By the end of May Hamer and two or three others had finished building, and their gospodarstwos were pleasant to look at. They resembled each other like drops of water; each one stood in the middle of its fields, the garden was by the roadside, shut off by a wooden fence; the house, roughcast, consisted of four large rooms, and behind it was a good-sized square of farm-buildings. All the buildings were larger and loftier than those of the Polish peasants, and were clean and comfortable, although they looked stiff and severe; for while the roofs of the Polish gospodarstwos overhung on the four sides, those of the Germans did so only at the front and back. But they had large windows, divided into six squares, and the doors were made by the carpenter. Jendrek, who daily ran over to the settlement reported that there were wooden floors, and that the kitchen was a separate room with an iron-plated stove. Slimak sometimes dreamt that he would build a place like that, only with a different roof. Then he would jump up, because he felt he ought to go somewhere and do work, for he was bored and ashamed of idling; at times he would long for the manor-fields over which he had guided the plough, where the settlement now stood. Then a great fear would seize him that he would be powerless when the Germans, who had felled forests, shattered rocks and driven away the squire, should start on him in earnest. But he always reassured himself. He had been neighbours with them now for two months and they had done him no harm. They worked quietly, minded their cattle so that they should not stray, and even their children were not troublesome, but went to school at Hamer's house, where the infirm schoolmaster kept them in order. 'They are respectable people,' he satisfied himself. 'I'm better off with them than with the squire.' He was, for they bought from him and paid well. In less than a month he had taken a hundred roubles from them; at the manor this had meant a whole year's toil. 'Do you think, Josef, that the Germans will always go on buying from you?' his wife asked from time to time. 'They have their own gospodarstwos now, and better ones than yours; you will see, it will last through the summer at the best, and after that they won't buy a stick from us.' 'We shall see,' said the peasant. He was secretly counting on the advantages which he would reap from the building of the new line; had not the engineer promised him this? He even laid in provisions with this object, having to go farther afield, for the peasants in the village would no longer sell him anything. But he soon realized that prices had risen; the Germans had long ago scoured the neighbourhood and bought without bargaining. Once he met Josel who, instead of smiling maliciously at him as usual, asked him to enter into a business transaction with him. 'What sort of business?' asked Slimak. 'Build a cottage on your land for my brother-in-law.' 'What for?'