“Let us try, let us try!” said Miller, who like a drowning man seized every plank, and from despair passed easily to hope. “But will Kuklinovski or Zbrojek agree to go again as envoys to the cloister, or will they believe in that passage, and will they inform the priests of it?”
“In every case Kuklinovski will agree,” answered the count; “but it is better that he should believe really in the existence of the passage.”
At that moment they heard the tramp of a horse in front of the quarters.
“There, Pan Zbrojek has come!” said the Prince of Hesse, looking through the window.
A moment later spurs rattled, and Zbrojek entered, or rather rushed into the room. His face was pale, excited, and before the officers could ask the cause of his excitement the colonel cried,—
“Kuklinovski is no longer living!”
“How? What do you say? What has happened?” exclaimed Miller.
“Let me catch breath,” said Zbrojek, “for what I have seen passes imagination.”
“Talk more quickly. Has he been murdered?” cried all.
“By Kmita,” answered Zbrojek.