“That may happen too,” answered Kmita.
Now the two sons of the old man came in—Kosma and Damian, twins, big fellows, awkward, with enormous heads completely overgrown with an immensely thick bush of hair, stiff as a brush, sticking out unevenly around the ears, forming hair-screws and fantastic tufts on their skulls. When they came in they stood near the door, for in presence of Kmita they dared not sit down; and Damian said—
“The cellar is cleared.”
“ ’Tis well,” answered old Kyemlich, “I will go to bring mead.”
Here he looked significantly at his sons.
“And Zolotarenko’s men took the horses,” said he, with emphasis; and went out of the cabin.
Kmita glanced at the two who stood by the door, and who looked as if they had been hewn out of logs roughly with an axe.
“What are you doing now?”
“We take horses!” answered the twins at the same time.
“From whom?”
“From whomsoever comes along.”
“But mostly?”
“From Zolotarenko’s men.”
“That is well, you are free to take from the enemy; but if you take from your own you are robbers, not nobles. What do you do with those horses?”
“Father sells them in Prussia.”
“Has it happened to you to take from the Swedes? Swedish companies are not far from here. Have you attacked the Swedes?”
“We have.”
“Then you fall on single men or small companies; but when they defend themselves, what then?”
“We pound them.”
“Ah, ha, you pound them! Then you have a reckoning with Zolotarenko’s men and with the Swedes, and surely you could not have got away dry had you fallen into their hands.”
Kosma and Damian were silent.
“You are carrying on a dangerous business, more becoming to robbers than nobles. It must be, also, that some sentences are hanging over you from old times?”
“Of course there are!” answered Kosma and Damian.
“So I thought. From what parts are you?”
“We are from these parts.”
“Where did your father live before?”
“In Borovichko.”
“Was that his village?”
“Yes, together with Pan Kopystynski.”
“And what became of him?”
“We killed him.”
“And you had to flee before the law. It will be short work with you Kyemliches, and you’ll finish on trees. The hangman will light you, it cannot be otherwise!”
Just then the door of the room creaked, and the old man came in bringing a decanter of mead and two glasses. He looked unquietly at his sons and at Kmita, and then said—
“Go and cover the cellar.”
The twins went out at once. The old man poured mead into one glass; the other he left empty, waiting to see if Kmita would let him drink with him.
But Kmita was not able to drink himself, for he even spoke with difficulty, such pain did the wound cause him. Seeing this, the old man said—
“Mead is not good for the wound, unless poured in, to clear it out more quickly. Your grace, let me look at the wound and dress it, for I understand this matter as well as a barber.”
Kmita consented. Kyemlich removed the bandage, and began to examine the wound carefully.
“The skin is taken off, that’s nothing! The ball passed along the outside; but still it is swollen.”
“That is why it pains me.”
“But it is not two days old. Most Holy Mother! someone who must have been very near shot at your grace.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because all the powder was not burned, and grains like cockle are under the skin. They will stay with your grace. Now we need only bread and spiderweb. Terribly near was the man who fired. It is well that he did not kill your grace.”
“It was not fated me. Mix the bread and the spiderweb and put them on as quickly as possible, for I must talk with you, and my jaws pain me.”
The old man looked suspiciously at the colonel, for in his heart there was fear that the talk might touch again on the horses said to have been taken by the Cossacks; but he busied himself at once, kneaded the moistened bread first, and since it was not hard to find spiderwebs in the cabin he attended promptly to Kmita.
“I am easy now,” said Pan Andrei; “sit down, worthy Kyemlich.”
“According to command of the colonel,” answered the old man, sitting on the edge of a bench and stretching out his iron-gray bristly head uneasily toward Kmita.
But Kmita, instead of conversing, took his own head in his hands and fell into deep thought. Then he rose and began to walk in the room; at moments he halted before Kyemlich and gazed at him with distraught look; apparently he was weighing something, wrestling with thoughts. Meanwhile about half an hour passed; the old man squirmed more and more uneasily. All at once Kmita stopped before him.
“Worthy Kyemlich,” said he, “where are the nearest of those squadrons which rose up against the prince voevoda of Vilna?”
The old man began to wink his eyes suspiciously. “Does your grace wish to go to them?”
“I do not request you to ask, but to answer.”
“They say that one squadron is quartered in Shchuchyn—that one which came here last from Jmud.”
“Who said so?”
“The men of the squadron themselves.”
“Who led it?”
“Pan Volodyovski.”
“That’s well. Call Soroka!”
The old man went out, and returned soon with the sergeant.
“Have the letters been found?” asked Kmita.
“They have not,
