'Gratia plena: the Lord be with you,' murmured the woman, kneeling at his side.
'Blessed art thou among women,' answered the crowd and pressed forward.
All knelt; a subdued sobbing arose; heads were bowed; trusting and resigned hearts breathed their emotions in prayer. A warm glow of trust kindled the dull eyes and pinched faces, straightened the bent shoulders, and gave them such force that they rose from their prayer heartened and unconquerable.
'Herszlik, Herszlik!' they called to the Jew, who had disappeared into the inner room. They were eager now to go into that unknown world, so terrible and yet so alluring for its very strangeness; eager to take on their shoulders their new fate and to escape from the old.
Herszlik came out armed with a dark lantern, counted the people, made them range themselves in pairs, opened the door: they began to move like some phantom army of misery, a column of ragged shadows, and disappeared at once in the darkness and rain. For a moment there shone in the gloom and amid the tossing trees the solitary light of their guide, for a moment one could hear amid wailing a tremulous hymn, 'He who casts himself on the care of the Lord….' Then the storm broke out again in what seemed like the groan of dying masses.
'Poor creatures! orphans!' whispered Jasiek; a wild grief filled his heart.
Then he returned to the inn, now dumb and dark, for the girl had extinguished the light and gone to sleep, and the singing had ceased in the inner room: only the beggar remained awake; he and the woman were counting the people's alms.
'A poor parish! two threepenny bits and five and twenty farthings—the whole show! Ha! May the Lord Jesus never remember them or help them!'
He went on babbling, but Jasiek no longer listened. Crouched in the fire-place he hid himself as best he could in his still wet cloak and fell into a stony sleep.
A good while after midnight he was awakened by a sharp tug; a light shone straight into his eyes.