The departure of the German settlers from Podlesie becomes a public spectacle in Lipce: a line of covered wagons passes through a hostile crowd, then disappears along the poplar road. The villagers greet the settlers not as neighbors leaving under uncertain circumstances, but as a defeated rival group whose exit appears to vindicate Lipce’s resistance. Yet the scene does not establish a single cause for their departure. Instead, it exposes competing claims to credit and a deep resentment shaped by disputes over land, work, and power.

Background: Work, land, and grievance

The departure unfolds against a history of conflict between Lipce and the manor. When the Squire refuses to employ local men for the felling at Wolf’s Hollow, at least twenty hired hands face a winter without work. Villagers fear that potatoes have frozen, cash is scarce, and the coming preharvest will be exceptionally lean. The expected logging work had seemed a possible answer to immediate need; its withdrawal turns an economic grievance into a collective one.

The villagers connect that refusal to a wider record of perceived injustice. At the inn, a speaker recalls complaints, confiscations, and unsuccessful appeals to the courts, presenting the manor’s felling of the forest as the final injury. The crowd gathers in the square and sets out together, with farmers, hired hands, women, and older children among those preparing to resist. This mobilization is not itself the settlers’ departure, but it clarifies why the later arrival of a rival group in Lipce carries such political weight: the village has already been organized around defending what it regards as its rights.

The settlers pass through Lipce

The newcomers arrive in roughly a dozen large britzskas, each covered by a white canvas bonnet and drawn by strong horses. Household goods are visible beneath the covers; women and children travel in the wagons, while well-fed men walk beside them with pipes in their teeth. Large dogs run alongside and bark at the village dogs, which snap back. The procession is conspicuous, orderly, and heavily laden—a household world in motion passing through a village that watches from the churchyard wall and the lanes near the pond.

The settlers move at walking pace through the crowd of carts and horses, but the encounter is not one of mutual greeting. They do not doff their caps at the church or acknowledge the Lipce villagers; instead, they stare at them. The villagers answer with insults and threats. When one boy throws a stone and others reach for bricks, the crowd stops them before the confrontation becomes an attack. The restraint matters: hostility is unmistakable, but the procession is allowed to continue.

As the wagons press onward, the settlers lash their horses and hurry out of the crush. A woman raises her fist and curses them; then the column disappears along the poplar road. The scene closes not with a battle or a formal agreement, but with the diminishing creak of carts and the sound of barking fading into dust and shadow. Their departure is physical and visible, while its explanation remains contested.

Celebration and competing explanations

Once the settlers have passed, the Lipce villagers turn their attention back to the Squire. Their excitement is so great that they can scarcely settle to prayer. The Squire chats with them, shares his snuff, and announces that they have driven the whole group out. His words convert the settlers’ departure into a victory for the village—and position him as the person who helped secure it.

The villagers’ account is less settled. They remark that the settlers had no luck in Podlesie and that their cows had apparently failed; another voice notes that the departing group was not leading any cattle. These observations offer a possible explanation for the move, but they remain village talk rather than confirmed fact. The narrative does not say that the settlers leave because of a defeat in a direct confrontation, nor does it establish that the Squire forced them out.

The Squire’s claim to credit also draws a pointed response. The blacksmith says that the settlers’ departure is thanks to the Squire, who presents himself as willing to sell to his own people even at half price and as a longstanding ally of the peasants. Sikora answers with a memory of the old Squire’s whip, suggesting that the manor’s professed solidarity cannot erase its record of coercion. The exchange makes the celebration politically uneasy: local people welcome an apparent success, but they do not all accept the landowner’s account of who produced it.

Significance

The episode brings the conflict over Podlesie into the public space of Lipce. The covered wagons, household goods, barking dogs, and hostile crowd make migration an immediate village encounter rather than an abstract question of settlement. The settlers’ passage reveals the villagers’ antagonism, while the stopped stone-throwing marks a limit to what the crowd does in this particular moment.

The ending gives no definitive explanation for why the settlers leave. Instead, villagers speculate about failed cattle, and the Squire claims that Lipce has driven them out. That uncertainty is central to the scene’s significance: an event that looks like collective triumph is also an argument over evidence, authority, and credit. The villagers can celebrate the settlers’ disappearance, but their dependence on the Squire’s version—and Sikora’s reminder of manor violence—shows that the underlying struggle over land and power has not simply been resolved.