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 two of her companions. To liberate them all must create a burden which their small number could not protect. These young women had been suddenly seized by a marauding body of the banditti who had penetrated into that part of the country, and had been borne off from among the cottagers during the absence of the military population. Hastily retiring to a separate camp with their new acquisition of numbers, Witek and his followers watched with true military precision, all the more strict as the young women had been recognized by Witek as being members of his brother’s household. In the early dawn this party hastily retreated along a track well known to them. The same day placed the low mountain range between them and pursuit, and they toiled wearily along the desolate path. Two more days of painful travel, especially exhausting to Eudocia and her companions, found the party at length within the walls of Fürstenberg, the strong castle of Lord Zawis.