“You have sold us—and yourself—cheaper still: for Yagna’s ... petticoat!” she burst out.—Antek started, as though stabbed. And then Hanka seemed suddenly to have gone raving mad. In a torrent of words she overwhelmed him with every wrong he had ever done to her, and with a host of remembrances and grievances she had never yet spoken of; unsparingly, passing over not one single fault or unkindness; beating him so unmercifully with the flail of her speech that, if she could, she would have beaten him to death on the spot. He stood aghast at her mad rage; and he felt something, too, that was tearing at his heart. With bowed head he listened, dismayed, and a bitter sense of shame burned his soul; then he snatched up his cap and fled out of the hut. It was long ere he could make out what strange transformation had come over her. As a dog spurned from the door, he ran away, never thinking where he went, to wander about aimlessly, as indeed was his daily custom. For since that terrible hour of the conflagration, a fearful thing had come into being within him: he was, so to speak, a prey to secret insanity. He no longer went to his work, although the miller had several times sent for him; he did nothing but wander about the country-side, or sit drinking in the tavern, continually revolving in his mind thoughts of bloody vengeance, and his soul was full of nothing else. He was even indifferent to the suspicions of arson which sullied his name. “Let anyone dare to utter them to my face ... let him but dare!” he had cried to Matthew in the tavern, loud enough for all present to hear. The heifer which remained to him he had sold to a Jew, and drunk the price of it with his associates; for he had now for pot-companions all the riff-raff in Lipka; such vile fellows as, for instance, Bartek Koziol, or Philip (from over the water), Francis, the miller’s man, or those, the lowest of all, the jail-birds, Gulbasowa’s sons—men always ready for any act of debauchery, always prowling like wolves about the country-side, seeking what they could snap up and barter to the Jew for a few drams. But he cared little what they were: they kept him company, and fawned upon him as spaniels fawn on their masters. He did indeed give one or another a thrashing now and then; but he willingly stood them drinks and protected them against other folk. The gang shortly committed so many lawless acts and breaches of the peace that complaints were made every day to the Voyt, and even to his Reverence. Matthew cautioned him, but unavailingly. Vainly, too, had Klemba, out of pure kindliness, besought him to stop in time, and not ruin his life for ever. He listened to no one, did more and more desperate deeds, drank yet harder, and had become the dread of the whole village.