Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/370

346 at him, they would not be able to pierce his armor at once, while he might wrest a weapon from the nearest German and destroy them all before help could come. Moreover, they knew what manner of man he was.

"And even," said he to himself, "if they wish to let my blood out, I have not come here for another purpose."

With this thought, he threw down his axe, then his sword; next his misericordia, and waited.

They seized all these; then that man who had spoken to him withdrew a few tens of paces, halted, and said in a voice loud and insolent,—

"For all the wrongs which thou hast done the Order, thou art, at command of the comtur, to put on thyself this hempen bag which I leave thee, tie to thy neck on a rope the scabbard of thy sword, and wait humbly at the gate till the grace of the comtur gives command to open it."

And after a little Yurand was alone in darkness and silence. On the snow lay black before him the penitential bag and the rope, but he stood there long, feeling that something in his soul was unhinging, something breaking, something coming to an end, something dying, and that soon he would be no longer a knight, no longer Yurand of Spyhov, but a wretch, a slave without name, without fame, without honor.

So much time passed before he approached the penitential bag, and said,—

"How can I act differently? Thou, O Christ, knowest that they will kill my innocent child unless I do what they command. And thou knowest also that I would not do this to save my own life. Shame is a bitter thing! Oh, bitter! but before Thy death men put shame on Thee. Well, then, in the name of the Father and the Son."

He stooped down, put on the bag, in which there were holes for his head and arms, then on the rope around his neck he hung the sheath of his sword, and dragged himself to the gate.

He did not find it open, but it was all one to him at that moment whether they opened it earlier or later. The castle sank into the silence of night; the guards called to each other now and then at the corners. There was light in one little window high up in the gate tower; the others were in darkness.

The night hours passed one after another; on the sky rose the sickle of the moon and lighted the castle walls gloomily.