They watched them march off; the giant, quieter now, staggered between two limping comrades who helped him along, though they had all their work cut out to put one sore foot before the other. When they reached the bend in the road they began to sing, in unison, as Russians do. And Father Constantine's heart went out to those brave, simple souls, and he prayed that they might reach the Nieman in safety.
At first this was the only army Ruvno saw--a host of men, way-worn but strong. But soon came the vanguard of another legion, a ghastly, straggling horde of old men, women and children, fleeing before the invaders. Some of them carried a kettle--all that remained of their worldly goods; others had harnessed skinny, starving nags to their long, narrow carts, piled with bedding, a quilt or two, a table or a stool. Here and there could be seen a sack of potatoes or buckwheat between the wooden bars; but this was rare indeed, because these unhappy people had nothing left in barn or cellar. And the women. They trailed on with their little ones; with children who could walk or toddle, with infants in arms, with babes at the breast, with babes yet unborn, destined to see the first light of a tempestuous world from the roadside, whilst jostling humanity passed indifferently by, benumbed with a surfeit of ordeal and pain. The household could do little for these poor wretches.
In one group of misery they saw a priest--a young man he was. Father Constantine chided him.
"Why did you let them leave their homes?" he asked. "Can't you see half of them are doomed to die in the ditch?"
He shrugged his shoulders and looked at his questioner with the dull eyes of a man steeped in despair.
"What could I do?" was his wail. "The Russians drove us out of house and home."
"The Prussians, you mean," corrected Ian.
"I mean what I say. The Cossacks burnt the grain in the fields. Then they set fire to the village." He cursed them with unpriestly words, but even Father Constantine had not the will to stop him.
"If there had been one cottage left, one sack of buckwheat, I could have persuaded them to stop," he concluded. "But the sight of the burning fields and the charred walls of their homes filled them with panic. All our younger men are in the army, and we had only the scorched earth left. If we ever reach Warsaw we shall get somewhere to lay our heads and a sup to put in our mouths."
Ian gave them some food for their journey, for that other retreating army paid these unfortunates no attention. They had two young mothers in the house. One Vanda found in the ditch outside the paddock. Ian cut down the household rations for these fugitives, because his stock had run low, and the horde came on unceasingly. He had ordered fresh supplies from Warsaw nearly a month back; but there was no hope of getting them now. His new grain was ready to cut, and he set about it in haste, lest bad luck befall it.