“Know, sir, that I am not the one who is going to the cloister for Ketling!”
When she had said this, she sprang on the stairs and vanished from before the eyes of the knight. He stood there like a stone pillar; after a while he began to rub his eyes like a man who is waking from sleep.
Then he was thirsting for blood; he seized his sabre, and cried with a terrible voice, “Woe to the traitor!”
A quarter of an hour later Pan Michael was rushing toward Warsaw so swiftly that the wind was howling in his ears, and lumps of earth were flying in a shower from the hoofs of his horse.
CHAPTER XX.
Pan Makovetski, with his wife and Zagloba, saw Pan Michael riding away, and alarm seized all hearts; therefore they asked one another with their eyes, “What has happened; where is he going?”
“Great God!” cried Pani Makovetski; “he will go to the Wilderness, and we shall never see him again in life!”
“Or to the cloister, like that crazy woman,” said Zagloba, in despair.
“Counsel is necessary here,” said Makovetski.
With that the door opened and Basia burst into the room like a whirlwind, excited, pale, with fingers in both her eyes; stamping in the middle of the floor, like a little child, she began to scream, “Rescue! save! Pan Michael has gone to kill Ketling! Whoso believes in God, let him fly to stop him! Rescue! rescue!”