If you chased their pigs when they came rooting up your garden, or objected to their children maltreating your children, they might complain against you to the police, stuffing their case with false accusations and false witnesses.

If you had not made friends with the police, the case might go to court; and there you lost before the trial was called, unless the judge had reason to befriend you.

The cheapest way to live in Polotzk was to pay as you went along.

Even a little girl understood that, in Polotzk.
Perhaps your parents were in business,--usually they were, as almost everybody kept store,--and you heard a great deal about the chief of police, and excise officers, and other agents of the Czar.

Between the Czar whom you had never seen, and the policeman whom you knew too well, you pictured to yourself a long row of officials of all sorts, all with their palms stretched out to receive your father's money.