"I know who he is. He has betrayed me once already. An old noble with a blue beard and a white eye. Death to him! But he is not a friend of mine."

"He is lying in wait for you, I see again--Stop! the princess is here too; she is in a crown, a white dress, above her a hawk."

"That is I."

"Maybe it is. A hawk--or a falcon? A hawk!"

"That is I."

"Wait! All has vanished. In the oaken wheel, in the white foam-- Oh! oh! many soldiers, many Cossacks, oh, many, like trees in the forest or thistles in the steppes; and you are above all,--they are bearing three bunchuk standards before you."

"And the princess is with me?"

"She is not; you are in the camp."

The wheel roared till the whole mill trembled.

"Oh, how much blood, how much blood! how many corpses,--wolves above them, ravens above them, plague above them! Corpses and corpses,--far away nothing but corpses, nothing to be seen but blood!"