Boryna’s brief return to consciousness turns a household crisis into a private charge to Hanka: he reveals money hidden in the grain and urges her to defend Antek, even if protecting him requires selling half the farm. The moment is fragile and incomplete. Boryna speaks clearly enough to entrust Hanka with practical instructions, but collapses before he can finish, leaving her responsible for what he has disclosed while the blacksmith waits outside for an answer.

The Household Interrupted

Hanka is at home when Magda arrives with an urgent warning that something has happened to Boryna. Until then, Hanka has been telling her father, old Bylica, the news Rocho brought about Antek. The shift from that report to Boryna’s sudden awakening is abrupt: Hanka finds him sitting on the bed, looking around the room, and rushes to support him lest he fall. He looks over her and then toward the door, where the blacksmith has just entered unexpectedly. His clear call to Hanka startles her, and she responds by telling him not to move because the doctor has forbidden it.

Boryna’s first questions concern whether everyone is awake and whether it is time to go to the fields. The words place his return to awareness inside the routines that have governed his life: waking, work, and the demands of the farm. Those around him cannot readily answer. When he calls on the men to defend what is theirs and not give up, his appeal abruptly falters. He shakes and buckles against Hanka’s support. The blacksmith and the Blacksmith’s Wife move to help, but Hanka refuses to release him, straining to hold him herself.

A Moment of Lucidity

Boryna tries to continue with an instruction about sowing the barley first, then cries out for help and falls back with his eyes closed and a rattle in his throat. Hanka cries that he is dying and tugs at him. Magda puts a blessed candle into his limp hand, and the blacksmith is told to fetch the priest. Before he can leave, however, Boryna opens his eyes; the candle drops and breaks into pieces. The failed attempt to prepare for his death gives way, for a moment, to renewed awareness.

The blacksmith bends over Boryna, but Boryna pushes him away and speaks lucidly again. He orders Hanka to send the others out. The blacksmith understands that Boryna wants to tell her something privately and resists leaving, but Boryna raises himself and points fiercely at the door. The blacksmith withdraws. Rather than accept that exclusion, he slips around through the orchard to a window in the gable, crouching beneath it to listen; the bedheads are against that wall, and he hopes to make out what is said through the panes. The private confidence is thus set against an attempted act of overhearing.

Money and a Charge to Hanka

Alone with Hanka, Boryna tells her to sit beside him. He reveals that cash is hidden in the storeroom, specifically in the grain, and instructs her to conceal it so that others cannot pry it away from her. Hanka trembles and asks where the money is, registering the importance of a disclosure that turns the farm’s stores into more than provisions: the grain also hides a reserve she is now expected to protect. The scene does not state how much money there is, but it makes the hiding place and the risk of its discovery explicit.

Boryna then tells Hanka to defend Antek. He says she should sell half the farm if necessary, but not give up. The instruction binds the hidden cash and the land to the same immediate responsibility: she must guard the money and preserve the possibility of standing by Antek. Boryna’s earlier appeal to the men to defend what is theirs returns in a more intimate form. The public-sounding call to resist surrender becomes a direct instruction to Hanka, focused on her son and the farm. He cannot finish the thought; he turns blue and falls back, his eyes fading and clouding as he mutters and seems to try to rise.

Collapse and Consequence

Hanka cries out in fright. The blacksmith and Magda rush back in and try to revive Boryna with water, but he does not regain consciousness. He lies motionless, eyes open, no longer responsive to the people around him. The women sit beside him for a long time and weep quietly. As dusk deepens and shadows fill the room, they leave together; the last light of twilight is reflected in the pond outside.

The blacksmith then blocks Hanka and sharply asks what Boryna told her. His question makes plain that the confidence has immediate consequences beyond the exchange itself: Hanka now holds information about money that the blacksmith tried to overhear, while Boryna’s instruction regarding Antek gives her a separate obligation to carry forward. The scene ends without reporting her answer. Boryna’s recovery has therefore not resolved the household’s crisis. It has instead left Hanka with a concealed resource, a specific warning against surrender, and a responsibility that she must exercise while Boryna is once again beyond communication.