'Why do you keep on asking me about my property? I told you last summer that the hill was mine.' 'Then sell it to us,' said the man with the beard. 'Wait, Fritz,' interrupted the older man. 'Oh bother! are you going to gossip again, father?' 'Look here, gospodarz,' said the father, 'we have bought the squire's estate. Now we want this; hill, because we want to build a windmill....' 'Gracious!' exclaimed the son disagreeably, 'have you lost your senses, father? Listen! we want that land!' 'My land?' the peasant repeated in amazement, looking about him, 'my land?' He hesitated for a moment, not knowing what to say. 'What right have you gentlemen to my land?' 'We have got money.' 'Money?...I!...Sell my land for money? We have been settled here from father to son; we were here at the time of the scourge of serfdom, and even then we used to call the land "ours". My father got it for his own by decree from the Emperor Alexander II; the Land Commission settled all that, and we have the proper documents with signatures attached. How can you say now that you want to buy my land?' The younger man had turned away indifferently during Slimak's long speech and whistled, the older man shook his fist impatiently. 'But we want to buy it...pay for it...cash! Sixty roubles an acre.' 'And I wouldn't sell it for a hundred,' said Slimak. 'Perhaps we could come to terms, gospodarz.' The peasant burst out laughing. 'Old man, have you lived so long in this world, and don't understand that I would not sell my land on any terms whatever?' 'You could buy thirty acres the other side of the Bug with what we should pay you.' 'If land is so cheap the other side of the Bug, why don't you buy it yourself instead of coming here?' The son laughed. 'He is no fool, father; he is telling you what I have been telling you from morning till night.' The old man took Slimak's hand. 'Gospodarz,' he said, pressing it, 'let us talk like Christians and not like heathens. We praise the same God, why should we not agree? You see, I have a son who is an expert miller, and I should like him to have a windmill on that hill. When he has a windmill he will grow steady and work and get married. Then I could be happy in my old age. That hill is nothing to you.' 'But it's my land, no one has a right to it.' 'No one has a right to it, but I want to buy it.' 'Well, and I won't sell it!' The old man made a wry face, as if he were ready to cry. He drew the peasant a few steps aside, and said in a voice trembling with emotion: 'Why are you so hard on me, gospodarz? You see, my sons don't hit it off with each other. The elder is a farmer, and I want to set up the younger as a miller and have him near me. I haven't long to live, I am eighty years old, don't quarrel with me.' 'Can't you buy land elsewhere?'