Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - Potop - The Deluge (1898 translation by Jeremiah Curtin) - Vol 1.djvu/393

Rh come to Lyubich, after his famous raids on Hovanski, he had not felt so vivacious.

Kharlamp was right in this, that there is no cure like the road for cares and troubles. Pan Andrei had iron health; his daring and love of adventures were coming back every hour. He saw these adventures before him, smiled at them, and urged on his convoy unceasingly, barely stopping for short night-rests.

Olenka stood ever before the eyes of his spirit, tearful, trembling in his arms like a bird, and he said to himself, "I shall return."

At times the form of the hetman passed before him, gloomy, immense, terrible. But it may be just because he was moving away more and more, that that form became almost dear to him. Hitherto he had bent before Radzivill; now he began to love him. Hitherto Radzivill had borne him along as a mighty whirlpool of water seizes and attracts everything that comes within its circle; now Kmita felt that he wished with his whole soul to go with him.

And in the distance that gigantic voevoda increased continually in the eyes of the young knight, and assumed almost superhuman proportions. More than once, at his night halt, when Pan Andrei had closed his eyes in sleep, he saw the hetman sitting on a throne loftier than the tops of the pine-trees. There was a crown on his head; his face was the same, gloomy, enormous; in his hand a sword and a sceptre, at his feet the whole Commonwealth. And in his soul Kmita did homage to greatness.

On the third day of the journey they left the Nyemen far behind, and entered a country of still greater forests. They met whole crowds of fugitives on the roads; but nobles unable to bear arms were going almost without exception to Prussia before the bands of the enemy, who, not held in curb there, as on the banks of the Vilia, by the regiments of Sweden and Radzivill, pushed at times far into the heart of the country, even to the boundary of Electoral Prussia. Their main object was plunder.

Frequently these Avere detachments as if from the army of Zolotarenko, but really recognizing no authority, — simply robber companies, so called "parties" commanded at times even by local bandits. Avoiding engagements in the field with troops and even with townspeople, they attacked small villages, single houses, and travellers.

The nobles on their own account attacked these parties