"Pretty good work, wasn't it?" asked Zagloba, with satisfaction. "It's not my first, it's not my first, Pan Michael. I see we were all looking for poppyseed in the bottom of the bushel; but we have found four, and such another four you could not find in the whole Commonwealth. If I should go with you, gentlemen, and with our prince at the head, we could reach even Stamboul! Just think! Skshetuski killed Burdabut, and yesterday Tugai Bey."
"Tugai Bey is not killed," interrupted the colonel. "I felt that the sabre was turning in my hand; then they separated us."
"All one; don't interrupt me, Pan Yan! Pan Michael cut up Bogun at Warsaw, as we have said--"
"It is better not to mention that," interrupted the Lithuanian.
"What is said is said," answered Zagloba, "though I should prefer not to mention it. But I go further: Here is Pan Podbipienta from Myshekishki, who finished Pulyan, and I Burlai. I will not hide from you, however, that I would give all these for Burlai alone; and this perhaps because I had terrible work with him. He was a devil, not a Cossack. If I had sons like him legitimately born, I should leave them a splendid name. I am only curious to know what his Majesty the King and the Diet will say when they reward us,--who live more on brimstone and saltpetre than anything else."
"There was a knight greater than all of us," said Pan Longin; "and no one knows his name or mentions it."
"I should like to know who he was,--one of the ancients?" asked Zagloba, offended.
"No; he was that man, brother, who at Tshtsiana brought the king Gustavus Adolphus to the ground with his horse, and took him prisoner."
"I heard it was at Putsek," interrupted Volodyovski.
"But the king tore away from him, and escaped," said Skshetuski.