"Be quick about it," interrupted Taras. "I want to know the truth!"
"Ah! do not look at me with those eyes," cried the unhappy girl, hiding her face in her hands, and indeed the man bending over her was fearful to behold. "I want to tell you ... I wish I had never done it, but they made me!"
"Be quick about it!" repeated Taras, hoarsely. "You are not Marinia Bertulak, and no peasant girl from Borsowka. Your name is Kasia, and you keep company with jugglers?"
"Yes, yes! I am Kasia Wywolow."
"And you lied to me in that night, all of you?"
"Yes, we did; the old baron only spoke the truth. The man who pretended to be my father was Jacek, with whom I have been going about to fairs; and the other one was a farm labourer, Dimitri Buliga, and not the village judge...."
"And why did you deceive me?"
"It was all Karol's doing. We, Jacek and I, fell in with him at the merry-making here at Zabie, and he talked us over; after which he went to Borsowka, where he bribed the coachman and prevailed on Dimitri to play the judge. He said he knew exactly how to set about it to make you believe the story ... he had an old grudge against the poor baron, who years ago brought him to punishment for theft. He stole away from you as soon as the deed was done, dividing the spoils with Jacek and Dimitri, who waited for him at Kotzman. But I suffered agony with remorse, and it brought me here."
"That will do," said Taras, faintly; "thank you." And he staggered from the room. The old innkeeper came upon him presently where he lay in a merciful swoon.
It was late in the afternoon when his men came after him, and with them the fiddler Gregori. They had not been able to gather the full truth from the bewildered messenger, but they had understood sufficiently to know that Karol Wygoda had deceived them shamefully, and it had filled their honest hearts with indignant grief. But pity for their unhappy leader was uppermost, for they felt rather than knew how fearfully the discovery must affect him; and since he had left no orders, they waited hour after hour, with growing anxiety, thinking he might return; and as he did not, they now came to seek him.