'Well, it matters a great deal to them; if Wilhelm had a windmill he could marry Miller Knap's daughter from Wolka and get a thousand and twenty roubles with her; the Hamers may go bankrupt without that money. That's why you stick in their throats. If you sold them your land they would pay you well.'
'And I won't sell! I will neither help them to stay here nor do myself harm for their benefit; when a man leaves the land of his fathers…'
'There will be trouble,' the schoolmaster said earnestly.
'Then let there be; I won't die because it pleases them.'
Slimak returned home without any further wish to see Hamer; he knew there could be no understanding between them.
Maciek had discovered at dawn one morning that a crowd had reached the river-bank by the ravines, and Slimak, hurrying thither, found some gospodarze from the village among the men.
'What is happening?'
'They are going to throw up a dam and build a bridge across the
Bialka,' Wisniewski replied.
'And what are you doing here?'
'We have been taken on to cart sand.'