Rzepki is a neighboring village whose people are drawn into the life of Lipce through contested work, a history of rivalry, and eventual acts of mutual aid. The village is not presented as a single, uniform community: its residents include men who regard themselves as gentry, yet are also described as poor, and their changing relations with Lipce expose the tension between local status, material need, and solidarity.

Work and rivalry

The immediate source of conflict is the squire’s recruitment of outside labor for the forest felling. At High Mass, Lipce villagers learn that workers have been contracted from Rudki, Modlica, Dębica, and Rzepki, while not one person from Lipce has been hired. The woodsman confirms the report. For the poorest households, the felling had seemed like a chance to earn through the winter, when several families otherwise had no village work. Rzepki’s participation therefore makes its men visible not simply as outsiders, but as competitors for income on which Lipce’s most vulnerable residents had been counting.

The rivalry becomes palpable at a betrothal gathering in the inn. A group of Rzepki men has occupied tables there since early in the day; the Lipce villagers watch them, and goodwill is scarce. Bartek from the Sawmill reports what the priest has said and denounces the squire, while Wojtek Kobus deliberately raises his voice in the hope that the Rzepki visitors will hear. They give no sign of listening. As the crowd turns increasingly hostile, taunts and threats gather around the visitors, who remain together, holding their staffs between their knees, eating the sausage they brought and drinking beer. Their composure does not dissolve the hostility; it makes the division all the more conspicuous.

The atmosphere shifts as the gathering loosens. Rzepki men come out from behind their table, share vodka with Lipce villagers, and some join the dancing. The girls accept their invitations, finding them more refined in manner and courteous in asking. This momentary conviviality does not erase the dispute over work, but it shows that the boundary between the villages is not fixed: under different social conditions, the same men regarded as rivals can be welcomed as companions.

The forest battle

The conflict becomes physical when Lipce villagers confront the woodcutters at the disputed forest. Boryna calls to the workers from Modlica, Rzepki, and elsewhere to take what is theirs and leave, declaring the felling forbidden and warning that those who ignore the ban will have to answer to the villagers. The workers initially withdraw under pressure, and the Lipce crowd drives them into the forest. The confrontation then swells as the manor’s men and the woodcutters join the fighting.

The Rzepki men take the opposing side in the renewed struggle. They rush together to support the manor’s party, led by the woodsman, who bears a longstanding grudge against the Lipce villagers. The narrator recalls that Rzepki and Lipce had skirmished with one another for centuries; the old antagonism gives the intervention a history beyond the immediate fight over wages or timber. Stacho Płoszka tries to restrain the woodsman and is thrown down, while Mateusz confronts him and is beaten back. In the confusion, the clash becomes a collective melee rather than a dispute that can be settled by the workers’ initial withdrawal.

Rzepki’s part in the battle makes the village’s position especially complicated. Its men are among the outside workers brought in when Lipce residents are excluded from the felling, yet the Rzepki group also comes to the aid of the manor’s side once the confrontation escalates. Their role links economic competition to inherited local antagonism: the conflict is not only about who gets paid, but also about which neighboring community stands with whom when force is used.

Assistance after the conflict

Later, the relationship changes again. During a small holiday in Lipce, Hanka invites two men from Rzepki who are working for Weronka and Gołębowa to stay at her home. She does not need their labor herself; she makes room for them to ease the burden on others. She chooses men who consider themselves gentry, a group Lipce villagers have traditionally mocked and looked down on. Yet when the men arrive, Hanka recognizes that they are unlike the stereotype attached to them.

Rocho voices the surprise their presence is likely to cause: Rzepki people have come to help Lipce. The elder guest explains that the forest fight had not been a matter between Rzepki and Lipce, so his people bear no grudge over it. Their conversation turns from the immediate welcome to a broader warning about division. A hardship that afflicts Lipce today may afflict Rzepki tomorrow, Rocho observes; villages that quarrel rather than defend one another leave themselves open to an enemy. The exchange recasts neighboring villages as communities with shared exposure to danger, without pretending that their previous disputes have disappeared.

The visiting workers’ departure gives that change a public, communal form. Girls and children accompany the men and their carts out of Lipce along the poplar road, where people from three villages are traveling. The farewells are lively, with conversation, jokes, and laughter continuing as the carts move toward the crossroads. The scene contrasts with the earlier inn gathering: Rzepki visitors are no longer surrounded by suspicion or threats, but leave amid a friendly exchange.

A distinct presence in the wider community

Rzepki remains visibly separate when more than two hundred peasants gather over the proposed school vote. At first, people stand in groups according to their villages, and their different styles of dress make those divisions easy to recognize. As news spreads that the prefect wants them to vote for a school, most of the crowd begins to mix across village lines. The Rzepki gentry, however, keep apart and watch the peasants with pride and truculence.

The account also punctures the social distinction they assert: these men are poor, and the narrator notes the joke that three of them might share the value of a cow’s tail. Their separation therefore reflects a claim to status that sits uneasily beside their material circumstances. Across the episodes, Rzepki is both a source of hired labor and a neighboring community with its own internal rank and pride; its residents can be rivals in a struggle over work, fighters in a feud, guests offering or receiving help, and a distinct bloc within a larger assembly. Their changing interactions with Lipce make the limits of village solidarity visible, but also show how it can be rebuilt through practical assistance and recognition of shared vulnerability.