I-VIII

While the autumn color was growing pale on
the grass and cornfields, things went badly
with our friends the Russians. Peter told his
troubles to Mr. Shimerda: he was unable to
meet a note which fell due on the first of No-
vember; had to pay an exorbitant bonus on
renewing it, and to give a mortgage on his
pigs and horses and even his milk cow. His
creditor was Wick Cutter, the merciless Black
Hawk money-lender, a man of evil name
throughout the county, of whom I shall have
more to say later. Peter could give no very
clear account of his transactions with Cutter.
He only knew that he had first borrowed two
hundred dollars, then another hundred, then
fifty -- that each time a bonus was added to
the principal, and the debt grew faster than
any crop he planted. Now everything was
plastered with mortgages.

Soon after Peter renewed his note, Pavel
strained himself lifting timbers for a new barn,
and fell over among the shavings with such a
gush of blood from the lungs that his fellow-

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v?