“Indeed that cannot be,” said the boy eagerly. “Gladly at this minute will he welcome any roof for the sake of my mother who is somewhat tired after the long journey from the Ukraine. I cannot go too swiftly to tell him of this news. But only assure me that you are in sober earnest about this matter.”
Elzbietka sprang up from her chair. “Did you but know him as well as I, you would not doubt.”
At that the alchemist enveloped her with his long arms from which hung the black sleeves of his gown, until she smiled out from the embrace at Joseph like one caught between the wings of a great raven or crow.
“Hurry and tell your people,” she commanded him, “and bring them back here. Indeed, I never knew what a mother was. If I but please her——”
“That you will,” shouted Joseph. “I will go as soon as Pan Kreutz unlocks the door for me below.”
“Tell your people that it is the floor beneath us that is unoccupied,” directed the alchemist as he let the boy out through the gate. “There are only two rooms there, a large and a small one, but they will serve your purposes for the time, I believe.”
Joseph thanked him with all his heart and set out on the run for the market place. The Street of the Pigeons seemed to unwind before him as he ran and he was soon in the street leading directly to the Cloth Hall.
Turning there, past one corner of the Town Hall, he ran directly by the cloth markets and headed for the little church near which his father had unloosed the horses. But no sooner had his eyes fallen upon the wagon and his father and mother standing in it, than he stopped suddenly in astonishment. Then like an arrow leaving a bow he darted forward, for what he saw set his heart beating faster than it had beaten in all that eventful day.
The stranger that they had left in the mud by the roadside that morning stood by the side of the wagon with a crowd of ruffians at his heels threatening and shouting at Pan Andrew and his wife. The stranger carried a huge club, and the ruffians, of whom he appeared to be the leader, were armed with staves and stones and were shouting angrily as if intent on harming the man and woman above them. Pan Andrew, in facing them, had stepped in front of his wife, to shield her if stones were thrown; and the sight of the resistance, and the cries of the leader and his attackers, soon brought a huge crowd surging about the wagon, for it was now close on to noon, and the morning’s business of the market was well-nigh finished and many citizens and farmers were eating or resting in the shade of the trees about the square.
Joseph darted through the crowd and leaped up on the wagon, to stand by his father’s side.