The guard again took him away with fixed bayonets. He knew where he was going. They would go through the village and stop at the wall of the cemetery.
The sky was becoming overcast, the beauty of the morning was waning. They called at the school-house for orders. Yakob remained outside the open window.
'I won't…' he heard a voice.
'Nor I…' another.
Yakob leant against the fence, supported his temples on his fists and watched the snow-clouds and mists.
A feeling of immense, heavy weariness came over him, and made him limp. He could see the ruins of the mill, the tumbled-down granaries, the broken doors. The water trickled down the wheel; smoke and soot were floating on the water, yet the water flowed on.
Guilty…not guilty…. What did it all matter?
'Do you hear?' he asked of the water. 'Do you hear?' he asked of his wife and children and his little property.
They took him here and they took him there. They made him wait outside houses, and he sat down on the steps as if he had never been used to anything else. He picked up a dry branch and gently tapped the snow with it and waited. He waited as in a dream, going round and round the wish that it might all be over soon.
While he was waiting, the crowd amused themselves with shaking their fists at him; he was thankful that his wife seemed to have gone away to the town and did not see him.