But Stasiek was silent. He was silent when they drove to the church, silent when the priest sprinkled holy water on him, silent when they took him to his grave and his father helped the gravedigger to lower him, and when they threw clods of earth upon him and left him alone for the first time. Even Maciek burst into tears. Slimak hid his face in his sukmana like a Roman senator and would not let his grief be looked upon. And a voice in his heart whispered: 'Father! father! if you had made a fence, your child would not have been drowned!' But he answered: 'I am not guilty; he died because his hour had come.' CHAPTER IX Autumn came with drab, melancholy stubble fields; the bushes in the ravines turned red; the storks hastily left the barns and flew south; in the few woods that remained, the birds were silent, human beings had deserted the fields; only here and there some old German women in blue petticoats were digging up the last potatoes. Even the navvies had left, the embankment was finished, and they had dispersed all over the world. Their place was taken by a light railway bringing rails and sleepers. At first you were only aware of smoke in the distant west; in a few days' time you discovered a chimney, and presently found that that chimney was fixed to a large cauldron which rolled along without horses, dragging after it a dozen wagons full of wood and iron. Whenever it stopped men jumped out and laid down the wood, fastened the iron to it and drove off again. These were the proceedings which Maciek was watching daily. 'Look, how clever that is,' he said to Slimak; 'they can get their load uphill without horses. Why should we worry the beasts?' But when the cauldron came to a dead stop where the embankment ended by the ravines and the men had taken out and disposed of the load, 'Now, what will they do?' he thought. To the farm labourer's utter astonishment the cauldron gave a shrill whistle and moved backwards with its wagons. Yes, there it was! Had not the Galician harvesters told him of an engine that went by itself? Had they not drunk through his money with which he was to buy boots? 'To be sure, they told me true, it goes by itself; but it creeps like old Sobieska,' he added, to comfort himself. Yet, deep down in his heart he was afraid of this new contrivance and felt that it boded no good to the neighbourhood. And though he reasoned inconsequently he was right, for with the appearance of the railway engines there also came much thieving. From pots and pans, drying on the fences, to horses in the stables, nothing was safe. The Germans had their bacon stolen from the larder; the gospodarz Marcinezak, who returned rather tipsy from absolution, was attacked by men with blackened faces and thrown out of his cart, with which the robbers drove off at breakneck speed. Even the poor tailor Niedoperz, when crossing a wood, was relieved of the three roubles he had earned with so much labour.