Boleslav uttered a sound that broke discordantly on the solemn silence--
"Come!" he said, and took Regina's hand in his; "let the old man curse, it seems to be his trade;" but he felt a cold shiver run through him.
He saw a lane open which reached to the door, in the densely-packed tap-room. Hand in hand he and Regina walked down it.
No one laughed, no one sneered, no one stirred. A superstitious awe seemed to have struck the onlookers dumb. The breath of the winter evening met their faces with an icy tooth. Had some one spread the news of what had happened within, among the crowd that waited outside, or had they divined it by instinct? Here too was profound silence; here too a path was made for them, which they followed, bending their footsteps riverwards with bowed heads.
CHAPTER XIV
The glow in the evening sky faded. A violet vapour hung about the bare tracery of the tree-tops, and showers of sparkling crystals rained from the branches.
Boleslav ground the snow under his heel. His breath curled in front of him in slender columns. The keen frosty air was balm to his fevered face. He had sent Regina on before, and was trying to regain calmness and presence of mind in solitary wandering, for his brain boiled like a witch's caldron.
The curse stood out intangibly in his ruminations; it was like the bogey that little children people the darkness with. He saw it everywhere; it haunted him. How well his father's old enemy had availed himself of the opportunity of doing what probably he had long connived at, putting the son under the same ban as the father.
But it was a terrible reflection to think he might have deserved that curse. As it was, he had not merited it; a thousand times no! What the veteran priest in his dark suspicion had alluded to as an accomplished brutal fact, had really only swept his soul with phantom wings. Now that his conscience was awakened to the danger of the situation, the danger itself was over. After all, he ought to be indebted to the pastor for showing him the yawning precipice that lay at his unwary feet.
"Think no more of it," he said to himself; "I am the master, she the servant, and I should be an accursed----"