"That is why it pains me."
"But it is not two days old. Most Holy Mother! some one who must have been very near shot at your grace."
"How do you know that?"
"Because all the powder was not burned, and grains like cockle are under the skin. They will stay with your grace. Now we need only bread and spider-web. Terribly near was the man who fired. It is well that he did not kill your grace."
"It was not fated me. Mix the bread and the spider-web and put them on as quickly as possible, for I must talk with you, and my jaws pain me."
The old man looked suspiciously at the colonel, for in his heart there was fear that the talk might touch again on the horses said to have been taken by the Cossacks; but he busied himself at once, kneaded the moistened bread first, and since it was not hard to find spider-webs in the cabin he attended promptly to Kmita.
"I am easy now," said Pan Andrei; "sit down, worthy Kyemlich."
"According to command of the colonel," answered the old man, sitting on the edge of a bench and stretching out his iron-gray bristly head uneasily toward Kmita.
But Kmita, instead of conversing, took his own head in his hands and fell into deep thought. Then he rose and began to walk in the room; at moments he halted before Kyemlich and gazed at him with distraught look; apparently he was weighing something, wrestling with thoughts. Meanwhile about half an hour passed; the old man squirmed more and more uneasily. All at once Kmita stopped before him.
"Worthy Kyemlich," said he, "where are the nearest of those squadrons which rose up against the prince voevoda of Vilna?"
"The old man began to wink his eyes suspiciously. "Does your grace wish to go to them?"
"I do not request you to ask, but to answer."
"They say that one squadron is quartered in Shchuchyn, — that one which came here last from Jmud."
"Who said so?"
"The men of the squadron themselves."
"Who led it?"
"Pan Volodyovski."
"That's well. Call Soroka!"
