The priest had given him public reproof from the pulpit, and urged him to marry her. But Franek would not obey, because he had to go to the army in autumn, and what should he do with a wife there? Magda now drew him into a corner, and was saying something in a tearful voice; but he answered as ever: “You’re a fool. Did I entice you, say? I’ll pay for the christening, and give you a rouble or so—as much as I choose to give.” He was stupefied with drink, and pushed her away so roughly that she sank down on the ground near Kuba, who was sleeping close to the stove, his head in the ashes. Then Franek went off to drink again with Ambrose and the farmers, who were all willing to pay for him, to get their corn ground sooner. “Have a drink, Franek, and pray get my stuff ground quick: my wife is worrying me—says she hasn’t enough flour to make any more dumplings.” “Ah! and mine is continually grumbling, because we have no groats.” “And mine must have oatmeal for the pig we are fattening.” Franek drank, promised everything, and bragged very loud about what he could do. It was by his orders, he said, that everything was done at the mill. The miller had to do his will ... and if not! well, he, Franek, knew of means to cause vermin to breed in the flour-bins—to make the stream run dry—to kill the fishes till the pond should stink—and rot the flour, so that it would be good for nothing in the world.... “And I, if you did that to me, would pluck the wool off your curly ram’s head!” cried a voice: it was Yagustynka’s. She was always present where she found most company, being there most likely to find also some gossip or kinsman to offer her a drop of vodka, fearing her acrimonious tongue. Franek too, drunk as he was, felt apprehensive, and answered her not a word. She knew, indeed, too much about him and his management of the mill. Triumphant, and also rather flustered with drink, she set her arms akimbo, and danced and stamped and shouted in time with the music. “What I say is true,” the smith in the adjoining room remarked; “for there it stands, in print in the papers—letters as big as an ox. There is no nation on earth that lives as we do. Not one!—Why, every big landowner domineers over us; so does every priest; so does every official. And all we have to do is work, and starve, and bow low to all men, lest they strike us in the face!—We have so little land of our own, that—for many of us—there presently will not be the least little patch left.... Meanwhile, the Squire has more land to himself than two villages put together!—Yesterday they were saying in court that there is to be a redistribution of land.” “Whose land?” “The gentlemen’s, of course.” Yagustynka, who had come in, leaned over the table and laughed. “Did you give it them, that you take it away! You are marvellous free with other people’s property!”