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 ﻿first at their grandfather, then at their father who sat defiantly with his gaze fastened on the floor.

Apolena wiping her tear-dimmed eyes on her sleeve, approached her husband and laying her hand on his shoulder, said in a voice of emotion thrilling with deep anxiety, “Father, husband—look! It is your own father! You will kill him thus! Is this the way to repay him for all his care, in his old age?”

“Don’t I respect my father? And do I want to injure him? He, too, will be better off in a new place than now—”

“What? What’s that you said?” screamed the father and with the agility of a youth he leaped in front of his son. “I am to be with you? In a new place? And do you think, Joseph, that you’d drive even me out of my own little reserve plot and that I, too, will let myself be bought? No, I thank God now, that I remembered to keep a little corner for myself though I never dreamed it might come to this!”

“Well, father, when we go, you go with us. A sale is a sale, and there all ‘reserve rights’ cease,” said the son in a calmer voice.

“If you want to sell your land, sell it,” responded the old man with cutting coldness. “Sell the roof over your head, sell your land on which you might have rested, sell all that your fathers and forefathers preserved for you for hundreds of years, but what is mine you shall not sell, do you understand?” and in the speech of the old man there sounded such a threat that