On the next day already Manz sent his hired boy, also a wench working for daily wage, and his own boy Sali out to the new field, to begin removing the weeds and wild growths, and to pile them up at certain places, so as to make the loading up and carting away of the crop of stones all the easier. This noted a change in his character, this sending the little boy, scarcely eleven, whom he had never before driven to hard work such as weeding, out to field labor, and this against the will of the mother. It seemed indeed, since he defended his order with solemn and high-sounding words, as if he wanted to daze his own better conscience. At any rate, the slight wrong thus done to his own flesh and blood in insisting on onerous and unfit labor, was but one of the consequences growing out of the original wrong done by him for years in regard to the field itself. One by one more wrong, more evil unfolded itself. The three meanwhile weeded away industriously on the long strip of ground, and hacked away at the queer plants that had been flourishing on the soil for so many years. And to the young people doing this hard work, albeit it taxed and tried their strength greatly, it really was something of an amusement, since it was no carefully graduated and scaled task, but rather a wild job of destruction. After piling all this vegetable refuse up in heaps and letting the sun dry it, it was set afire with great jubilation and noise, and when the murky flames shot up and broad swaths of smoke waved irregularly, the young people jumped and danced about like a band of wild Indians.