The tumult increased. Women were in the majority; children, too, had flocked there from every side, edging in amongst their elders, pushing and elbowing one another, overflowing the enclosures and pouring out into the roads, with little heed either of the deep mud or of the lashing boughs. All were babbling together; sometimes one voice rose above another, but there was no making out what was said; the gale was too high. Looking through the trees, Roch could perceive only that Ploshkova headed them all: a big fat crimson-faced woman, who cried out louder than anyone else and, shaking her fist furiously under the Voyt’s very nose, made him shrink back, while the others screamed their approval, like a flock of offended turkeys. The wife of Kobus also was there, on the skirts of the crowd, vainly striving to get at the gendarmes, against whom many a fist was shaken, and here and there a stick or dirty broom. The Voyt, sorely embarrassed, was trying to appease them and scratching his head, while drawing the women’s onslaught on to himself, so that the gendarmes cunningly managed to extricate themselves from the throng, and retired in the direction of the mill. The Voyt, following in the rear, continued to answer them back and threaten the boys who had begun to pelt him with mud. “What do they want?” Roch asked of the assembled women. “They would have our village supply them with twenty wagons, horses and men, for road-mending in the forest!” Ploshkova told him. “Some big official is to pass this way, and they want to get the holes in the road filled up.” “Neither wagons nor horses nor men! we have said.” “Who is here that can drive?” “Let them set our lads free first: then we shall think about the roads!” “The Squire! let them put him to a wagon!” “Or set to work themselves, and keep their snouts out of our cabins.” “Ah! the hounds, the carrions, the scurvy knaves!” many voices shouted at once, in a rising chorus. “All the morning they have been with the Voyt, laying their heads together in the tavern.” “Aye, aye, drinking vodka, and then going round to every hut for labourers!” “But the Voyt knows the state of affairs perfectly well,” said Roch, vainly attempting to make himself heard in the tumult. “He ought to have explained matters at the Bureau.” “He! He is the best friend of our enemies!” “He only cares to get money!” they all shouted again. “Yes, he advised us to give them a score of eggs, or a fowl per hut: then they would let us alone, and press men to work from the other villages.” “A score of stones for him rather!” “Peace, good woman; ye might smart for contempt of an official.” “I don’t care. Let them take me to jail. I’ll stand up to the very biggest official and tell him what injustice we have to bear.” “Afraid of the Voyt? What, I?” Ploshkova cried. “The tainted wretch! I fear a scarecrow as much as him! He forgets that ’tis we that have made him Voyt, and what we have made we can unmake.”