CHAPTER XXXVI.
Kmita had, it is true, Radzivill's passes to all the Swedish captains, commandants, and governors, to give him a free road everywhere, and make no opposition, but he did not dare to use those passes; for he expected that Prince Boguslav, immediately after Pilvishki, had hurried off messengers in every direction with information to the Swedes of what had happened, and with an order to seize him. For this reason Pan Andrei had assumed a strange name, and also changed his rank. Avoiding therefore Lomja and Ostrolenko, to which the first warning might have come, he directed his horses and his company to Pjasnysh, whence he wished to go through Pultusk to Warsaw.
But before he reached Pjasnysh he made a bend on the Prussian boundary through Vansosh, Kolno, and Myshynyets, because the Kyemliches, knowing those wildernesses well, were acquainted with the forest trails, and besides had their "cronies" among the Bark-shoes,[1] from whom they might expect aid in case of emergency.
The country at the boundary was occupied for the most part by the Swedes, who limited themselves, however, to occupying the most considerable towns, going not too boldly into the slumbering and fathomless forests inhabited by armed men, — hunters who never left the wilderness, and were still so wild that just a year before, the Queen, Marya Ludvika, had given a command to build a chapel in Myshynyets and settle there Jesuits, who were to teach religion and soften the manners of those men of the wilderness.
"The longer we do not meet the Swedes," said old Kyemlich, "the better for us."
"We must meet them at last," answered Pan Andrei.
"If a man meets them in a large town they are often afraid to do him injustice; for in a town there is always some government and some higher commandant to whom
- ↑ So called because they wore shoes made from the inner bark of bass-wood or linden trees.
