Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - Potop - The Deluge (1898 translation by Jeremiah Curtin) - Vol 1.djvu/457

Rh A well-wisher counsels this, — believe him. Meanwhile keep together, choosing quarters for the squadrons one not far from the other, so that you may be able to give mutual assistance. The hetman has few cavalry, only a small number of dragoons, and Kmita's men, but they are not reliable. Kmita himself is absent. The hetman found some other office for him ; it being likely that he does not trust him. Kmita too is not such a traitor as men say; he is merely led astray. I commit you to God.

Pan Andrei did not wish to put his own name to the letter, for he judged that it would rouse in each one aversion and especially distrust. "In case they understand," thought he, "that it would be better for them to retreat before the hetman than to meet him in a body", they will suspect at once, if they see my name, that I wish to collect them, so that the hetman may finish them at a blow; they will think this a new trick, but from some Babinich they will receive warning more readily."

Pan Andrei called himself Babinich from the village Babiniche, near Orsha, which from remote times belonged to the Kmitas.

When he had written the letter, at the end of which he placed a few timid words in his own defence, he felt new solace in his heart at the thought that with that letter he had rendered the first service, not only to Volodyovski and his friends, but to all the colonels who would not desert their country for Radzivill. He felt also that that thread would go farther. The plight into which he had fallen was difficult, indeed, almost desperate; but still there was some help, some issue, some narrow path which would lead to the highroad.

But now when Olenka in all probability was safe from the vengeance of Radzivill, and the confederates from an unexpected attack, Pan Andrei put the question, What was he to do himself?

He had broken with traitors, he had burned the bridges in the rear, he wished now to serve his country, to devote to it his strength, his health, his life; but how was he to do this, how begin, to what could he put his hand?

Again it came to his head to join the confederates; but if they will not receive him, if they will proclaim him a traitor and cut him down, or what is worse, expel him in disgrace?

"I would rather they killed me!" cried Pan Andrei; and he flushed from shame and the feeling of his own