"Neither am I," retorted Jurand. "I did not fight them with craft, but with this hand and that which remained in me."
"I understand that," said the young knight. "I understand it because I love Danusia and because they carried her off. If, God forbid…."
And he did not finish, because the mere thought made him feel not a human but a wolfs heart in his breast. For some time they rode silently over a white, moonlight-flooded road; then Jurand commenced to speak as if to himself:
"If they only had any reason to take revenge on me—I would not say! But gracious God! they had none…. I waged war with them in the field, when sent on an embassy by our prince to Witold, but here I was like a neighbor to neighbors…. Bartosz Natecz captured, chained and imprisoned under ground in Kozmin forty knights who attacked him. The Teutons were compelled to pay half a wagonful of money for them. While I, when a German guest happened to come on his way to the Teutons, received and rewarded him like one knight another. Frequently also, the Teutons came against me across the swamps. I was not hard on them then, and they did to me what I would not do even to-day to my greatest foe…."
And terrible recollections began to tear him with increasing force, his voice died away for an instant in his breast, then he said, half groaning: "I had only one, like a ewe lamb, like the heart in my breast, and they captured her like a dog on a rope, and she died there…. Now again, the child … Jesus, Jesus!"
And again there was silence. Zbyszko raised his youthful, perplexed face toward the moon, then again looked at Jurand and inquired:
"Father!… It would be far better for them to earn men's esteem than their vengeance. Why do they commit so much wrong on all nations and all people?"
But Jurand spread his hands apart as if in despair, and replied with a choked voice: "I do not know…."
Zbyszko meditated for a time over his own question, presently however his thoughts turned to Jurand.
"People say that you wreaked a worthy vengeance," he said.