Grzela’s drowning is revealed not in a scene of the accident but through a letter that arrives after his family has been expecting him home. The delayed news confirms that he died at Easter, aged twenty-six, and turns a hoped-for return at harvest into a reckoning with loss and inheritance.

The News Arrives

After gathering herself, a woman took a letter from behind a picture and went to the presbytery, hoping the priest would read it. She did not approach him when she saw him working in the fields with his hired hands, and instead sought out The Miller, who was testing a saw with Mateusz the Young Villager. The Miller began by joking about the household’s recent affairs; after glancing at the letter, he abruptly announced the bad news. The message said that Grzela had drowned at Easter and that his belongings could be collected from the county authority.

A Death Learned After the Fact

The report makes the death especially stark through the contrast between what the family expected and what had happened. Grzela had been due back for the harvest, and the news describes him as young and healthy, not yet twenty-six. The woman’s distress—she wrings her hands and invokes Jesus—registers the shock of learning that a familiar future has already vanished. The drowning itself remains outside the narrated scene: the letter gives its timing and consequence, but no account of how it occurred.

Inheritance and Its Cost

The news immediately enters the household’s calculations. Weronka observes that, if Grzela has died, his portion will come to the woman through the divisions. She then connects the expected payment for the woods with the family’s shares, remarking that even a death can become a source of profit for the wealthy. The exchange places grief beside material consequence without making the inheritance a consolation: Grzela’s share may change hands, but it cannot restore the son expected at harvest. His death is thus disclosed both as a personal bereavement and as a change in the family’s property arrangements.