My hands were still weak, and yet I clenched them as I thought of the vexatious affair.

'I will punish him,' I muttered to myself.
"Then I heard the door of the room open, and I saw three men respectfully approaching a fourth.

He greeted them with dignity, but yet with friendliness, and rolled up a scroll which he had been reading, I would have called out, but I could not open my parched lips, and yet I saw and heard all that was going on around me in the room.
"It all seemed strange enough to me then; even the man's mode of greeting was unusual.

I soon perceived that he who sat in the chair was a judge, and that the others had come as complainants; they were all three old and poor, but some good men had left them the use and interest of a piece of land.

During seed-time one of them, a fine old man with long white hair, had been ill, and he had not been able to help in the harvest either; 'and now they want to withhold his portion of the corn,' thought I; but it was quite otherwise.