CHAPTER X. Everything went on well at Pümpelhagen that year. The harvest was plenteous, and the price of corn was high. Alick von Rambow saw a way opening before him of getting out of his difficulties; he did up his accounts over and over again, and saw clearly that if he sold the rape for so much, the sheep for so much, and the cattle for so much, that all this, with what he got for the wheat would be amply sufficient to pay off the last farthing of his debts. The devil himself must take part against him, if he failed to do so. He thought that the reason of his good fortune this year was that he himself was at Pümpelhagen, and was therefore able to look after things with his own eyes. The eye of the master is to a farm what the sun is to the world, everything ripens under it, and the tender blades of grass grow green under his footstep. So thinking, it was not long before Alick quite forgot that these blessings were the gift of God, and began to look upon them as the result of his own efforts, and even the high price of corn seemed to him to be a piece of well merited good fortune. He rode his high horse without fear, and even when the farming and household expenses of the moment ran away with all the bank-notes with which David and Slus'uhr had provided him, and his small change began to run short, he congratulated himself on his excellent farming which gave him such unlimited credit in the neighbourhood, that Pomuchelskopp had offered to lend him various small sums from time to time. He had accepted loans from Pomuchelskopp without fear, in order to get rid of David for the time being, so that he paid David and Slus'uhr with Pomuchelskopp's money, and they paid it back to Pomuchelskopp, and he again lent it to Alick, thus the money was kept continually going round and round in a circle. It would altogether have been a very pleasant little arrangement, if Pomuchelskopp had not been obliged to take the trouble of removing the marks from the bills for fear of Alick's finding out that it was always his own money that he got back. It could not be helped however if Pomuchelskopp still wished to keep his plans for gaining the Pümpelhagen acres a profound secret from his victim, and indeed he enjoyed the sense of power which came of his rapid intimacy with Alick far too much to grudge the trouble he had to take.