and the garden was neither fenced nor planted; in the vegetable beds birches had grown up. Yet this old farmhouse seemed the capitol of the village, for it was handsomer and more spacious than the other cottages, and on the right side, where the living-room was placed, it was of brick. Near by were a storehouse, granary, barn, cow shed, and stable, all close together, as is usually the case among the gentry. The whole was uncommonly old and decayed; the house roofs shone as if made of green tin, because of the moss and grass, which grew as luxuriantly as on a prairie. The thatches of the barns were like hanging gardens of various plants, the nettle and the crimson crocus, the yellow mullen and the bright-coloured tassels of mercury. In them too were nests of various birds; in the lofts were dove-cotes, nests of swallows in the windows; white rabbits hopped about at the threshold and burrowed in the untrodden turf. In a word the place was like a birdcage or a warren.
But of old it had been fortified! Everywhere there were plenty of traces that it had undergone great and frequent attacks. Near the gateway there still lay in the grass a relic of the Swedish invasion, an iron cannon ball, as large as a child's head; once the open gate had rested on that ball as on a stone. In the yard, among the weeds and the wormwood, rose the old stumps of some dozen crosses, on unconsecrated ground, a sign that here lay buried men who had perished by a sudden and unexpected death. When one eyed from close by the storehouse, granary, and cottage, he saw that the walls were peppered from ground to summit as with a swarm of black insects; in the centre of each spot sat a bullet, like a bumble-bee in its earthy burrow.
