Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/371

Rh There was such silence that Yurand might have heard the beating of his own heart, but he had grown benumbed and altogether stony, just as if the soul had been taken out of him, and he gave no account to himself of anything. Only one idea remained to the man, that he had ceased to be Yurand of Spyhov, but what he had become he knew not. At moments something quivered before him, it seemed, in the night; that Death was coming to him stealthily over the snow from those corpses on the gibbet which he had seen in the morning.

All at once he quivered and recovered completely.

"O merciful Christ, what is that?"

Out of the lofty little window in the gate tower came certain sounds of a lute, at first barely audible. Yurand, when going to Schytno, felt sure that Danusia was not in the castle, but those sounds of a lute in the night roused his heart. In one instant it seemed to him that he knew them, and that no one else was playing but his child, his love. So he fell on his knees, joined his hands in prayer, and listened, while trembling as in a fever.

With that a half-childish and immensely sad voice began:

"Oh, had I wings like a wild goose, I would fly after Yasek; I would fly after him to Silesia!"

Yurand wanted to answer, to cry out the dear name, but the words stuck in his throat as if an iron hoop had squeezed them down. A sudden wave of pain, tears, sadness, misfortune rose in his breast; he threw himself on his face in the snow, and began with ecstasy to cry to heaven in his soul, as if in a thanksgiving prayer,—

"O Jesus! I hear my child yet! O Jesus!"

And sobbing rent his gigantic body. Above him the yearning voice sang on in the undisturbed silence of night:

"I would sit on a fence in Silesia; Look at me, Yasek dear, Look at the poor little orphan."

Next morning a bearded, burly man at arms kicked the side of the knight who was lying before the gate.

"To thy feet, dog! The gate is open, and the comtur commands thee to stand before his face."

Yurand woke as if from sleep. He did not seize the man by the throat; he did not crush him in his iron hand;