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 the armpits, swung him into the air, and balancing him like a racket ball, continued, “I’ll pound every one to a jelly who dares once say such a thing.”

And from the way in which Joseph turned deadly pale in Bartos’s hands and impotently shook and shivered, it was evident that he believed the grave-digger to be in earnest and about to fulfil his threats to a tittle.

But Joseph, in his own impotence, began to pluck up a bolder spirit when he contemplated his servants, and no sooner had Bartos once more dropped him on to the ground than he shouted to them to force the doors of the charnel-house without further hesitation and to drag out the aged Loyka.

“And, prithee, why not? Prithee, why not?” observed Bartos in a voice again perfectly calm, as if a moment before he had not threatened to make a jelly of a human body. And he posted himself before the doors of the charnel-house.

“Cleave the doors asunder!” commanded Joseph, seeing that his servants did not wish to have anything to do with the business. “A souterkin of beer to the man who cleaves them open.”

And when the servants made a rush in right earnest to get at the doors Bartos, as though he had heard nothing of what Joseph had said, merely stretched out his two hands and said, “Cave!” and already two of the servants lay on the ground blubbering, as though they had come to order their own graves to be delved. The rest of the servants wavered in their charge, and then suddenly turned and fled at full speed by the shortest road out of the cemetery.

Joseph began to jeer and threaten them.

“Everything is not to be had for a souterkin of beer”, said Bartos, and laughed, or rather smiled, tauntingly.

“But it will be had all the cheaper,” said Joseph, “when I bring half the village against you, you will pipe in another strain.”

“Do not bring them”, said Bartos, and continued to smile tauntingly.

“When I report matters at the bureaux”

“Report it not, report nothing, unless you would report your own precious doings”, said Bartos. “But, of course, if you think it right, bring them, report it all, only, you just sleep upon it and I will sleep upon it, too.”

“But I tell you it is notorious how you encourage his vagabondage, how you cause disunion in the family”