"Very well then, I shan't," said Schmielke. He made no more of his frivolous remarks, but grew silent as the others had gradually done. They all felt out of tune, thoroughly depressed. Starydwór seemed to be running behind them, now that they had left the place. In their mind's eye they continued to see the black birds on the gloomy-looking roofs, and the man who had hanged himself and was still alive, and the woman who had cut him down and who still smiled. All at once they hastened their steps, and not another word was spoken until they reached the first house in Starawies. Then they began to speak of the schoolmaster. That was another of them, he and Tiralla were a couple. Both of them were being ruined by drink. But it was a great shame of Böhnke, for he ought to be a pattern to the children, as the priest very rightly had said. How could such a fellow teach children, a man who drank so much that he had been found in the ditch like a tramp, his clothes torn, and bleeding and dirty? It was a great disgrace. The gendarme could tell a tale about that. He had many a time seen the schoolmaster coming home at dawn, and had watched him trying to poke his key into the lock; he had many a time had to help him to open the door. But when he had picked him out of the ditch on his way home from a round in the Przykop, looking no better than a drunken vagabond whom you [Pg 278] look up, he had felt obliged to speak about it. Father Szypulski would perhaps have preferred him to have hushed it up, but it surely would not do for the village schoolmaster to be found lying drunk and bruised in a ditch. It would have been found out sooner or later, and then nobody would have any respect for him. Of course, the man could not stop at Starawies, and who knows, perhaps he would have to give up being a schoolmaster altogether. The priest, who as a rule was so loquacious, had never said a word about it. As they came past the house where Böhnke lived, they looked at it askance. What did the man feel like? He had not shown himself for days--had he already left? The priest had said "as soon as possible." They all felt they had never liked the schoolmaster; he had always been so conceited, so proud of his learning. Here you could plainly see it, "Pride goeth before a fall." They knocked at the door. The shutters in front of the schoolmaster's window were closed. Had he really left, or was it because he felt so ashamed of himself?