The village meanwhile, on account of the Voyt’s battle, was in a state of great animation, each party eagerly looking for witnesses in its favour. It was of no great importance in itself: yet the Voyt exerted himself with might and main; and his influence in Lipka proved so considerable that more than half the inhabitants were on his side. They knew him to be no saint; but he was their Voyt all the same, and able to make things hot for opponents. So, by dint of insistence, flattery, and vodka, he got together as many witnesses as he required. Koziol was very ill in bed, and the priest had been to him with the last sacraments. As to that illness, opinions differed: some went so far as to whisper low that it was only a feint to give the Voyt more trouble.—But who knew really what to think of it? In the meantime Kozlova was going about all day, telling the people that she had sold her sow and farrow to purchase medicines for her goodman; and well-nigh daily she stationed herself outside the Voyt’s house, loading him with invectives, shrieking that her Bartek was about to die, and calling God and all honest people to witness in her favour and take sides with her. Only the riff-raff of the community, however, and a few tender-hearted women, were with her; Kobus also, a third-rate farmer and a most litigious and quarrelsome man. The others would not listen to her. Some paid no notice to what she said; others, in her own interest, advised her to make friends with the Voyt. Many broils arose thence; for Kobus had an ungovernable tongue, and was very ready with his fists; while the women, on their side, used extremely violent language. Their anger and acrimony were most intense: for how could they hope to get the better of the farmers and the Voyt together? In the end, the Jew himself treated the Koziols with contempt, and refused them credit. Within a week after the battle, everyone had enough of the affair, and the complaints and lamentations connected therewith, and would not listen any longer. But at that juncture, new helpers came, and the village was again in an uproar. Ploshka, joining forces with the miller, now stood up openly and strongly for the Koziols. Not that they cared for their cause in the least: each had his own aims and sought his own advantage. Ploshka, an underhanded and much-aspiring man, put unbounded trust in his own wealth and cleverness: and as to the miller, he would have risked his life for money. And thus the struggle between the two parties began, fierce, yet courteous: they treated each other to shows of friendship, and conversed as before, and even went sometimes arm in arm to the tavern together. The shrewder Lipka folk were soon aware that this coalition aimed at something more than the mere redress of Koziol’s grievance—possibly at the Voyt’s office itself. And the elders nodded their heads, saying: “One man has made a good thing by the office: others may do so too!”