When he ended thus, no one made any remark. Everyone reflected with heads bent as under the weight of this fresh burden. At last the Voyt said: “Have ye heard all that our secretary has read to you?” “We have indeed! We are not deaf!” several voices replied. “Then whoso is against this plan, let him step forward and say so.” No one, however, was so bold as to put himself forward first, or go beyond glances and nudges. “Then,” the Voyt proposed, “let us vote the rate directly, and go home.” “Very well,” the scrivener asked, with solemn formality. “Ye do all unanimously agree to this plan?” “No! No!” vociferated Gregory, and about a score of others with him. “We need no such schools! We will not have them! The taxes are heavy enough as it is!—No!” and cries of opposition now resounded on every side, and ever more boldly. At the sound, the head official came forth and stood in the doorway. At the sight, the tumult died away. Stroking his beard, he said, with much affability: “Well, good husbandmen, how goes it with you?” “The better that your Honour asks us!” answered the foremost men, swaying to and fro under the pressure of those behind, pushing forward to hear the District Official. Now he, leaning against the door-post, uttered some sentences in Russian; but their effect was impaired by constant hiccups. The gendarmes started forward, crying to the people: “Hats off! Hats off!” A voice was thereupon heard abusing them roundly: “Get out, ye vermin, and meddle not with our business.” But the head official, though he had spoken very affably, concluded in Polish, and in a tone of command: “Vote the rate, and at once, for I have no time to spare.” And he looked on them with an ominous scowl. Fear seized upon them; they wavered, and low timorous whispers ran through their ranks. “Ah, shall we vote?—Say, Ploshka, what are we to do?—Where’s Gregory?—The head commands us to vote!—Come, then, brethren, let us do so!” But the tumult swelled to a storm, when Grzela came forward, and declared fearlessly: “For such a school we’ll not vote half a kopek!” “We will not! No, we will not!” a hundred voices repeated. At this, the head official knitted his brows. The Voyt was terror-struck, and the scrivener’s spectacles fell from his nose. But Gregory met the great man’s glance without fear, and was about to speak further, when Ploshka, pushing forward, and louting very low, said humbly: “May it please your Honour the District Official if I speak in our tongue, and think with our own thoughts.—As to voting the school, we are willing; but twenty kopeks an acre seems to us very much. Times are hard just now, and money is short. And that is all.”