“Be not angry, Master, I’ll give you pretty toys for your children.—No?—Then needles, thread, ribbons peradventure?—No?—Then may I offer rolls or scones or caramels ... or aught else? For I have everything—Or would ye, Master Farmer, buy of me a packet of tobacco? Or may I give you a glass of quite superior vodka? such as I have only for my very good friends—on my conscience, only for my very good friends.” And here a fit of coughing made his eyes almost start from their sockets.... Antek went a little more slowly, and the Jew, catching at the barrow, managed to drag himself along. “We shall have a good harvest,” he continued, starting another subject; “the price of rye is falling.” “Aye, and when the crop is scanty, it must bring us in less: either way, it is ill for farmers!” “But the Lord God has granted us fine weather, and the corn in the ear is dry.” He rubbed some in his hands and tasted it. “Well and good; but the Lord Jesus is hard upon us for the barley crop: it is quite lost.” From topic to topic, they came to talk about the morning’s assembly. It appeared that the Jew had special information on this point. Looking cautiously about him, he said: “Do ye know? The District Official made a contract as far ago as last winter with a builder about that Lipka school! My son-in-law acted as his agent.” “What, in winter, and before it was voted? What is this ye tell me?” “Was he to ask anyone for leave? Is he not throughout his District like a Squire on his estate?” Antek put him a few more questions, which Nuchim answered, giving many curious particulars, and finally saying, with tolerant amenity: “Things have to be so. The husbandman lives on the land he tills, the tradesman on what he sells, the Squire on his estate, the priest on his parish ... and the official, on everybody. It must be so, and ’tis well so. All men should get their livelihood, should they not?” “To my mind, that one man should fleece the others is not well; but that all men should live justly, and as the Lord hath commanded.” “What’s to be done? Folk must live as they can.” “Oh, I know the saying: ‘Every man peels his own turnip’; but therefore do things go so badly.” The Jew nodded, but kept his own counsel. They at last got to the wood, where the road was less deep in sand. Antek gave up the barrow, bought a _zloty’s_ worth of sweets for his children, and, when the Jew wanted to thank him, cried out: “You are foolish! To help you was but a whim of mine.” And then he started off at a good pace for Lipka. He was now in the cool grateful shadow of the trees, with only a tiny strip of sky overhead, and a thin bright stream of sunshine beneath. The wood—of oak, pine and birch—was old and tall, and the trees were pressed close, with a thick undergrowth at their feet of hazels, aspens, juniper-bushes, and hornbeams, with here and there a few groves of firs, pushing greedily skywards to get at the sun.