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 implored him on my knees and with clasped hands. I’ve said, ‘Joseph, day and night until my limbs give way under me will I toil if only you will not drive us out of here.’ But all pleading is in vain. Sooner could you squeeze a tear out of a rock!”

“So much has he hardened against his own family!” bitterly complained the old man. “And for a miserable thousand he has—sold himself!”

“And we’ll have an easier living! After all, I will stay on my own soil, for I’m to look after the place for the German master,” the son defended himself in some embarrassment.

“On your own soil? That will be wholly different. Now you are master here, then you will be a master’s servant or lackey! And you’ll serve by the hour! When it suits him, he’ll drive you out. And you’ll leave the homestead to which cling the blood and sweat of your forefathers. So you wanted an easier living? And you seek it at a German’s? My boy, we of the mountains are not born for, nor do we fit an easy life. What God gave, take, even though it be little—there will be enough. But from a German, it is as if you accepted water in a sieve!”

“But it’s to be by written contract! Am I a child that I’m to be fooled by empty words? You’ve heard that I’m to go in a carriage with them to the notary and there it will all be properly recorded.”

“What will be recorded there? Your shame for everlasting memory? Listen, Joseph,”—the old man