A feeling of intense anxiety came over him, as if instinct was foretelling fresh disaster more terrible than anything which had yet fallen. The firing from the Russians went on and he could see von Senborn and his fellow officers were not only disturbed but very suspicious. By the way Kosczielna lay it was clear that the Russians, retreating on Warsaw, could easily shell it if their fire was directed by anybody on a high spot in Ruvno, since on the level it was above all the other villages by a hundred feet. They questioned every man, woman and child in the village, trying to find out if there was some vantage ground from which the Russians could have their attack directed. Ian kept as far away from von Senborn and his friends as he could, not wanting him to think he spied on their movements. The experience of the day before had taught him a lesson. All the same, he was determined to follow their movements as far as possible, if only to be on his guard; and he managed it fairly well, for some of them were always coming and going between the house and the village, where they had put up a telephone with their friends at Kosczielna. These were having a bad time of it and had lost heavily. Before long he heard one trooper say to another who was watering horses:
"We'll have work again soon. All ours in that place near by have been put out of action."
"Liar," said the man's comrade, with that courtesy so characteristic of the race.
"True as gospel. I was by the major when the news came. He's mad, too."
"What's going to happen?" said the man at the trough.
"We're falling back from that place."
"What place, idiot?"
"That begins with a kay and ends in a curse."
The man was evidently right, for a lull came now as though the retreating force had completed its tasks in Kosczielna. The day wore on. The women, though obsessed with the same sense of coming disaster, bore up splendidly. But at about four in the afternoon, when the firing began again and two shells burst, one on the site of the windmill, the other at the end of the village, where Szmul used to live, Ian sent them and the women and children from the village into the cellars.
The Russians stopped firing at six o'clock and the women came up from the cellars. The little family had supper in the dining-room as quietly as in times of peace. None of the Prussians came to table. They had just received a supply of fresh provisions by motor-lorry and sent the Countess some, with a message that there was beer too, if she liked. They refused the beer, but ate the food. They could not afford to be proud, for supplies, except for cereals, had quite given out. Being cut off from Russia, the land of plenty, and the refugees they had fed, put them in this unenviable position. There was no chance of buying things in the neighborhood, as bare of supplies as if it had seen ten years' war. Vanda, noticing that her aunt had no appetite, laughingly remarked that she had better eat a good meal, for who knew where the next would come from. Little did they think how true her jest would prove to be.