The chapter opens with a description of a man who is walking home from work one night. He stumbles and falls on the ground. He is grateful to the two men for the food they have stolen from him, but he is not sure whether he is capable of beating them. The men catch up with him, and the man realizes that he has thanked them too quickly. He does not know whether he can beat the men, and they set him up for a fight. The three men discuss the man's reaction to the incident. They all agree that the man is wicked, but they do not agree on what punishment he should receive. The squat man, who is returning to his village that night, is frightened by a gust of wind. He feels as though someone is behind his back. The air is so cold that it makes him shiver from head-to-toe. He thinks that there are fate fires burning on both shoulders. He tries to strangle the man with his hands, but the man cuts him with his own hand. The narrator tells us that this is the story of the carpenter's son, who has a stroke. The carpenter had borrowed money from his son's father, who had a memory of the illness, and he did not care about it. He just took the clothes off the corpse and left. He did not want to be associated with the other owners of the second-hand clothes shops.