Half-Russian Jan was to the Poles what a padrone too often is to the Italian laborers, a creature who herded them together and mercilessly worked them for the profit of others, and incidentally his own, an exacting tyrant against whose will it was useless to rebel.  He had a little timid wife with red eyes—­perhaps because she cried so much over the annual baby which just as annually died.  He made a good deal of money, but the dark Slav passion for whisky forced him to spend what he earned, and this increased a naturally sullen temper.  He was the thorn in the Parish side; that we could do so little for the Poles was due in a large measure to Jan’s stubborn hindering.

His people lived in terror of him.  When they displeased him he beat them.  It was not a light beating, and once or twice we had in the Guest Rooms nursed its victims back into some semblance of humanity.  But what could we do?  Jan was so efficient a foreman that Inglesby’s power was always behind him.  So when Jan chose to get very drunk, and sang long, monotonous songs, particularly when he sang through his teeth, lugubriously: 

    “Yeszeze Polska nie Zginela
     Poki my Zygemy ...”

men and women trembled.  Poland might not be lost, but somebody’s skin always paid for that song.

In passing one morning—­it was a holiday—­through the Poles’ quarters, an unpleasant enough stretch which other folks religiously avoided, the Butterfly Man heard shrieks coming from Michael Karski’s back yard.  It was Michael’s wife and children who screamed.

“It is the Boss who beats Michael, Meester Fleent,” a man volunteered.  “The Boss, he is much drunk.  Karski’s woman, she did not like the ways of him in her house, and Michael said, ’I will to send for the police.’  So Big Jan beats Michael, and Michael’s woman, she hollers like hell.”

John Flint knew inoffensive, timid Michael; he knew his broad-bosomed, patient, cowlike wife, and he liked the brood of shockheaded youngsters who plodded along patient in old clothes, bare-footed, and with scanty enough food.  He had made a corn-cob doll for the littlest girl and a cigar-box wagon with spool wheels for the littlest boy.  Perhaps that is why he turned and went with the rest to Michael’s yard where Big Jan was knocking Michael about like a ten-pin, grunting through his teeth:  “Now!  Sen’ for those policemens, you!”

Michael was no pretty thing to look upon, for Jan was in an uglier mood than usual, and Michael had greatly displeased him; therefore it was Michael’s turn to pay.  Nobody interfered, for every one was horribly afraid Big Jan would turn upon him.  Besides, was not he the Boss, and could he not say Go, and then must not a man go, short of pay, and with his wife and children crying?  Of a verity!

The Butterfly Man slipped off his knapsack and laid his net aside.  Then he pushed his way through the scared onlookers.