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Rh your family, and all of them through your guilt alone, Pan Jacek! And yet to-day, when the yagers aimed at the Count (the last of the Horeszkos, though in the female line), you preserved him; and when the Muscovites shot at me you threw me on the ground, so that you have been the saviour of us both. If it is true that you are a monk, in holy orders, then your habit shields you from my penknife. Farewell, I will set foot no more upon your threshold; our account is clear—let us leave the rest to the Lord."

Jacek stretched out his hand—but Gerwazy started back.

"Without dishonour to my noble blood," he said, "I cannot touch a hand denied by such a murder, committed for private vengeance, and not pro publico bono."

But Jacek, sinking from the pillows into the bed, turned to the Judge and grew more and more pale; he eagerly asked for the parish priest, and cried to the Warden:—

"I implore you to remain; in a moment more I shall finish; hardly have I strength to conclude—Warden—I shall die this night."

"What, brother?" cried the Judge, "I have seen your wound; it is trifling: why do you say this? Send for the priest! Perhaps it has been ill tended: I will send for the doctor; he is at the apothecary's."

"It is too late, brother," interrupted the Monk. "In the same place I have an earlier gunshot wound; I received it at Jena. It was ill healed, and now it has been irritated—there is gangrene there already. I am familiar with wounds; see how black the blood is, like soot; a doctor could do nothing. But this is a trifle; we die but once; to-morrow or to-day we must yield S