"Don't you remember how you walloped us when we ate up all the cherries Aunt Natalie's housekeeper had thrown out of the vodka bottle? Lord, how drunk we were!" and he grinned, being tired of laughing, I suppose.
Then the priest remembered the story and recognized him. It was Roman Skarbek himself, the young man who won a fortune at Monte Carlo but could not win Vanda.
"What do you mean, coming here dressed like a savage?" he asked angrily, for it annoyed him that the trick had succeeded, all through his having left his glasses in the sacristy. "Don't you know what's due to a Pole and a Christian?"
"Aren't Cossacks Christians?" retorted Roman in that pleasant way which always made the Father forgive his boyish deviltries sooner that he ought. "Come, Father, be just."
"Well," he admitted, "some of them are. But why be a Cossack when you can help it?"
"Can't help it. Being a volunteer, they made me a Cossack."
"Before this war I detested the very sight of their tall caps and with good reason," said the Father. "But such is the power of Prussian brutality that Poles now fight side by side with wild children of the steppes to drive the soldier of the anti-Christ out of our country. Where have you been?"
"In Masuria," and Roman told him some of his experiences, adding that he had come to Ruvno with Rennenkampf, for a few hours.
"Well, I'm glad you've killed a few Germans. But you had better cut off that red beard before you go to the Countess."
As he got on his feet the priest was glad to see he had finished Vitold's work with the sods. He liked the graves to look neat.