Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/507

Rh But, since he could not get Pan Zbyshko then, he gave command to torture Yurand, and put Yurand's tongue and his hand into Rotgier's coffin. The corpse began to eat them raw—"

"Oh, terrible to hear such things! In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost!" said Yagenka, and rising, she threw a billet of wood on the fire, for it had grown dusk then.

"That is how it was," continued Hlava. "I do not know how it will be settled at the last judgment, for what belonged to Yurand must be returned to him. But how that will be done is beyond human reason. The executioner saw all this. So when the old comtur had sated the vampire with human flesh he went to offer him Yurand's daughter, for the dead man had whispered to him, as it seems, that he wanted to wash down his food with the blood of that innocent. But the executioner, who, as I have said, would do anything except to endure wrong done a girl, hid on the staircase. The priest says that he is not in his full mind, and is really a beast; but he understands that one thing, and when there is need, no man can equal him in cunning. He sat then on the stairs and waited for the comtur. The old comtur heard the breathing of the executioner, saw his gleaming eyes, and was frightened, for he thought it was the devil. Then the executioner gave the comtur a blow of his fist on the neck, thinking that would shock his spine so that there would be no sign left of violence; still he did not kill him. But Siegfried fainted and was sick from fright, and when he recovered, he feared to attack Yurand's daughter."

"But he took her away?"

"He took her away, and with her the executioner also.

The old comtur did not know that it was he who had defended Danusia; he thought that it was some unknown power, good or evil. But he did not choose to leave the executioner in Schytno. He feared his testimony, or something,—he is dumb, it is true, but in case of a trial he might tell through the priest what he knows. So the priest said at last to the knight Matsko: 'Old Siegfried will not destroy Yurand's daughter now, for he is afraid; and though be should command another to do so, while the executioner is alive he will not desert her, all the more that he has defended her already.'"

"Did the priest know whither they had taken her?"