“Not to the Swedish, you may be sure.”
Kyemlich not only failed to recover, but began to make the sign of the cross.
“Then surely your grace does not know that people say our lord the king has taken refuge in Silesia, for all have deserted him. Cracow is besieged.”
“We will go to Silesia.”
“Well, but how are we to pass through the Swedes?”
“Whether we pass through as nobles or peasants, on horseback or on foot, is all one to me, if only we pass.”
“Then too a tremendous lot of time is needed.”
“We have time enough, but I should be glad to go as quickly as possible.”
Kyemlich ceased to wonder. The old man was too cunning not to surmise that there was some particular and secret cause for this undertaking of Pan Kmita’s, and that moment a thousand suppositions began to crowd into his head. But as the soldiers, on whom Pan Andrei had enjoined silence, said nothing to the old man or his sons about the seizure of Prince Boguslav, the supposition seemed to him most likely that the prince voevoda of Vilna had sent the young colonel on some mission to the king. He was confirmed in this opinion specially because he counted Kmita a zealous adherent of Prince Yanush, and knew of his services to the hetman; for the confederate squadrons had spread tidings of him throughout the whole province of Podlyasye, creating the opinion that Kmita was a tyrant and a traitor.
“The hetman is sending a confidant to the king,” thought the old man; “that means that surely he wishes to agree with him and leave the Swedes. Their rule must be bitter to him already, else why send?”