Zagloba was rightfully cautious, for Kmita seized him in his arms, raised him, and began to hug him so that the old man’s eyes were bursting out. He had barely come to his feet and recovered breath, when Pan Michael, greatly delighted, seized him by the hand,—
“It is my turn! Tell what awaits me.”
“God bless you, Michael! your pretty tufted lark will hatch out a whole brood,—never fear. Uf!”
“Vivat!” cried Volodyovski.
“But first, we will make an end of the Swedes,” added Zagloba.
“We will, we will!” cried the young colonels, shaking their sabres.
“Vivat! victory!”
CHAPTER L.
A week later Kmita crossed the boundaries of Electoral Prussia at Raygrod. It came to him easily enough; for before the departure of the full hetman he disappeared in the woods so secretly that Douglas felt sure that his party too had marched with the whole Tartar-Lithuanian division to Warsaw, and he left merely small garrisons in the castles for the defence of those parts.
Douglas, with Radzeyovski and Radzivill, followed Gosyevski.