'What are you hitting me for?' he asked in amazement. 'Where are the horses, you thief?' shouted Slimak. 'Horses? what horses?' He was suddenly seized with sickness. Coming to himself a little, he looked round. Yes, something seemed to be missing from the stable; he wiped his forehead, looked again... the stable was empty. 'But where are the horses?' he asked. 'Where?' cried Slimak, 'where your brothers have taken them, you thief.' The labourer held out his hands. 'I never took them out. I haven't stirred from here all night, something must have happened... I am ill.' He staggered up and had to support himself. 'What is that? You are trying to make out that you have lost your wits. You know quite well that the horses have been stolen. Whoever stole them must have opened the door and led them over you.' 'God help me! no one opened the door, no one led them over me,' cried Maciek, bursting into sobs. 'Dad! Burek is lying dead behind the fence,' cried Jendrek, who came running up with his mother. 'They have poisoned him,' said the woman, 'the foam has frozen on his mouth.' Maciek sank down in the open door, unable to stand any longer. 'The devil has got him too, he isn't like himself, something has fallen on him,' said Slimak. 'And may he keep it till he dies,'cried the woman, 'here he is sleeping in the stable and lets the horses be stolen. May the ground spit him out!' Jendrek was looking for a stone, but his parents, taking notice of the man's deathly pallor and his sunken eyes for the first time, restrained him. 'Maybe they have poisoned him too,' whispered Slimakowa. Slimak shrugged his shoulders, not knowing what to make of it. He began to question Maciek: Had anything happened in his absence? Slowly and with difficulty, but concealing nothing, Maciek told his story. 'Of course they gave me some filthy stuff, and then they made off with the horses,' he added, sobbing. But instead of taking pity on him, Slimak burst out afresh: 'What? you took drink from strangers and never told me anything about it?' 'Why should I have bothered you, gospodarz, when you were a little bit screwed yourself?' 'What's that to do with you?' bawled Slimak, 'dogs have no right to notice whether one is drunk or not, they have to be all the more watchful when one is! You are a thief like the others, only you are worse. I took you in when you were starving, and you've robbed me in return.' 'Don't talk like that,' groaned Maciek, crawling to Slimak's feet, 'I have saved a few roubles from my wages, and there is my little chest and a bit of sheepskin and my sukmana; take it all, but don't say I robbed you. Your dog has not been more faithful, and they have poisoned him too.' 'Don't bother me,' cried Slimak, thrusting him aside, 'the fellow offers me his wages and his box when the horses were worth twenty-eight roubles.