They sprang forward, and stood for a while near the corpses. Four foot-soldiers were hanging together by ropes, like a bunch of thrushes, their feet barely an inch above the ground, for they were on the lower branches.
Douglas looked at them indifferently enough; then said as if to himself, “Now we know that the prince and Babinich have passed this way.”
Then he fell to thinking again, for he did not know well whether to continue on by the forest path or go out on the Ostrolenko highway.
Half an hour later they found two other corpses. Evidently they were marauders or sick men whom Babinich’s Tartars had seized while pursuing the prince.
“But why did the prince retreat?”
Douglas knew him too well—that is, both his daring and his military experience—to admit even for a moment that the prince had not sufficient reasons. Therefore something must have intervened.
Only next day was the affair explained. Pan Byes Kornie had come from Prince Boguslav, with a party of thirty horse, to report that Yan Kazimir had sent beyond the Bug against Douglas the full hetman Pan Gosyevski, with six thousand Lithuanians and Tartar horse.
“We learned this,” said Pan Byes, “before Babinich came up; for he advanced very carefully and attacked frequently, therefore annoyingly. Gosyevski is twenty or twenty-five miles distant. When the prince received the tidings, he was forced to retreat in haste, so as to join Radzeyovski, who might be cut to pieces easily. But by marching quickly we made the junction. The prince sent out at once parties of a few tens of men in every direction, with a report to your worthiness. Many of them will fall into Tartar or peasant hands, but in such a war it cannot be otherwise.”
“Where are the prince and Radzeyovski?”
“Ten miles from here, at the river.”