'To tell you the truth,' laughed Earner's farmhand, 'we thought it was you who had done it.' 'Go to the devil!' 'Let's go after them,' Fritz interrupted quickly. 'Go on! I... steal your hog! indeed!' 'Let me go, father,' begged Jendrek. 'Go indoors! We've saved them a hog and the thieves will revenge themselves on us; and here they come and accuse me of being a thief myself.' Fritz Hamer swore at the farm-hand for his clumsiness and tried to pacify the peasant, but he turned his back on him. Fritz had lost his zeal for pursuing the thieves, took up his hog and disappeared into the darkness. After a few days the police-sergeant drove up, cross-examined every one, explored the ravines, perspired, made himself muddy, and found no one. He came to the very just conclusion that the thieves must have escaped long ago. So he told Slimakowa to put some butter and a speckled hen into his cart and returned home. The thieving stopped for a while, and winter came on. The ground was warmly covered as with a sheepskin; ice as hard as flint froze on the Bialka, the Lord wrapped the branches of the trees securely in shirts of snow. But Slimak was still meditating on hasps and bolts. One evening, as he sat filling the room with smoke from his pipe, shifting his feet and arriving at the second part of his meditations, namely that 'What is done too soon is the devil's,' Jendrek excitedly burst into the room. His mother was busy with the fire and paid no attention to him, but his father noticed, although they were sparing of light in the cottage, that his sukmana was torn and he looked bruised and dishevelled. Looking at him out of the corner of his eyes, Slimak emptied his pipe and said: 'Someone has been oxing your ears three times over.' 'I gave him one better,' said the boy scowling. As the mother had gone out and did not hear the conversation, the father did not hurry himself; he cleaned his choked pipe, blew through it and indifferently inquired, 'Who's been treating you this?' 'That scoundrel, Hermann.' The boy was hitching up his shoulders as if he had been stung. 'And what were you doing at Earner's when you had been told not to go there?' 'I was looking at the schoolmaster through the window,' said Jendrek blushing, and added quickly, 'That German dog ran out from the kitchen and shouted: "You are spying about here, you thief!" "What have I stolen?" I say, and he: "Nothing yet, but you will steal some day; be off, or I'll box your ears." "Try!" I say. "I've tried before," says he; "take this!"' 'That was smart of the Swabian,' said Slimak, 'and did you do nothing to him?' 'Why should I do nothing to him? I snatched up a log and hit him over the head two or three times, but the coward started bleeding and gave in; I should have liked to have given him more, but they came running out of their houses and I made off.' 'So they didn't catch you?'