Maciek started cautiously homeward in the wake of the jingling sleighs. Distant flames were still twinkling ahead, and the wind carried faint sounds of merriment back to him. Then all was silent.
'Are they doing right?' he murmured, perturbed.
For he recalled the portrait of the grey-headed senator in the choir of the church; he had even prayed to it sometimes…. The bald-headed nobleman was there too, whom the peasants called 'the cursed man', and the knight in armour who was lying on his tomb beside the altar of the Holy Martyr Apollonius. Then he remembered the friar who walked through the Vistula, and Queen Jadwiga who had brought salt from Hungary. And by the side of all these he saw his own old wise grandfather, Roch Owczarz, who had been a soldier under Napoleon, and came home without a penny, and in his old age became sacristan at the church, and explained all the pictures to the gospodarze so beautifully that he earned more money than the organist.
'The Lord rest his soul eternally!'
And now these noblemen were amusing themselves with sacred matters!
What would they do next?…
Slimak met him when he was about a verst from the cottage.
'We have been wondering if you had got stuck on the hill. Thank God you are safe. Did you see the sleigh race?'
'Oho!' said Maciek.
'I wonder they did not smash you to pieces.'
'Why should they? They even helped me up the hill.'