The spring storm that destroys Stach’s cottage turns a night of communal fear into an immediate crisis for Weronka and her children. The house collapses around them, yet they escape death by reaching a potato pit before dawn. In the aftermath, the storm’s damage is visible across Lipce, but the response to Weronka’s loss is equally concrete: Hanka hurries to her aid, the priest offers shelter for the family’s cow and gives money, and Sikora’s wife makes a room available. The episode makes survival depend not only on finding refuge from the weather, but also on neighbors’ willingness to share space and scarce resources.

The Night of the Gale

The wind rises after nightfall and continues for almost the whole night. It rushes through the houses while trees lash against walls and batter windows; the villagers fear that it may tear the village apart. The storm’s threat is therefore collective before its consequences become particular. People are kept awake by a force that seems capable of undoing the safety of every household, and the cottage’s collapse reveals how little protection its walls and roof can provide.

Thunder begins shortly before morning, when the exhausted villagers have only just fallen asleep. Lightning flashes, heavy rain follows, and some residents suspect that lightning has struck the forest. The weather then clears: the rain stops, the air warms, and birds begin to sing. This quick turn toward apparent good weather does not undo what the gale has done. Instead, the relative calm makes the damage legible. By daylight, fallen trees, broken roofing, and smashed fencing block the roads, while homes across the village show signs of destruction.

Weronka and the Collapse

Hanka is checking the farm when Sikorzyna rushes in with news that Stach’s cottage has come down and that its occupants have narrowly escaped death. Hanka responds with alarm, covers her head with her apron, and hurries to the wreckage. Other villagers follow after hearing of the disaster. The journey from warning to aid is swift, but the sight awaiting them is severe: only the walls of the cottage remain, warped and sunk into the ground. The roof is gone; broken rafters hang overhead, and the chimney has collapsed until only a small stump remains. Tangled sheaves and broken household belongings litter the ground.

Weronka sits beside the wall on a heap of precariously stacked possessions, holding her weeping children and crying out in grief. Hanka throws herself toward her sister, while the people gathering around try to comfort her. Weronka is too overwhelmed to take in their efforts. Her lament for her children expresses what the wreckage means beyond the loss of a building: a household has been exposed, its possessions scattered, and its future suddenly uncertain.

Weronka recounts how the family had gone to bed when evening fell because they had neither fuel for the lamp nor firewood. The cottage shook in the wind, but she had experienced stronger gales and was not initially afraid. After she dozed, a tremendous crash and shaking jolted her awake. She gathered the children as the house began to split and fall around them. She had just managed to reach the hallway when the cottage came down behind her; then the chimney collapsed as well. Outside, the wind was so fierce that standing was difficult, and the family was isolated in the dark, with the village too far away for them to be heard. Weronka pulled the children into the potato pit, where they remained until dawn. The storm thus makes the difference between death and survival a matter of a narrow escape from the collapsing house and a makeshift refuge beneath the ground.

Shelter and Immediate Relief

The villagers’ concern does not last evenly. After talking and expressing sympathy, the women disperse, remembering their breakfasts and urgent work. Weronka and her family are left among the rubble, trying to decide what can be salvaged. The scene registers both communal compassion and its limits: people come quickly when the disaster is announced, but the work of living through its consequences falls on those who have lost their home.

The priest offers a practical first measure of relief by inviting Weronka to bring her cow to his byre, where it can stay until pasture time. His question about where the family will go makes clear that livestock shelter alone cannot solve their problem. Sikora’s wife then offers the family an empty room on the other side of her house, where Rocho had taught children. It has no chimney, but an iron stove can be installed. She tells Weronka not to worry about rent: payment can wait, work can be offered instead, and if neither is possible, the family can stay on a blessing. Her offer transforms sympathy into usable accommodation without making immediate payment a condition of refuge.

The priest also gives Weronka three paper roubles for her needs. She receives the money with gratitude, and Hanka affirms the priest’s honesty. With the cow taken into the priest’s byre and a room made available by Sikora’s wife, the family begins moving at once. Hanka summons a farmhand, and Rocho eventually arrives to help. The new dwelling stands beside the path where the road turns toward the village; by noon, Weronka is there with what the family has managed to rescue, especially dishes and bedding retrieved quickly from beneath the ruins.

Consequences and Significance

The room provides immediate safety, not restored security. Weronka looks around at the four walls and stove and grieves that there is not even a picture or a single unbroken bowl. She describes herself as nearly a beggar and a hired hand, showing how swiftly the destruction of a home can threaten both material independence and social standing. Hanka answers with specific promises: she will find a holy picture and spare dishes, and she expects Stach to return and rebuild the cottage with help from others. Those assurances point toward recovery, but the family’s losses remain present in the bare room and the scattered belongings.

The storm’s damage extends well beyond Weronka’s household. At the Płoszkas’, the pigsties are knocked down and all the geese are crushed; other yards and cottages also suffer. Women crowd the damaged yards, and grief spreads through the village alongside the practical labor of clearing and salvaging. The episode’s movement from a village-wide fear of the wind to one family’s ruined cottage, then to the shared work of finding shelter, gives the natural disaster a social scale. Weather brings sudden loss, but survival and the first steps toward rebuilding depend on neighbors who can offer a room, a place for a cow, money, labor, or the promise of help.