"Your treasure is safer here than in a Moscow bank," he said. "The Prussians will not touch it, for who would think to scrape under this horse farm? And when we have come back and cleared the earth of the enemy, you can dig for them in peace, and you will have money with which to build up your home. In Russia, neither bread nor meat is lacking and you can very well live on what you dug up near the high road. Let us go. The night passes, and darkness is now our best friend."
He was right. What good to linger weeping over their misfortunes? With heavy hearts they turned away and set out across the trench-furrowed fields to Sohaczev.
XVII
Although it was easy to see that the Countess and the chaplain were tired, Ian listened to his mother's entreaties to set out without any rest; for who could sleep within sight of their ruined home? Besides, time was precious, unless they were prepared to remain under the Prussian rule; and they decided that exile, beggary, anything would be better than living in some town to see them every day and every hour of the day.... Their way lay through what had been the home forest, by paths and fields that run south of Kosczielna, thence south-west to Sohaczev. It was already the last day of July and the Prussians at Ruvno had been boasting that they would be in Warsaw for the third of August; and the Kaiser's second son crowned King of Poland, in the old palace, within a month. They were a couple of days late in getting into Warsaw, and Poland's crown is not yet on a Hohenzollern's head.
The fear that the Grand Duke might no longer be in Sohaczev haunted them all. Even as the crow flies, Ruvno was twenty versts from there. By the road, which ran fairly straight, it was thirty. By cutting across country, by the ways which Ian and Vanda knew well, he thought they could save five versts, thus leaving twenty-five to cover. He and Ostap, walking a little ahead, to warn the others of barbed wire and trenches, soon saw what the short cut meant.
"I'm for getting back to the road," said the Cossack.
"But it is much further." Ian explained the distances.
"Eh, God, but we can't do more than a verst an hour if this kind of ground goes on, and I know this part. It's cut up like Hell. We shall be clambering in and out of trenches and dodging wire and dead bodies all the way. We might do three versts an hour by the road. None of you are walkers. Nor I. We Cossacks are more at home on horses' backs than our feet. You walk as if every step hurt you."
"There's something inside me that grates about as I move," admitted Ian.
"Broken ribs. I had them several times. If you tie them up it's all right, but a bit nasty if you let them jog into your flesh."