“A dog,” answered the boy, “a friendly dog.”
“Bring him along with us,” said the father with a laugh, “we can’t have too many friends just now.” And at that they continued on their way.
Now of all the creatures that God has put in the world a dog is the most curious, and sometimes, one might think, the most discerning. For when this same animal had broken loose in the morning, his first impulse, which he had followed, had been that of flight. His second impulse was to look for a friend, since no dog can live without a friend. The Tartar boy had already departed. The dog had seen too much of him as it was. Also by virtue of a rare instinct which dogs, and sometimes horses, possess, the wolf dog had realized fully that the boy who had leaped at his collar was not an enemy. Perhaps it was the boy’s touch, perhaps it was some quality in the tone of his voice, but the animal knew that Joseph was used to dogs and knew as well that he was just in his treatment of them. Therefore he had searched all day throughout the city streets, and when he came upon this little group of people in the dark street his sense of smell told him that here was a dog lover, and marvel of marvels, it was the same dog lover that had sprung upon him earlier in the day!
They turned at length from St. Ann’s Street into a side lane that is known to-day as Jagiellonska, and followed it for a short distance until they reached the Street of the Pigeons. Here they turned to the left and walked for a few steps until suddenly just before them rose a babel of subdued voices. Father Jan Kanty stood stock-still. The others also came to a halt and remained motionless except for the dog, which strained at Joseph’s hold upon his collar.
“Stay,” said the scholar, “I will go forward to see what may be in the air.” And holding his lantern at the height of his head, he plunged into a crowd of black-robed figures that had formed a circle in the very middle of the street.
“Students,” he cried aloud, as he swung his lantern first to this face and then to that, “students. And what devilment make you here now?”
The crowd broke before him at a touch. Either he was much feared by them or greatly respected—that Pan Andrew could see—perhaps both.
“A duel,” he exclaimed as he reached the center of the crowd, where a space lighted by a lantern upon the ground had previously been obscured by the bodies of the lookers-on, “and what means it?”
Two young men, both students, with their black university robes lying beside them on the ground, stood facing each other with unfastened underjackets. Slender Italian dueling swords or foils, held firmly in the clasped fingers of their bared right arms, had clashed the instant before Jan Kanty entered the arena.
“A duel,” he repeated. “Do you not know that dueling has been forbidden I know not how many times within these streets bounding the university? Do you not know that it is punishable by fine or imprisonment even, if the duelers are students?”