"Oh yes, I came up with him in time, and delivered your warning message. He would not listen, he was bent on crossing in spite of everything; he thought the forest thickets would protect him. I implored, I kneeled to him, and asked him if he would let himself be shot down by the sentries like some hunted animal. That told at last. He consented to wait until evening. We were just considering whether we should venture into the forester's station, when we were met by ..."
"By whom? By a patrol?"
"No, by the farmer of Janowo. We had no treachery to fear from him, he has always been faithful to the cause. He had been called on to provide relays for the troops, and was just coming back from the frontier. He had heard say that a battle was being fought near W----, which was not yet decided; that the Morynski corps had been surprised, but was defending itself desperately. It was all over then with reason and reflection. Our young Prince had only one thought--how to get to W---- and throw himself into the thick of the fight. We could not hold him back. He would listen to nothing then. He had left us about half an hour, when we heard shots fired; two at first, one after the other, then half a dozen all at once; and then ..." The old man could say no more, his voice failed him, and a torrent of hot tears burst from his eyes.
"I have brought the body," he said, after a pause. "The cavalry captain, who was here yesterday, obtained it for me from the set out yonder. They could do nothing with a dead man. But I did not dare to take it straight up to the Castle. We have laid him in there for the present."
He pointed to a room on the other side of the passage. Waldemar signed to him and the steward to remain behind, and went in alone. Grey and dim the waning twilight fell on the lifeless form of the young Prince. Silently his brother stood by, gazing down upon him. The beautiful face, which he had seen so radiant with life and happiness, was rigid now and cold; the flashing dark eyes were closed; and the breast, which had swelled so high with hope and dreams of liberty, now bore the death-wound. If the hot wild blood of youth had erred, it had also made atonement, as it gushed forth from that shattered breast, staining the clothing with dark, ominous patches. But a few hours before all the passions of youth had raged in that inanimate frame. Hatred and love, jealousy and ardent thirst for revenge, despair at the terrible consequences of an act committed in reckless haste--all were past, frozen into the icy stagnation of death. One trace alone remained on the still, pale face. Stamped thereon so deeply, that it seemed indelibly graven for ever and ever, was that look of anguish which had quivered round the son's lips when his mother refused him a last farewell, when she let him go from her without a word of forgiveness. All else had faded out of sight with life itself; but this one grief Prince Baratowski had taken with him into his death-struggle; it had been with him in the last glimmer of consciousness. The shadow of the grave itself could not shroud it from view.
Waldemar left the room, sombre and mute as he had entered it; but those who waited for him without, glancing at his troubled face, could see that he had loved his brother.
"Bring the body up to the Castle," he said. "I will go on first--to my mother."
CHAPTER XIV.
Spring had come round again for the second time since the beginning of the rebellion, which had blazed up so hotly at first, but which now lay quelled and crushed. Those wintry March days of the preceding year had not only brought woe on the Wilicza household, but had been pregnant with disaster to the whole insurrection. By the defeat of the Morynski corps, one of its chief supports had been lost to it. When overtaken by that sudden attack, which found him and his so totally unprepared--relying, as they did, upon the shelter afforded them by Prince Baratowski and his troops--Count Morynski had defended himself with all the energy of desperation; and even when, surrounded and outnumbered, he saw that all was lost, he yet fought on to the last, determined to sell his life and liberty as dearly as possible. So long as he remained at their head, his example inspired his wavering forces, and kept them together; but when the leader lay bleeding and unconscious on the ground, all resistance was at an end. Those who could not fly were hewn down, or taken prisoners by the victorious party. It was more than a defeat, it was an annihilation; and if that day's work did not decide the fate of the revolution, it yet marked a turning-point in its career. From that time forth, the fortunes of the insurgents declined, steadily and surely. The loss of Morynski, who had been by far the most redoubtable and energetic of the rebel leaders; the death of Leo Baratowski, on whom, in spite of his youth, the eyes of his countrymen were turned; in whom, by virtue of his name and family traditions their hopes and expectations centred--these were heavy blows for a party which had long been split into factions, and divided against itself, and which now fell still further asunder. Occasionally, it is true, the waning star would gleam out brightly for a moment. There were other conflicts, other battles glorious with heroic acts and deeds of desperate valour; but the fact stood out ever more and more plainly, that the cause for which they fought was a lost cause. The insurrection, which at first had spread over the whole land, was forced back into narrower and narrower limits. Post after post fell into the hands of the enemy; one troop after another was dispersed, or melted away, and the year, which at its opening had seen the horizon lurid with revolutionary flames, before its close saw the fire quenched, the last spark extinguished. Nothing but ashes and ruins remained to testify of the death-struggle of a people over whom the fiat of history has long since gone forth.
A weary interval elapsed before Count Morynski's fate was decided. He first awoke to consciousness in a dungeon, and for a time his serious, nay, as it was at first believed, mortal wounds rendered all proceedings against him objectless. For months he lingered in the most precarious state, and when at length he recovered, it was to find himself on the threshold of life, confronted with his death-warrant. For a leader of the revolution, taken armed and in actual fight, no other fate could be reserved. Sentence of death had been passed on him, and would most assuredly have been carried out in this, as in numberless other cases, but for his long and dangerous illness. His conquerors had not thought fit to inflict capital punishment on a man supposed to be dying, and when, later on, it became practicable to apply the law in all its rigour, the rising had been altogether suppressed, all danger to the land averted. The victors' obdurate severity relaxed in its turn. Count Morynski was reprieved, his sentence commuted to exile for life; exile in its bitterest form, indeed, for he was condemned to deportation to one of the most distant parts of Siberia--a terrible favour to be granted a man whose whole life had been one long dream of freedom, and who, even during the years of his former banishment in France, had never known any restriction on his personal liberty.