"You three will keep watch on the prisoner through the night, and are answerable for him with your heads."
Old Merckel, finding the church door did not yield to his furious onslaughts, came to his senses, and squinting askance at Boleslav, sneaked off in the direction of the parsonage. The latter thought he knew what he wanted there.
"Three more of you," he continued, "will kindly guard the vestry door, the key of which I have not got in my possession, and take care that no one goes in and out except the barber, who is to bandage the prisoner's wound."
Three voices quivering with suppressed anger assured him his orders should be obeyed.
"Now then, to business!" he exclaimed. "According to the lists the village of Schranden is capable of supplying troops to the number----." And the mobilisation began.
CHAPTER XVI
Two hours later Boleslav quitted the gaping crowd, who glowered at him with a sort of stony superstitious awe, as if he were a magician, and as he crossed the open common he felt as if he had just left a cage of wild beasts, the duty of taming which, had fallen to his share. The danger seemed safely over for the present. "Having mastered them to-day, they won't dare to mutiny to-morrow," he thought, and revelled in the joyous sensation of having won a victory.
Now he had only to take leave of Regina, and his troubles would be at an end. The world was all before him once more; an unknown future seemed to be enticing him onwards with bugle-peals and battle-cries.
"Regina! now for Regina!" welled up in him with such jubilation, from the depths of his soul, that he was frightened at himself. He took a round by the wood before approaching the Cats' Bridge, to brace and harden his nerves for this last and most arduous encounter.
The sun pierced the topmost boughs of the trees. Over the tender young green of the meadows floated a shadowy haze, and an odour of fermenting slime rose from the damp ditches. Only the fir-wood looked as dark and mysterious as in winter, with scarcely a light-green spike peeping anywhere from its black, bare branches.