Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/379

Rh cruelty and bravery, "thou wilt free, not only the girl, but this hell hound to bite again?"

"He will not bite as before!" exclaimed Gottfried.

"Oh, he will pay the ransom," answered Danveld, carelessly.

"Though he were to give us all he has he would strip twice as much in one year from our people!"

"As to the girl I make no opposition," repeated Siegfried, "but the lambs of the Order will cry more than once because of that wolf."

"But our word?" inquired Danveld, with a laugh.

"Thou hast spoken differently on that point."

Danveld shrugged his shoulders.

"Have ye had too little amusement?" asked he. "Do ye want more?" Yurand was surrounded now by others, who, conscious of the glory which had come to all the brotherhood because of Danveld's act of honor, fell to boasting before the prisoner,—

"Well, bone-breaker! " said the captain of the archers to Yurand, "thy pagan brothers would not act thus with our Christian Knighthood!"

"Thou didst drink our blood."

"We give thee bread in return for a stone."

Yurand paid no heed to the pride or contempt in their words; his heart was full and his eyelids moist. He was thinking that in a moment he should see Danusia, and see her through their favor, hence he looked on the speakers almost with compunction, and finally he answered,—

"True, true! I have been stern against you—but not false."

Meanwhile at the other end of the hall a voice shouted: "They are leading in the girl!" and immediately there was silence. The men at arms stood apart on both sides. Though no man had seen Yurand's daughter, and the greater number, because of the mystery with which Danveld surrounded his acts, did not even know of her presence in the castle; those who did know hurried to whisper to others of her marvellous beauty. Every eye therefore turned with exceeding curiosity to the doorway through which she was to enter.

Now came the youth; after him the serving woman of the Order, who was known to all, she who had gone to the hunting-lodge; behind her entered a girl dressed in white, with hair let down at full length and then fastened above the forehead with a ribbon.