‘Merciful Jesus!’ faltered some one behind me. I looked round: Souvenir. ‘Ah!’ I thought, ‘he’s left off laughing now!’
Sletkin clutched a peasant, who was standing near, by the collar.
‘Climb up now, climb up, climb up, all of you, you devils,’ he wailed, shaking the man with all his force, ‘save my property!’
The peasant took a couple of steps forward, threw his head back, waved his arms, shouted—‘hi! here! master!’ shifted from one foot to the other uneasily, and then turned back.
‘A ladder! bring a ladder!’ Sletkin addressed the other peasants.
‘Where are we to get it?’ was heard in answer.
‘And if we had a ladder,’ one voice pronounced deliberately, ‘who’d care to climb up? Not such fools! He’d wring your neck for you—in a twinkling!’
‘He’d kill one in no time,’ said one young lad with flaxen hair and a half-idiotic face.
‘To be sure he would,’ the others confirmed. It struck me that, even if there had been no obvious danger, the peasants would yet have been loath to carry out their new owner’s orders. They almost approved of Harlov, though they were amazed at him.
‘Ugh, you robbers!’ moaned Sletkin; ‘you shall all catch it.…’