more will he not if he finds his wife and she tells him that we took her away from the hunting-lodge. It would appear at once that we invited Yurand just to destroy him, and that no one had a thought of restoring the daughter to her father." Here it occurred to Siegfried that in answer to the prince's letters the Grand Master would probably order a search in Schytno, even to clear himself before that same prince of Mazovia. It was important to him and the Chapter, in case of war with the powerful King of Poland, that the princes should be neutral. Omitting those princes' troops, which were not among the fewest, it was proper, in view of the number of Mazovian nobles and their valor, not to despise Prince Yanush and his brother; peace with them secured the boundary along great spaces, and permitted the Order to concentrate its forces better. They had mentioned this frequently in Malborg before Siegfried, and comforted themselves with the hope that after conquering the King they would find later on some pretext against Mazovia, and then no power could snatch that land from the grasp of the Order. That was a great and certain reckoning, hence it was positive in that juncture that the Grand Master would do everything to avoid irritating Prince Yanush, who, married to Keistut's daughter, was more difficult to please than Ziemowit of Plotsk, whose wife, for undiscovered reasons, was thoroughly devoted to the Order.
In view of these thoughts old Siegfried, with all his readiiness for every treachery, crime, and cruelty, and though he loved the Order, and its glory began to reckon with his conscience. "Would it not be better to liberate Yurand and his daughter? Treason and foulness weighed down the name of Danveld, but he was not living. And even," thought he, "if the Grand Master should punish me and Rotgier severely, since we were in every case participants, will not that be better for the Order?" But here his vengeful, cruel heart began to storm within him at the thought of Yurand. Liberate him, that oppressor and executioner of people of the Order, a victor in so many conflicts, the author of so many defeats and so much shame, the conqueror, and later the murderer, of Danveld, the captor of De Bergov, the slayer of Meinegger, Gottfried, and Hugo, of him, who in Schytno itself shed more German blood than is shed in a good engagement in time of warfare. "I cannot, I cannot!" repeated Siegfried in spirit. And at the very thought the grasping fingers of the old man contracted in a cramp, and
