Hanka’s secret recovery of Boryna’s hidden money turns the quiet interval before the Easter Resurrection service into an act of nerve and concealment. She waits until the household has emptied, enters her father-in-law’s storeroom, and carries what she finds to church hidden beneath her clothes, where fear and joy keep her from prayer.

Easter Morning and the Opportunity

Since daybreak, Lipce has been busy with preparations for Easter. Hanka sends Józka ahead with the children and the farmhand, but delays her own departure, repeatedly going to the porch to scan the road. Her waiting is deliberate: she does not enter the storeroom until Jagna has left for church with the blacksmith’s wife and she has heard the blacksmith pass by with the Voyt.

The farm is not wholly unattended. Bylica and the dogs remain there, with Witek and Maciej Kłąb occupied in making a cockerel for Dyngus. While Bylica keeps watch in the yard, Hanka tiptoes into her father-in-law’s storeroom. The scene’s careful timing makes her action unmistakably private, though the passage does not explain what she intends to do with the money.

The Hidden Money

Hanka stays inside for a good half hour. When she emerges, she carefully fastens her bodice; her eyes are shining and her hands are trembling. She mutters something incoherent and leaves for the Resurrection service. The loose, cold grain still seems present to her by touch, and she repeatedly shrugs to feel the bundle secured against her breasts. The money is not displayed or counted: its concealment is part of the event, and Hanka carries it away on her person.

At the Resurrection Service

The public ceremony does not quiet Hanka’s private agitation. While the congregation immerses itself in prayer, she cannot turn her mind to praying; she feels as if she were still in the storeroom. Her rosary repeatedly slips from her fingers, and she forgets the words of the prayers, looking feverishly across the people without really seeing them.

The contrast between the church’s shared ritual and Hanka’s inward fear gives the theft its immediate consequence: she reaches the service, but cannot participate in it with an undistracted mind. The concealed bundle remains physically close as the Easter liturgy proceeds, binding the household’s secret to the public observance of the Resurrection.