Yagustynka must have noted this change of attitude; for she said, though reluctantly: “Yagna is not guiltless, but the Voyt is still more to blame.” “True; and it is he—he!—that ought to be punished for everything,” Hanka returned, in such energetic agreement that Pete cast a look of gratitude towards her. They had gauged the common feeling. Till late in the night Ploshka and the Koziols were going about the village, stirring people up against the Voyt. The former would enter the huts and say, as in jest: “Well, well, we have got a splendid Voyt: the most strapping fellow in all the district!” And, finding them slow to follow his drift, he would take them with him to the tavern, where some of the smaller farmers were gathered already; plied them assiduously with vodka, and returned to the attack when he saw them flushed. “Our Voyt is great for doing things, hey?” “And not for the first time either,” Kobus replied, cautiously. “I know about him.... I know.... I know ... what I’ll not tell,” growled Sikora, who was tipsy, and leaned heavily against the bar. “And about you too, I know.... I know ... what I’ll not tell,” he went on growling. “The only thing,” said Ploshka, ordering glasses round again, “is to depose him. Whom we have made Voyt, we can unmake. What he has just done shames all the village; but he has done worse. He has always held with the Squire, to the hurt of our community. He would have had a school opened in Lipka;[6] and ’twas he no doubt who recommended the Voyt to sell Podlesie to the Germans. He revels and drinks continually; he has built a barn and purchased a horse; weekly he eats flesh-meat; and he drinks tea!—At whose expense, pray? Not at his own, belike!” ----- Footnote 6: A Russian Government school, that is.—_Translator’s Note._ “I know,” Sikora growled, interrupting, “that the Voyt is a swine, but also that in this trough you would fain put your snout too!” “The man’s drunk and talking nonsense!” “And likewise do I know that you shall never be Voyt!” Thereupon they went apart from him, and took counsel far into the night. On the morrow the Voyt’s adventure was talked about yet more loudly, for the priest had forbidden the altar which had been in former years erected before his cabin. Early in the morning, he had sent for Dominikova, who had not come home till midnight the day before; and he was so angry that he even chid the organist, and gave Ambrose a beating with his long pipe-stem! Corpus Christi, like the former days, rose serene and splendid, but remarkably sultry and still. Ever since dawn, the sun had been blazing pitilessly; the air was so parched that all the leaves drooped; the corn bowed earthward, faint and limp; the sand burned the bare feet like hot embers, and great drops of resin came trickling out of the walls.