“For that he is now doing a sore penance. A sore penance, I say.—Are ye not the oldest man in the village?” “Nay, Ambrose must be older: I cannot remember him but as an old man.” “He himself,” the smith’s wife put in, “says that Death has overlooked him.” “No, Dame Crossbones never overlooks anyone; but she leaves him to the last, that he may repent. For he is greatly hardened.” Bylitsa continued, after a long silence: “I remember the time when there were no more than fifteen peasants’ farms in Lipka.” He moved his hand hesitatingly towards Roch’s snuff-box, which the latter offered him at once, saying: “And now there are a couple of score.” “So the land must be divided again and again. Whether the harvest be rich or poor, the folk must always grow poorer. Ye cannot make the land to stretch. Yet a few more years, and there will be too little for us to live upon.” “In truth, we are straitened enough as it is now,” the smith’s wife observed. “Yes; and when our lads marry, there will be no more than one acre apiece for their children.” “Therefore,” Roch said, “they will have to go abroad.” “And what will they do there? Shall they clutch at the winds, and grasp them in their bare hands?” “But,” he somewhat ruefully observed, “there are some German settlers who have purchased land of the Squire of Slupia, and are working it now: seventy acres to each settlement.” “Of that I have heard. But the Germans are wealthy, and know much: they do business with the Jews, and profit by the sufferings of others. Were that same land to be taken up by empty-handed peasants like us, they would not sow it thrice! For us, there is scant room in Lipka. While that man—why, he has no end of broad acres that lie fallow close by!” And with a sweep of his arm he pointed to the Manor lands beyond the mill, shelving up towards the forest, and black with heaps of lupines. “All that land,” he went on to say, “is close to our own, and might be parcelled out into thirty small holdings.—But the Squire would never sell it: such a rich man cares naught for money.” “Rich? He?” the smith’s wife broke in. “He needs money as a mudfish needs mud. Why, he is driven to borrow from the very peasants. The Jews are dunning him now for what they advanced him upon the forest he cannot sell them. He is in arrears with the taxes, does not pay his own people—they have not yet received what is due them in kind for the New Year. He is in debt to everyone; and now that the government has forbidden him to cut down any timber till the peasants’ consent is obtained, how is he to get money to pay? He will not be master of Vola very long, not he!—They say he is seeking a purchaser.” Here she broke short as unexpectedly as she had begun, and all Roch’s efforts to draw her out a little more were useless; she put him off with a few commonplace remarks, and presently withdrew with her little ones.