'I'll give you your priest! You shall kick your bucket in the pigsty, you sinner...like a dog!' She seized him under the armpits, but dropped him again directly, and covered him entirely with the feather-bed, for she had noticed a shadow flitting past the window. Some one was coming up to the house. She scarcely had time to push the old man's feet back into the bed. Blue in the face, she furiously banged the feather-bed and pushed the bedding about. The wife of the peasant Dyziak came into the room. 'Christ be praised.' 'In Eternity...' growled the other, and glanced suspiciously at her out of the corners of her eyes. 'How do you do? Are you well?' 'Thank God... so so...' 'How's the old man? Well?' She was stamping the snow off her clogs near the door. 'Eh... how should he be well? He can hardly fetch his breath any more.' 'Neighbour... you don't say so... neighbour...' She was bending down over the old man. 'Priest,' he sighed. 'Dear me... just fancy... dear me, he doesn't know me! The poor man wants the priest. He's dying, that's certain, he's all but dead already... dear me! Well, and did you send for his Reverence?' 'Have I got any one to send?' 'But you don't mean to let a Christian soul die without the sacrament?' 'I can't run off and leave him alone, and perhaps...he may recover.' 'Don't you believe it... hoho... just listen to his breathing. That means that his inside is withering up. It's just as it was with my Walek last year when he was so ill.' 'Well, dear, you'd better go for the priest, make haste... look!' 'All right, all right. Poor thing! He looks as if he couldn't last much longer. I must make haste... I'm off...' and she tied her apron more firmly over her head. 'Good-bye, Antkowa.' 'Go with God.' Dyziakowa went out, while the other woman began to put the room in order; she scraped the dirt off the floor, swept it up, strewed wood-ashes, scrubbed her pots and pans and put them in a row. From time to time she turned a look of hatred on to the bed, spat, clenched her fists, and held her head in helpless despair. 'Fifteen acres of land, the pigs, three cows, furniture, clothes--half of it, I'm sure, would come to six thousand... good God!' And as though the thought of so large a sum was giving her fresh vigour, she scrubbed her saucepans with a fury that made the walls ring, and banged them down on the board. 'May you... may you!' She continued to count up: 'Fowls, geese, calves, all the farm implements. And all left to that trull! May misery eat you up... may the worms devour you in the ditch for the wrong you have done me, and for leaving me no better off than an orphan!' She sprang towards the bed in a towering rage and shouted: 'Get up! 'And when the old man did not move, she threatened him with her fists and screamed into his face: