“You dread that just as a mouse dreads bacon. Oh, I know you!”
Eva, flushed already from the cold air, flushed still more, and said:—
“I should fear my father’s curse, and I know that Azya is ready to disregard everything.”
“Be of good courage,” answered Basia, “besides me, you have your brother to help you. True love always comes to its own. Pan Zagloba told me that when Michael wasn’t even dreaming of me.”
Conversation once begun, they vied with each other in talking,—one about Azya, the other about Michael. Thus a couple of hours passed, till the caravan halted for the first refreshment at Yaryshoff. Of a hamlet, wretched enough at all times, there remained, after the peasant incursion, only one public house, which was restored from the time that the frequent passage of soldiers began to promise certain profit. Basia and Eva found in it a passing Armenian merchant of Mohiloff origin, who was taking morocco to Kamenyets.
Azya wished to hurl him out of doors with the Wallachians and Tartars who were with him; but the women permitted him to remain, only his guard had to withdraw. When the merchant learned that the travelling lady was Pani Volodyovski, he began to bow down before her and praise her husband to the skies. Basia listened to the man with great delight. At last he went to his packs, and when he returned offered her a package of special sweetmeats and a little box full of odorous Turkish herbs good for various ailments.
“I bring this through gratitude,” said he. “Till now we have not dared to thrust our heads out of Mohiloff, because Azba Bey ravaged so terribly, and so many robbers infested on this side all the ravines and on the Moldavian bank the meadows; but now the road is safe, and trading secure. Now we travel again. May God increase the days of the commandant of Hreptyoff, and make each day long enough for a journey from Mohiloff to Kamenyets, and let every hour be extended so as to seem a day! Our commandant, the field secretary, prefers to sit in Warsaw; but the commandant of Hreptyoff watched, and swept out the robbers, so that death is dearer to them now than the Dniester.”
“Then is Pan Revuski not in Mohiloff?” asked Basia.
“He only brought the troops; I do not know if he remained three days. Permit, your great mightiness, here are raisins in this packet, and at this edge of it fruit such as is not found even in Turkey; it comes from distant Asia, and grows there on palms. The secretary is not in the town; but now there is no cavalry at all, for yesterday they went on a sudden toward Bratslav. But here are dates; may they be to the health of your great mightiness! Only Pan Gorzenski has remained with infantry.”
“It is a wonder to me that all the cavalry have gone,” said Basia, with an inquiring glance at Azya.