Here the Bukoyemskis burst into such mighty laughter that their horses were put on their haunches. Tachevski turned and measured them one after another, with glances which were ice cold and as sharp as a sword edge.
"Not like a crow," said he then to Pan Gideon, "but like a horseless noble, at which condition it is granted you, my benefactor, to laugh, but it may be unhealthy for another to do so."
"Oho! oho! oho!" repeated the Bukoyemskis, urging toward him their horses. Their faces grew dark in one moment, and their mustaches quivered. Again Tachevski measured them, and raised his head higher.
But Pan Gideon spoke with a voice as severe and commanding as if he had power over all of them.
"No quarrels here, I beg! This is Pan Tachevski," said he after a while, with more mildness, turning to the cavaliers, "and this is Pan Tsyprianovitch, and each of the other four nobles is a Pan Bukoyemski, to whom I may say we owe our lives, for wolves met us yesterday. These gentlemen came to our aid unexpectedly, and God knows in season."
"In season," repeated Panna Anulka, with emphasis, pouting a little, and looking at Pan Stanislav bewitchingly.
Tachevski's cheeks flushed, but on his face there appeared as it were humiliation, his eyes became mist-covered, and, with immense sadness in his accents, he said,--
"In season, for they were in company, and happy because on good horses, but wolf teeth at that time were cutting old Voloshyn, and my last friend had vanished. But--" even here he looked with greater good-will at the Bukoyemskis--"may your hands be sacred, for ye have done that which with my whole soul I wished to do, but God did not let me."
Panna Anulka seemed changeable, like all women, perhaps too she was sorry for Tachevski, since her eyes became pleasant and twinkling, her lids opened and closed very quickly, and she asked with a different voice altogether,--
"Old Voloshyn? My God, I loved him so much and he knew me. My God!"