Page:The Mantle and Other Stories.djvu/167

 anyway? May he break his neck, the son of a dog! I spit at him! May he be run over by a cart, the one-eyed devil!"

"Ah! the drunken sot has crawled into the house, and now he lays his paws on the table," said the headman, rising angrily; but at that moment a heavy stone, breaking a window-pane to pieces, fell at his feet. The headman remained standing. "If I knew," he said, "what jail-bird has thrown it, I would give him something. What devil's trick is this?" he continued, looking at the stone, which he held in his hand, with burning eyes. "I wish I could choke him with it!"

"Stop! Stop! God preserve you, friend!" broke in the distiller, looking pale. "God keep you in this world and the next, but don't curse anyone so."

"Ah! now we have his defender! May he be ruined!"

"Listen, friend! You don't know what happened to my late mother-in-law."

"Your mother-in-law?"

"Yes, my mother-in-law. One evening, perhaps rather earlier than this, they were sitting at supper, my late mother-in-law, my father-in-law, their two servants, and five children. My mother-in-law emptied some dumplings from the cooking-pot into a dish in order to cool them. But the others, being hungry after the day's