Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/149

Rh "I am a sinful man; I am glad to be penitent," said Matsko. "I dreamed in the night that devils were pulling the boots from my feet, and were gabbling to one another in German. God was gracious, relief came. But thou didst sleep like a log?"

"How sleep when I was watching you?"

"Then lie down a little. When we arrive I will wake thee."

"What time have I to sleep?"

"But what hinders thee?"

"What unless love?" said Zbyshko, looking at his uncle with the eyes of a child. "Pains have collected in my breast from sighing, but I will sit on horseback a little, and that will relieve me."

He crawled out of the wagon and mounted a horse, which one of the Turks given by Zavisha held carefully. Matsko meanwhile held his side because of pain, but clearly he had something else besides his own sickness in mind, for he shook his head, smacked his lips, and said at last,—

"I wonder, and I cannot stop wondering, how thou hast become so eager for that love, for neither thy father nor I were of that kind."

Zbyshko, instead of answering, straightened himself quickly in the saddle, put his hand on his hips, threw up his head, and thundered with all the power in his breast:—

"I wept all the night, I wept in the morning. Where hast thou gone, dearest maiden? Nothing avails me, though I weep my eyes out, For I never shall see thee, O maiden. Hei!"

And that "Hei!" rushed through the forest, struck the trees by the roadside, was heard at last in a distant echo, and grew still in the thickets.

But Matsko put his hand again on his side where the German arrow-point had stuck, and said, groaning slightly,—

"Formerly people were wiser—dost understand?" But after a while he grew thoughtful, as if remembering some of the old times, and added: "Though even in old times an odd man was foolish."

Meanwhile they issued from the forest, after which they beheld sheds for miners, and farther on the indented walls of Olkush, reared by King Kazimir, and the tower of the church built by Vladislav Lokietek.