Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/489

Rh "Praised be Jesus Christ!" said Yagenka. "Do you understand Christian speech, grandfather?"

But he, hearing her sweet voice, trembled, a wonderful ray shot across his face as it were of emotion and tenderness, he covered with his eyelids the empty pits of his eyes, and dropping the stick, fell before her on his knees with his arms stretched upward.

"Rise! I will help you. What is your suffering?" asked Yagenka with astonishment.

He made no answer, save that two tears rolled along his cheeks, and from his mouth came a sound something like a groan.

"Aa! a!"

"By the pity of God are you dumb, or what? "

"Aa! a!"

When he had uttered this he raised his hand, made a sign of the cross with it first, then passed it across his lips. Yagenka, not understanding, looked at Matsko, who said,—

"It must be that he is showing how they cut his tongue out."

"Did they cut your tongue out?" asked the girl.

"Aa! a! a! a!" repeated the old man a number of times, nodding his head therewith.

Then he pointed at his eyes with his fingers, thrust forth his right arm without a hand, and made a motion with his left like giving a blow.

Now both understood him.

"Who did this to you?" asked Yagenka.

The old man made a number of signs of the cross in the air.

"The Knights of the Cross!" cried out Matsko.

The old man dropped his head toward his breast in sign of affirmation. A moment of silence followed. Matsko and Yagenka looked at each other with fear, for they had before them a clear proof of that lack of mercy and absence of measure in punishment for which the Knights of the Cross were distinguished.

"Savage measures!" said Matsko at last; "grievously have they punished him, and God knows whether justly. But we shall not discover that. If only we knew where to take him, for he must be a man of these parts. He understands our speech, for the people here are the same as in Mazovia."