'Bah, how can they catch me, when I run like a hare?' 'Confound the boy,' said his mother, who had come in, 'the Swabians will beat him small.' 'He can always give them the slip,' said Slimak, lit his pipe, and resumed his meditations on hasps and bolts. But these were interrupted the next afternoon by a visit from the Hamers; their cousin, Hermann, had his head so tightly bandaged that hardly anything was visible of his face. They stood outside the gate and shouted to Maciek to call his master. Slimak hastily fastened his belt and stepped out. 'What do you want?' he said. 'We are going to the police-station to take out a summons against that Jendrek of yours; look what he has done to Hermann; we have a certificate from the surgeon that his injuries are serious.' 'He came ogling the schoolmaster's daughter, now he shall ogle his prison bars,' Hermann added thickly behind his bandages. Slimak was getting worried. 'You ought to be ashamed of yourselves,' he said, 'to take out a summons for a bit of boy's nonsense; didn't Hermann box his ears too? But we don't take out summonses for that sort of thing.' 'Oh, rather! I gave it him,' mumbled Hermann, 'but where's the blood? where's the doctor's certificate?' 'You're a nice one,' said Slimak bitterly, 'there was no policeman to certify that it was we who saved you the hog, but when a boy plays a prank on you, you go to law.' 'Perhaps with you a hog means as much as a man,' sneered Fritz; 'with us it is different.' Slimak's meditations now turned from bolts and padlocks to prisons. He talked the matter over with Maciek. 'When they put our small Jendrek in Court by the side of that big Hermann, I reckon they won't do much to him.' 'They'll do nothing to him,' agreed the labourer. 'All the same, I should like to know what the punishment is for thrashing a man.' 'They don't trouble their heads much about it. When Potocka beat her neighbour over the head with a saucepan, they just fined her.' 'That's true, but I am afraid they think more of the Germans than of our people.' 'How could they think more of unbelievers?' 'Look at the police-sergeant, he talks to Hamer as he wouldn't even talk to Gryb.' 'That is so, but when he has looked round to see that no one is listening, he tells you that a German is a mangy dog. You see, the Germans have their Kaiser, but he's nothing like as great as our Czar; I have it from a soldier who was in the hospital, and he used to say: "Bah, he's nothing compared to ours!"' This greatly reassured Slimak, and he went to church with his wife and son the next Sunday to find out what others, familiar with the ways of the law, thought of the matter. Maciek remained at home to look after the dinner and the baby. It was past noon when Burek began to bark furiously. Maciek looked out and saw a man dressed like the townspeople standing at the gate; he had pulled his cap well over his face. The farm-labourer went outside. 'What's up?'