The day seemed very long to him. Many a time he looked to see the sun’s height, and measure the length of the fields, of which much still remained to be ploughed. His trouble of mind increased, and he beat the horses, and cried furiously to the women to work faster. His agitation, too, was getting beyond bearing; and his brain swarmed so now with countless thoughts that his hands could no longer drive the plough steadily, and it would deflect against the stones. Hard by the forest, it went so deep under a root that the coulter was wrenched off.
To do any more work was out of the question. He took the plough away on a light sledge, to which he put one of the horses, and made for home.
The cabin was empty, and everything there untidy and soiled with flour: Hanka, in the orchard, quarrelled with a neighbour.
“The woman! She has always time enough for brawling!” he growled, on entering the farmyard. There he grew still more angry: the other plough, which he took out of the shed, was quite out of gear. He worked at it a long time, losing his patience as he heard the quarrel going on, and Hanka raising her voice to a scream.
“If ye pay for the damage done, I’ll give you back your sow: if not, I’ll bring an action! Pay for the linen she tore in spring on the bleaching-ground; pay for my potatoes she has eaten now! I have witnesses to prove what has been done.—Oh, a clever woman this is!—Thinks to fatten her sow at my expense, does she? But I will not give up my rights!”
So she went on, and the neighbour giving her as violent language in return, the quarrel was waxing venomous, both of them stretching out their fists over the hedge.
“Hanka!” shouted Antek, heaving the plough on to his shoulders.
She at once ran to him, out of breath, and ruffled like an angry hen.
“Why, what a din you do make! All the village can hear you.”
“I’m standing up for my rights!” she cried out. “What, shall I suffer another man’s swine to root in my garden? So much harm done—and am I to say no word?” But he stopped her short, with a sharp sentence.
“Dress yourself, and try to look like a creature of God.”
“What now? Must I dress up for work as for church?”
He eyed her with disdain, for she looked as though someone had swept the cabin floor with her. Then he walked away.
The smith was busy at work; his hammers were heard from a distance, loudly and tunefully clinking; and the forge, hot as hell, was uproarious with the tempestuous streams from the bellows that puffed in cadence.
Michael himself was working with his assistant, forging long bars of iron; and his face looked like a blackamoor’s, and he beat on the anvil, as it were, out of sheer spite against it, smiting unweariedly.
“And for whom are those thick axletrees?”
“For Ploshka’s wagon. He is to cart timber for the sawmill.”
Antek rolled a cigarette and sat down by the doorstep. The hammers went on with pertinacious fury, smiting rhythmically again and again on the red-hot iron, slowly changing its shape beneath their strokes, as they bent it to the will of those who wielded them; and the smithy vibrated.
“Would ye not like to cart timber as well?” asked Michael, thrusting the bar deep into the flame, and working the bellows.
“I suppose the miller would not be willing. I hear he is the organist’s partner, and hand in hand with the Jews.”
“But you have horses,” he said with bland friendliness; “horses and all that is needful. And your Pete does naught but lounge about your farmyard.—And they pay pretty well.”
“No doubt a little money before the harvest would be a good thing; but then, am I to go and beg the miller to do me a service?”
“No: arrange matters direct with the dealers.”
“Whom I do not know!—If you would speak for me. …”
“Since you ask me, I am willing—and shall go to them this very day.”
Antek went out hurriedly; for now the hammers were playing, and a deluge of sparks of fire flew on every side.
“I shall be back this instant, and am only going to look what kind of timber they are bringing in.”
At the sawmill, likewise, the workers were lively; the logs were being hewn into shape one after another; the saws rasped harshly through the great trunks, while the water, pouring out of the wheels into the river, boiled and bubbled and foamed, swirling along the narrow mill-tail banks. Rough pine-logs, with their boughs scarcely lopped off, thundered down out of the carts, till the earth shook; while half a dozen workmen were busy with their axes, squaring them for the mill; and others were carrying the sawn boards out into the sunshine. Matthew was foreman there, and Antek could see him busily engaged, both working himself and directing the work of the others.
They met with hearty good-fellowship.
“Why, what’s become of Bartek?” Antek asked, looking round him.
“He had enough of Lipka, and is gone from us.”
“Some folk must needs be always on the move!—Ye seem to have work for a long time in advance, with so much timber here!”
“For a year, perchance, or yet longer. If the Squire come to terms with all of us, he is going to cut down and sell the half of his woods.”
“Ah! I saw them measuring the land out again on the Podlesie farm.”
“Yes: someone comes to terms every day.—The silly sheep! They would not make an agreement one and all together, because they hoped the Squire would offer more. And now they make it apart and in secret from the others, each one striving to be first!”
“Some men are like donkeys, which, if you would have them go forward, you have to pull their tails. Yes, indeed, they are silly sheep.—And of course the Squire makes a good profit out
