Soroka wanted to answer that he knew these woods and the road very well; but after a moment's thought he determined that silence was better, and inquired, —
"Are these woods very great?"
The fellow did not understand the question. "How is that?"
"Do they go far?"
"Oh! who has gone through them? Where one ends another begins, and God knows where they are not; I have never been in that place."
"Very well!" said Soroka.
Then he ordered the man to go back to the cabin, and followed himself.
On the way he was pondering over what he should do, and hesitated. On one hand the wish came to him to take the horses while the cabin-dwellers were gone, and flee with this plunder. The booty was precious, and the horses pleased the old soldier's heart greatly; but after a while he overcame the temptation. To take them was easy, but what to do further. Swamps all around, one egress, — how hit upon that? Chance had served him once, but perhaps it would not a second time. To follow the trail of hoofs was useless, for the cabin-dwellers had surely wit enough to make by design false and treacherous trails leading straight into quagmires. Soroka knew clearly the methods of men who steal horses, and of those who take booty.
He thought awhile, therefore, and meditated; all at once he struck his head with his list, —
"I am a fool!" muttered he. "I'll take the fellow on a rope, and make him lead me to the highway."
Barely had he uttered the last word when he shuddered, "To the highway? But that prince will be there, and pursuit. To lose fifteen horses!" said the old fox to himself, with as much sorrow as if he had cared for the beasts from their colthood. "It must be that our fortune is ended. We must stay in the cabin till Pan Kmita recovers, — stay with consent of the owners or without their consent; and what will come later, that is work for the colonel's head."
Thus meditating, he returned to the cabin. The watchful soldiers were standing at the door, and though they saw a lantern shining in the dark from a distance, — the same lantern with which Soroka and the pitch-maker had gone out, — still they forced them to tell who they were before
