“Has the man lost his wits?” he said, as soon as he was out in the road. “I was giving him good counsel ... and he—Oh, that’s your game, is it? You would have struck me, driven me out, because I wanted to share the land with you, and came to you as to a friend and a brother! Is that your game ... to have all to yourself? Ha! you will not live to see the day, my man! Though you wormed my thoughts out of me so cleverly, I will give you such a shaking, the worst ague will be nothing beside it!” He grew angrier and still more angry, as he reflected that Antek had taken him in so, and would inform old Boryna of all this intrigue.—The very thing he feared most of all! “But that must at once be prevented!” He swiftly came to a decision, and though in bodily fear of Antek, went back to Boryna’s. “Is your master at home?” he asked Vitek, who was opposite the house, throwing pebbles at the geese in the pond to make them land. “Over there at the miller’s: gone to invite their people to his wedding.” “I shall go that way: perhaps we may meet,” he thought, and made for the miller’s; but he went home first, and told his wife to dress her best, take the children with her, and go round to Antek’s at the first stroke of the noonday Angelus. “He will tell you what to do.... Do nothing by yourself, for you are not clever; only fall a-crying at the right time, embrace your father’s knees and beseech him, and all that. But give good heed to what Antek shall say and your father reply.” And so he went on instructing her for some time. “Now I shall look in at the mill: perhaps our meal is ground.” He was too uneasy to stay any longer in the house and, going out, walked on slowly, often halting to consider. “The man threatened me; yet he’ll do as I told him, I think. Better my wife should be there, and not I.—What else can he do but what I say?—Quarrel—and be expelled!” He smiled in triumph, set his cap straight and buttoned up his capote, for a chill piercing wind came from the pond. “There will be frost, surely, or else dirty weather,” he predicted, standing on the bridge and looking into the sky, where a scud of driven clouds was passing, not unlike a flock of muddy unwashed sheep. The pond uttered a low murmur, now and then beating upon its shores, along which, scattered about amongst blackened drooping alders and weeping willows, the outlines of women washing linen appeared, traced in red, and the obstreperous clatter of their bats rose on either bank. The roads were empty, save for the numerous flocks of geese, soiled with stiffening mire, that were waddling in and out of the ditches, now filled up with dead leaves and rubbish. Children outside the houses squealed and screamed; and the cocks crowed in the hedges—weather-prophets telling of a change. “Better wait for him at the mill!” he growled and walked down the slope.