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 holder for selling his cottage for a school and his lands for the extension of the nobility’s park.

Just as had happened yesterday at the inn, so to day in the village square, various opinions were heard regarding the German school, but of those who found a means of livelihood at the factory, not one ventured to say aloud just what he thought.

Only Makovec, one of those hard mountaineer heads, which when it makes up its mind to push through its ideas, would even have charged a stone wall at full speed, publicly spoke out against it, and when they tried to pacify him, saying someone would inform on him at the German master’s, he grew even more furious.

“Yes, indeed! It’s a mighty sad thing that we’re all bought up, for we’re ready to sell one another if the ‘master’ smiles at us or places us on a better job. There didn’t use to be such corruption among us not even when we were bondmen under the imported German nobility!”

“That’s because money is everything now,” vigorously assented Halama, who had joined the group. “For money Joseph is selling the roof over his father’s head!”

“Well, we haven’t yet had a drink on the earnest money. Old Nešněra won’t let it come to pass, you’ll see!”

While there were plenty of opinions and knowing discussions in the village, at the Nešněras’ there was