'His trial does not come on till to-morrow,' he said, 'but as I was driving that way, I thought he might as well come with me.' Jendrek grew pale and silently put on his new sukmana and sheepskin. 'What will they do to him?' his father asked peevishly. 'Eh! I dare say he'll get a few days, perhaps a week.' Slimak slowly pulled a rouble out of a little packet. 'And...Soltys, have you heard what the accursed Jew has been saying about Maciek and the child being frozen to death?' 'How shouldn't I have heard?' said the Soltys, reluctantly; 'it's true.' 'Frozen...frozen?' 'Yes, of course. But,' he added, 'every one understands that it's not your fault. He didn't look after the horses and you discharged him. No one told him to go down into the ravines. He must have been drunk. The poor wretch died through his own stupidity.' Jendrek was ready to start, and embraced his parents' knees. Slimak gave him the rouble, tears came into his eyes; his mother, however, showed no sign of interest. 'Jagna,' Slimak said with concern, 'Jendrek is going to his trial.' 'What of that?' she answered with a delirious look. 'Are you very ill?' 'No, I'm only weak.' She went into the alcove and Slimak remained alone. The longer he sat pondering the lower his head dropped on to his chest. Half dozing, he fancied he was sitting on a wide, grey plain, no bushes, no grass, not even stones were to be seen; there was nothing in front of him; but at his side there was something he dared not look at. It was Maciek with the child looking steadily at him. No, he would not look, he need not look! He need see nothing of him, except a little bit of his sukmana...perhaps not even that! The thought of Maciek was becoming an obsession. He got up and began to busy himself with the dishes. 'What am I coming to? It doesn't do to give way!' He pulled himself together, fed the cattle, ran to the river for water. It was so long since he had done these things that he felt rejuvenated, and but for the thought of Maciek he would have been almost cheerful. His gloom returned with the dusk. It was the silence that tormented him most. Nothing stirred but the mice behind the boards. The voice was haunting him again: 'I was a stranger and ye took me not in.' 'It's all the fault of those scoundrel Swabians that everything is going wrong with me,' he muttered, and began to count his losses on the window-pane: 'Stasiek, that's one, the cow two, the horses four, because the thieves did that out of spite for the hog, Burek five, Jendrek six, Maciek and the child eight, and Magda had to leave, and my wife is ill with worry, that makes ten. Lord Christ...!'