"Ah! he has a good thought in his head!" exclaimed Father Voynovski.
"He has been thus from his boyhood," added Pan Serafin with a certain proud feeling. "He told me also, that when he had learnt what the girl had been to Tachevski, and what he had passed through because of her, he would not cross the road of so worthy a cavalier. No, my benefactor, I do not take a mortgage on Vyrambki to have my son near Pan Gideon's. May God guard my Stanislav, and preserve him from evil."
"Amen! I believe you as if an angel were speaking. And now let some third man take the girl, even one of the Bukoyemskis, who boast of such kinsfolk."
Pan Serafin smiled, drank out his mead, took farewell, and departed.
Father Voynovski went to the church to thank God for that unexpected assistance, and then he waited for Yatsek impatiently.
When at last Yatsek came, the old man ran out to the yard and seized him by the shoulders.
"Yatsek," exclaimed he, "thou canst give ten ducats for a crupper. Thou hast one hundred ducats, as it were, on the table, and Vyrambki remains to thee."
Yatsek fixed on Father Voynovski eyes that were sunken from sleeplessness and suffering, and asked, with astonishment,--
"What has happened?"
"A really good thing, since it came from the heart of an honest man."