"Your wife!" I exclaimed, stupidly surprised that the poor deformed
creature should have found a mate--as though there were not a superfluity
of mates in the world--"I didn't know you were married?"

"Yes, and I have two little children, and I don't know what they would do if I were not to come
home.
But it is a very expensive journey to Russia, and costs me
every time seven marks."

"Seven marks!"

"Yes, it is a great sum."

I wondered whether I should be able to get to Russia for seven marks,
supposing I were to be seized with an unnatural craving to go there.

All the labourers who work here from March to December
are Russians and Poles, or a mixture of both. We send a man
over who can speak their language, to fetch as many as he can
early in the year, and they arrive with their bundles,
men and women and babies, and as soon as they have got
here and had their fares paid, they disappear in the night
if they get the chance, sometimes fifty of them at a time,
to go and work singly or in couples for the peasants,
who pay them a pfenning or two more a day than we do,
and let them eat with the family. From us they get a mark
and a half to two marks a day, and as many potatoes as they
can eat. The women get less, not because they work less,
but because they are women and must not be encouraged.
The overseer lives with them, and has a loaded revolver in his