Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/127

Rh Cracow at that time were two-thirds of them German, still round about were heard dreadful curses against the Knights of the Cross. "Shame! shame! May the German wolves perish if children must die to please them. It is a shame for the king and the kingdom!" The Lithuanians, seeing this resistance, took their bows, already drawn, from their shoulders, and looked frowningly at the people; they dared not, however, shoot into the crowd without orders. But the captain sent halberdiers in advance, for it was easier to open the road with halberds. In that way they reached the knights standing in the square around the scaffold.

These opened without resistance. First the halberdiers entered, after them came Zbyshko with the priest and the secretary, after that something took place which no one had expected.

Suddenly from among the knights stepped forth Povala, with Danusia on his arm, and cried "Stop!" with such a thundering voice that the whole retinue halted as if fastened to the earth. Neither the captain nor any of the soldiers dared oppose a lord and a belted knight whom they saw daily in the castle, and often talking with the king confidentially. Finally others, also renowned, cried with commanding voices: "Stop! stop!" Povala approached Zbyshko and gave him Danusia dressed in white.

Zbyshko, thinking that that was the farewell, seized her, embraced her, and pressed her to his bosom; but Danusia, instead of nestling up to him and throwing her arms around his neck, pulled as quickly as possible from her bright hair and from under the garland of rue a white veil and covered Zbyshko's head with it entirely, crying at the same time,—

"He is mine! he is mine!"

"He is hers!" repeated the powerful voices of the knights. "To the castellan!"

"To the castellan! To the castellan!" answered a shout from the people which was like thunder.

The priest raised his eyes, the court secretary was confused, the captain and the halberdiers dropped their weapons, for all understood what had happened.

It was an old Polish and Slav custom, as valid as law, known in Podhale, in Cracow, and even farther, that when an innocent maiden threw her veil over a man on the way to execution, as a sign that she wanted to marry him, she saved the man from death and punishment by that act. The knights knew this custom, yeomen knew it, the Polish people