“No, serene, great, mighty lord hetman, I have not even been at Kamenyets. I come straightway from Hreptyoff.”
“What is my little soldier doing there? Is he well, and has he cleared the wilds of Ushytsa even somewhat?”
“The wilds are so peaceful that a child might pass through them in safety. The robbers are hanged, and in these last days Azba Bey with his whole party was cut to pieces, so that even a witness of the slaughter was not left. I arrived there on the very day of their destruction.”
“I recognize Volodyovski: Rushchyts in Rashkoff is the only man who may compare with him. But what do they say in the steppes? Are there fresh tidings from the Danube?”
“There are, but of evil. There is to be a great muster of troops at Adrianople in the last days of winter.”
“I know that already. There are no tidings now save of evil,—evil from the Commonwealth, evil from the Crimea and from Stambul.”
“But not altogether, for I myself bring such good tidings that if I were a Turk or a Tartar I should surely mention a present.”
“Well, then, you have fallen from heaven to me. Come, speak quickly, dispel my anxiety!”
“But if I am so frozen, your great mightiness, that the wit has stiffened in my head?”
The hetman clapped his hands, and commanded an attendant to bring mead. After a while they brought in a mouldy decanter, and candlesticks with burning tapers, for though the hour was still early, snowy clouds had made the air so gloomy that outside, as well as in the house, it was like nightfall.