Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/147

Rh Tatár. They traversed the church unperceived and emerged upon the square in front. The quadrangular square was entirely deserted; in the middle of it stood wooden pillars, showing that only a week before, perhaps, a provision market had existed there. The streets, which were then unpaved, were simply a mass of dried mud. The square was surrounded by a row of small, one-storied houses of stone or mud, on whose walls were visible wooden stakes and posts to their full height, obliquely crossed by carved wooden beams, as was the manner of building in those days, examples of which style of construction are still to be seen in some parts of Lithuania and Poland. They were covered with enormously high roofs, with a multitude of dormer-windows and ventilating orifices. On one side, quite close to the church, and taller than the others, rose a building entirely detached from the rest; probably the Town Hall or some government office. It was two stories high, and above it, in two arches, was built a belvedere, where stood a watchman; a huge clock-face was inserted in the roof.

The square seemed dead, but Andríi thought he heard a feeble groan. Glancing about him, he perceived, on the further side, a group of two or three men lying almost motionless on the ground. He fastened his eyes more intently upon them, to