"But they don't all belong to the priest," said the nabob of Glogova, smoothing back his hair.
"Why, how is that?" asked the priest.
"Many of the inhabitants of Glogova are never buried in the cemetery at all. The wolves eat them without ever announcing it in the parish."
"And some die in other parts of the country," went on György Klincsok, "so that only very few of them are buried here."
"It is a bad lookout," said the priest. "But the parish fields, what about them?"
Now they all wanted to speak at once, but Klincsok pulled the sacristan aside, and stood up in front of the priest.
"Fields?" he said. "Why you can have as much ground as you like. If you want one hundred acres ..."
"One hundred acres!" shouted Szlávik, "five hundred if you like; we shall not refuse our priest any amount of ground he likes to ask for."
The priest's countenance began to clear, but honest Szlávik did not long leave him in doubt.
"The fact is," he began, "the boundaries of the pasture-lands of Glogova are not well defined to this day. There are no proper title-deeds; there was some arrangement made with regard to them, but in 1823 there was a great fire here, and all our documents were burnt. So every one takes as much of the land as he and his family can till. Each man ploughs his own field, and when it is about used up he looks out a fresh bit of land. So half the ground is always unused, of course the worst part, into which it is not worth while putting any work."