"Even if it were all, I think that such counsel is more in accordance with the honor of Swedish soldiers than barren jests at cups, or than sleeping after drinking-bouts. But that is not all. We should spread the report among our soldiers, and especially among the Poles, that the men at work now making a mine have discovered the old underground passage leading to the cloister and the church."
"That is good counsel," said Miller.
"When this report is spread among the soldiers and the Poles, the Poles themselves will persuade the monks to surrender, for it is a question with them as with the monks, that that nest of superstitions should remain intact."
"For a Catholic that is not bad!" muttered Sadovski.
"If he served the Turks he would call Rome a nest of superstitions," said the Prince of Hesse.
"Then, beyond doubt, the Poles will send envoys to the priests," continued Count Veyhard, "that party in the cloister, which is long anxious for surrender will renew its efforts under the influence of fear; and who knows but its members will force the prior and the stubborn to open the gates?"
"The city of Priam will perish through the cunning of the divine son of Laertes," declaimed the Prince of Hesse.
"As God lives, a real Trojan history, and he thinks he has invented something new!" said Sadovski.
But the advice pleased Miller, for in very truth it was not bad. The party which the count spoke of existed really in the cloister. Even some priests of weaker soul belonged to it. Besides, fear might extend among the garrison, including even those who so far were ready to defend it to the last drop of blood.
"Let us try, let us try!" said Miller, who like a drowning man seized every plank, and from despair passed easily to hope. "But will Kuklinovski or Zbrojek agree to go again as envoys to the cloister, or will they believe in that passage, and will they inform the priests of it?"
"In every case Kuklinovski will agree," answered the count; "but it is better that he should believe really in the existence of the passage."
At that moment they heard the tramp of a horse in front of the quarters.
"There, Pan Zbrojek has come!" said the Prince of Hesse, looking through the window.
A moment later spurs rattled, and Zbrojek entered, or rather rushed into the room. His face was pale, excited, and before the officers could ask the cause of his excitement the colonel cried,
"Kuklinovski is no longer living!"
"How? What do you say? What has happened?" exclaimed Miller.
"Let me catch breath," said Zbrojek, "for what I have seen passes imagination."
"Talk more quickly. Has he been murdered?" cried all.
"By Kmita," answered Zbrojek.
The officers all sprang from their seats, and began to look at Zbrojek as at a madman; and he, while blowing in quick succession bunches of steam from his nostrils, said,
"If I had not seen I should not have believed, for that is not a human power. Kuklinovski is not living, three soldiers are killed, and of Kmita not a trace. I know that he was a terrible man. His reputation is known in the whole country. But for him, a prisoner and bound, not only to free himself, but to kill the soldiers and torture Kuklinovski to death, that a man could not do, only a devil!"
"Nothing like that has ever happened; that's impossible of belief!" whispered Sadovski.
"That Kmita has shown what he can do," said the Prince of Hesse. "We did not believe the Poles yesterday when they told us what kind of bird he was; we thought they were telling big stories, as is usual with them."
"Enough to drive a man mad," said the count.
Miller seized his head with his hands, and said nothing. When at last he raised his eyes, flashes of wrath were crossing in them with flashes of suspicion.
"Pan Zbrojek," said he, "though he were Satan and not a man, he could not do this without some treason, without assistance. Kmita had his admirers here; Kuklinovski his enemies, and you belong to the number."
Zbrojek was in the full sense of the word an insolent soldier; therefore when he heard an accusation directed against himself, he grew still paler, sprang from his place, approached Miller, and halting in front of him looked him straight in the eyes.
"Does your worthiness suspect me?" inquired he.
A very oppressive moment followed. The officers present had not the slightest doubt were Miller to give an affirmative answer something would follow terrible and unparalled in the history of camps. All hands rested on their rapier hilts. Sadovski even drew his weapon altogether.
But at that moment the officers saw before the window a yard filled with Polish horsemen. Probably they also had come with news of Kuklinovski, but in case of collision they would stand beyond doubt on Zbrojek's side. Miller too saw them, and though the paleness of rage had come on his face, still he restrained himself, and feigning to see no challenge in Zbrojek's action, he answered in a voice which he strove to make natural,
"Tell in detail how it happened."
Zbrojek stood for a time yet with nostrils distended, but he too remembered himself; and then his thoughts turned in another direction, for his comrades, who had just ridden up, entered the room.
"Kuklinovski is murdered!" repeated they, one after another. "Kuklinovski is killed! His regiment will scatter! His soldiers are going wild!"
"Gentlemen, permit Pan Zbrojek to speak; he brought the news first," cried Miller.
After a while there was silence, and Zbrojek spoke as follows,
"It is known to you, gentlemen, that at the last council I challenged Kuklinovski on the word of a cavalier. I was an admirer of Kmita, it is true; but even you, though his enemies, must acknowledge that no common man could have done such a deed as bursting that cannon. It behooves us to esteem daring even in an enemy; therefore I offered him my hand, but he refused his, and called me a traitor. Then I thought to myself, 'Let Kuklinovski do what he likes with him.' My only other thought was this: 'If Kuklinovski acts against knightly honor in dealing with Kmita, the disgrace of his deed must not fall on all Poles, and among others on me.' For that very reason I wished surely to fight with Kuklinovski, and this morning taking two comrades, I set out for his camp. We come to his quarters; they say there, 'He is not at home.' I send to this place, he is not here. At his quarters they tell us, 'He has not returned the whole night.' But they are not alarmed, for they think that he has remained with your worthiness. At last one soldier says, 'Last evening he went to that little barn in the field with Kmita, whom he was going to burn there.' I ride to the barn; the doors are wide open. I enter; I see inside a naked body hanging from a beam. 'That is Kmita,' thought I; but when my eyes have grown used to the darkness, I see that the body is some thin and bony one, and Kmita looked like a Hercules. It is a wonder to me that he could shrink so much in one night. I draw near Kuklinovski!"
"Hanging from the beam?" asked Miller.
"Exactly! I make the sign of the cross, I think, 'Is it witchcraft, an omen, deception, or what?' But when I saw three corpses of soldiers, the truth stood as if living before me. That terrible man had killed these, hung Kuklinovski, burned him like an executioner, and then escaped."
"It is not far to the Silesian boundary," said Sadovski.
A moment of silence followed. Every suspicion of Zbrojek's participation in the affair was extinguished in Miller's soul. But the event itself astonished and filled him with a certain undefined fear. He saw dangers rising around, or rather their terrible shadows, against which he knew not how to struggle; he felt that some kind of chain of failures surrounded him. The first links were before his eyes, but farther the gloom of the future was lying. Just such a feeling mastered him as if he were in a cracked house which might fall on his head any moment. Uncertainty crushed him with an insupportable weight, and he asked himself what he had to lay hands on.