Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/474

36 the hair from men's heads and faces. That was devils; whole crowds of them were roaring in the night wind, each with a pitchfork, and when a devil came up he thrust his fork into the ground, raised out a Knight of the Cross, and flew off to Hell with him. The people in Plovtsi heard a noise like that of dogs howling in packs, but they could not tell whether the Germans were howling from terror, or the devils were howling from gladness. It was that way till a priest blessed the ditches, and the ground froze so hard at the New Year that no fork could go into it."

Here he was silent, but added after a while,—

"God grant, lord knight, such an end as you say, though I shall not see the time; youths like these two will live to it, but they will not see what my eyes have seen."

Then he began to look at Anulka and Yagenka, to wonder at their beautiful faces, and shake his head.

"The poppy in the wheat field is no man's," said he, "and I have never seen any one like these two lads."

In this way they talked through a part of the night, then they lay down to sleep in the cabin on moss soft as down, and were covered with warm skins. When deep sleep had strengthened their limbs they moved on faster next morning, after clear daylight.

The road along Chartsi Vandol was not very easy, but it was also not difficult; hence before sunset they saw the castle of Lenchytsa. The town had been raised again from its ashes. It was of red brick, and even partly of stone. It had lofty walls, defended by towers, and the churches were richer than the churches of Sieradz. From the Dominicans they got news of the abbot easily. He was better, they said, and rejoiced in the hope of recovery, and some days before he had gone on his journey. Matsko did not wish greatly to overtake him on the road, for he had determined already to take the two girls to Plotsk, whither the abbot would have taken them; but as he was in a hurry to find Zbyshko he was terribly distressed by news that after the abbot's departure the rivers had swollen so that it was quite impossible to go farther. The Dominicans, seeing a knight with a considerable escort, and going, as he said, to Prince Ziemovit's, received and entertained him hospitably, and even gave him a tablet of olive-wood, on which was written in Latin a prayer to the angel Raphael, the patron of travellers.

His forced stay at Lenchytsa lasted two weeks during Which time the young shield-bearer of the castle starosta