Page:Pantadeuszorlast00mick.djvu/149

122 The Seneschal had hardly once glanced at the hare: seeing that it had escaped, he indifferently turned his head and finished his interrupted discourse:—

"Where did I stop? Aha, at my making them both promise that they would shoot across the bear skin! The gentlemen cried out: ‘That is sure death, almost barrel to barrel!’ But I laughed to myself, for my friend Maro had taught me that the skin of a beast is no ordinary measure. You know, my friends, how Queen Dido sailed to Libya, and there with great trouble managed to buy a morsel of land, such as could be covered with a bull's hide. On that tiny morsel of land arose Carthage! So I thought that over attentively by night.

"Hardly was day dawning, when from one side came Dowejko in a gig, and from the other Domejko on horseback. They beheld that over the river stretched a shaggy bridge, a girdle of bear skin cut into strips. I stationed Dowejko at the tail of the beast on one side, and Domejko on the other side. ‘Now blaze away,’ I said, ‘for all your lives if you choose, but I won't let you go until you are friends again.’ They got furious, but then the gentry present fairly rolled on the ground for laughter; and the priest and I with impressive words set to giving them lessons from the Gospel and from the Statutes. There was no help for it; they laughed and had to be reconciled.

"Their quarrel turned later into a lifelong friendship, and Dowejko married the sister of Domejko; Domejko espoused the sister of his brother-in-law, Panna Dowejko: they divided their property into two equal portions, and on the spot where so strange an occurrence had happened they built a tavern, and called it the Little Bear."