'Fodder won't help you. A peasant among settlers will always be at a disadvantage,' said the old man, with his pipe between his teeth. 'Sell me your land; I'll give you a hundred roubles an acre.' Slimak shook his head. 'You are mad, Pan Hamer, I don't know what you mean. Isn't it enough that I am obliged to sell the beast? Now you want me to sell everything. If you want me to leave, carry me out into the churchyard. It is nothing to you Germans to move from place to place, you are a roving people and have no country, but a peasant is like a stone by the wayside. I know everything here by heart. I have moved every clod of earth with my own hands; now you say: sell and go elsewhere. Wherever I went I should be dazed and lost; when I looked at a bush I should say: that did not grow at home; the soil would be different and even the sun would not set in the same place. And what should I tell my father if he were to come looking for me when it gets too hot for him in Purgatory? He would ask me how I was to find his grave again, and Stasiek's, poor Stasiek who has laid down his head, thanks to you!' Hamer was trembling with rage. 'What rubbish the man is talking!' he cried, 'have not numbers of peasants settled afresh in Volhynia? His father will come looking for him! ...You had better look out that you don't go to Purgatory soon yourself for your obstinacy, and ruin me into the bargain. You are ruining my son now, because I can't build him a windmill. Here I am offering you a hundred roubles an acre, confound it all!' 'Say what you like, but I won't sell you my land.' 'You'll sell it all right,' said Hamer, shaking his fist, 'but I shan't buy it; you won't last out a year among us.' He turned away abruptly. 'And I don't want that lad to stroll in and out of the settlement,' he called back, 'I don't keep a schoolmaster here for you!' 'That's nothing to me; he needn't go if you grudge him the room.' 'Yes, I grudge him the room,' the old man retorted viciously, 'the father is a dolt, let the son be a dolt too.' Slimak's regret for the cow was drowned in his anger. 'All right, let them cut her throat,' he thought, but remembering that the poor beast could not help his quarrel with Hamer, he sighed. There were fresh lamentations at home; Magda was blubbering because she had been given notice. Slimak sat down on the bench and listened to his wife comforting the girl. 'It's true, we are not short of food,' she said, 'but how am I to get the money for your wages? You are a big girl and ought to have a rise after the New Year. We haven't enough work for you; go to your uncle at once, tell him how things are going from bad to worse here, and fall at his feet and ask him to find you another place. Please God, you will come back to us.' 'Ho,' murmured Maciek from his corner, 'there's no returning; when you're gone, you're gone; first the cow, then Magda, now my turn will come.'