“And are you really near me?”
“Yes; how do you feel?”
“Ai, well.”
It was clear that she herself was not certain that the fever had not brought before her eyes deceptive visions; but from that moment she regained consciousness more and more.
In the evening Lusnia and his men came and shook out of a bag before the fort the doctor of Kamenyets, together with his medicines; he was barely alive. But when he learned that he was not in robber hands, as he thought, but was brought in that fashion to a patient, after a passing faintness he went to the rescue at once, especially as Zagloba held before him in one hand a purse filled with coin, in the other a loaded pistol, and said,—
“Here is the fee for life, and there is the fee for death.”
That same night, about daybreak, the spider of ill-omen hid away somewhere for good; thereupon the decision of the doctor, “She will be sick a long time, but she will recover,” sounded with joyful echo through Hreptyoff. When Pan Michael heard it first, he fell on the floor and broke into such violent sobbing that it seemed as though his bosom would burst. Zagloba grew weak altogether from joy, so that his face was covered with sweat, and he was barely able to exclaim, “A drink!” The officers embraced one another.
On the square the dragoons assembled again, with the escort and the Cossacks of Pan Motovidlo; it was hardly possible to restrain them from shouting. They wanted absolutely to show their delight in some fashion, and they began to beg for a number of robbers imprisoned in the cellars of Hreptyoff, so as to hang them for the benefit of the lady.
But the little knight refused.