attacked next?"--"Well, Charles, you may be right, for Kurz said to me this evening--that's to say before he was turned out--that two Gürlitz labourers were talking very strangely in his shop last Sunday."--"Well," said Hawermann, taking up his candle to go to bed, "I don't wish anyone harm, although some people have perhaps deserved it, but the pity of it to my mind is, that the innocent will suffer as well as the guilty, and that the whole country will share the fate of the few, who by their misconduct have brought all the misery upon themselves."--He then went away and Bräsig said to himself: "Charles, may be right after all, and dreadful things may happen out in the country, so I must go and see what young Joseph and parson Godfrey are about. However young Joseph's in no danger, for he has never angered his labourers in any way, and so they'll let him alone. George at the parsonage isn't a rebel either, I'm sure of that." Hawermann knew the nature of the people amongst whom he had worked for so many years. A feeling of uneasiness was spreading like a fever throughout the land. Reasonable complaints together with the most unreasonable and insane demands flew from mouth to mouth; what at first had been only whispered, was soon to be spoken of openly. The landowners were most to blame for that. They had lost their heads. Each of them acted as it seemed good to him, selfishly worked for his own safety regardless of others, and as long as he was at peace with his own people cared nought for his neighbour's fate. Instead of meeting their people honestly and straightforwardly, and showing them the real state of the case, some of the squires granted every demand their labourers chose to make in their folly and ignorance, while others, getting on horseback, wanted to reduce their labourers to order with swords and pistols, and I know several landowners who never went out to drive in their own grounds without taking a couple of loaded muskets in the carriage with them. And why was this? Because their conscience pricked them for their former conduct, and because there was no kindly human sympathy between them and their dependents. Of course that was not the case with all the masters.