Breathless, he paused and looked at his wasted arms, then continued: 'To whom is it that the colonists resell their land? To you peasants! On the other side of the Vistula[1] the peasants bought up every scrap of our land.' [Footnote 1: i.e. in Prussian Poland. One of the Polish people's grievances is that the large properties are not sold direct to them but to the colonists, and the peasants have to buy the land from them. Statistics show that in spite of the great activity of the German Colonization Commission more and more land is constantly acquired by the Polish peasants, who hold on to the land tenaciously.] 'One of your lot is always after me to sell him my land,' said Slimak. 'To think of such a thing!' interposed his wife. 'Who is he?' 'How should I know? there are two of them, and they came twice, an old man and one with a beard. They want my hill to put up a windmill, they say.' 'That's Hamer,' said the girl under her breath to her father. 'Oh, Hamer,' repeated the invalid, 'he has caused us difficulties enough. Our people wanted to go to the other side of the Bug, where land only costs thirty roubles an acre, but he persuaded them to come here, because they are building a railway across the valley. So our people have been buying land here at seventy roubles an acre and have been running into debt with the Jew, and we shall see what comes of it.' The girl meanwhile had been eating coarse bread, sharing it with the dog. She now looked across to where the colonists were spreading themselves over the fields. 'We must go, father,' she said. 'Yes, we must go; what do I owe you for the milk, gospodarz?' The peasant shrugged his shoulders. 'If we were obliged to take money for a little thing like that, I shouldn't have asked you.' 'Well, God repay you!' 'God speed you,' said Slimak and his wife. 'Strange folk, those Germans,' he said, when they had slowly moved off. 'He is a clever man, yet he goes about in that little cart like an old beggar.' 'And the girl!' said Slimakowa, 'whoever heard of dragging an old man about, as if you were a horse.' 'They're not bad,' said Slimak, returning to his cottage. The conversation with the Germans had reassured him that they were not as terrible as he had fancied. When Maciek went out after breakfast to plough the potato-fields, Slimak slipped off. 'You've got to put up the fence!' his wife called out after him. 'That won't run away,' he answered, and banged the door, fearful lest his wife should detain him. He crouched as he ran through the yard, wishing to attract her attention as little as possible, and went stealthily up the hill to where Maciek was perspiring over his ploughing. 'How about those Swabians?' asked the labourer. Slimak sat down on the slope so that he could not be seen from the cottage, and pulled out his pipe. 'You might sit over there,' Maciek said, pointing with his whip to a raised place; 'then I could smell the smoke.'