CHAPTER XXIX.
Silence succeeded; but soon something began to rustle in the near thicket, as if wild beasts were passing. The movement, however, grew slower the nearer it came. Then there was silence a second time.
"How many of them are there?" asked Kmita.
"About six, and perhaps eight; for to tell the truth I could not count them surely," said Soroka.
"That is our luck! They cannot stand against us."
"They cannot, Colonel; but we must take one of them alive, and scorch him so that he will show the road."
"There will be time for that. Be watchful!"
Kmita had barely said, "Be watchful," when a streak of white smoke bloomed forth from the thicket, and you would have said that birds had fluttered in the near grass, about thirty yards from the cabin.
"They shot from old guns, with hob-nails!" said Kmita; "if they have not muskets, they will do nothing to us, for old guns will not carry from the thicket."
Soroka, holding with one hand the musket resting on the saddle of the horse standing in front of him, placed the other hand in the form of a trumpet before his mouth, and shouted, —
"Let any man come out of the bushes, he will cover himself with his legs right away."
A moment of silence followed; then a threatening voice was heard in the thicket, —
"What kind of men are you?"
"Better than those who rob on the highroad."
"By what right have you found out our dwelling?"
"A robber asks about right! The hangman will show you right! Come to the cabin."
"We will smoke you out just as if you were badgers."
"But come on; only see that the smoke does not stifle you too."
The voice in the thicket was silent; the invaders, it seemed, had begun to take counsel. Meanwhile Soroka whispered to Kmita, —
