“What is your name?” she asked.
“I am Joseph Charnetski.”
“Joseph,” she said. “I like the name much. Mine is Elzbietka.”
“My father is Andrew Charnetski,” continued Joseph, “and we lived in the country of the black lands in the Ukraine. It was lonely in our neighborhood, for the nearest neighbor was sixty staja away, yet we never felt fear of Cossack or Tartar, though others did, for my father always treated them well. We were therefore surprised not long ago when there came to us a former servant, a friendly Tartar, who said that we were in some danger, and although my father laughed, I know that he gave the report some credence since he took the Tartar aside and talked with him privately for a long time. He is not one to reveal his fear, however, and we remained in our house as before with the warning all but forgotten by my mother and me.
“Then one night before we went to bed, my mother, who was working upon some sewing, saw a man’s face peeping in through the thatch at one corner of our house. It was a face that she had never seen before; it was not one of the servants of our place or any place next to ours; it was a villainous face and it made such an impression on her that she screamed aloud, alarming us all.”
“Yes?” the blue eyes were full of interest.
“That night my father came into the room where I was sleeping, bade me dress quickly, and in a short time led me and my mother through a little door in the rear of the house that I had never seen opened before, since it had always been fastened with nails. Outside this door we found ourselves in a passageway dug out of the earth like a cave, and through this we crept until we emerged into a shed some distance from the other dwellings where two of our best horses were hitched to a cart. That my father had already taken such precautions unknown to us assured me that he had feared something, the nature of which he had kept from us.”
“But you know now?”
“Nay—the most curious part is yet to come. My mother and I climbed into the wagon where a goodly supply of food had been stored, while my father, moving swiftly, wielded a forked stick with such effect, in one corner of the shed, that he soon unearthed a pile of vegetables which had been covered over with tree branches and leaves in order to preserve them. I thought at the time that he was about to put some of them into our wagon for food, but to my surprise he chose only one.”
“And that——”