"And he found Janko stretched out at full length in the meadow, and fast asleep. The kopanitschar caught him round the neck between the prongs of the fork, and pinned him fast to the ground. The terrible robber was caught and quite harmless. In vain he roared and cursed; the kopanitschar's iron fist and wooden fork held him down till the rest mustered up sufficient courage to hasten up and secure him.
"To-morrow the whole three of them will be executed at Eperies, and we will be there to see it all."
CHAPTER XXII.
Wherein is related what end was reserved for the evil-doers by way of deterrent example, which example, however, only distressed the soft-hearted without terrifying the stiff-necked.
"I won't be there to see it," said Valentine to Simplex. "A shudder runs through my whole body when I think of a man torturing another. If a man were to beat, tweak, or flay me, I should only laugh at it; but when I see one man tormenting another, it makes my blood boil. I feel no dizziness when I stand on the edge of the loftiest precipice, but when I see another hovering over the abyss, I am beside myself with terror. I am amazed that there should be people who delight in watching the bloody scenes on the scaffold. The battlefield is quite another thing. There you fight man to man; there you do not hear the cries of the dying. The death I deal to one man, another man may at any moment deal to me. But I won't see men who are bound hand and foot tortured to death; I won't hear them shriek with anguish beneath the hand of the headsman."
"You'll go, notwithstanding," returned Simplex. "As I've already said, if you are a true Calvinist, you'll resign yourself to predestination, and must not say: 'I'll go hither, or, I'll go thither!' You will do what it was preordained you should do at the beginning of the world, and the place you are now going to is the town of Eperies, and the market place in that town."
And it all happened exactly as Simplex said. For they had no sooner stepped out of the tavern than they were stopped by a patrol of drabants, who learning that they were soldiers, showed them the mandate of the Commandant of Eperies, whereby all the soldiers on leave in the district were ordered to Eperies, to remain in the market place during the day, so that the people might not disturb the execution of the law's sentence, or the comrades of the robbers release them by a sudden and audacious onslaught.
So Valentine had to march to Eperies, with the other men-at-arms, whether he liked it or not.
Crowds of people were pouring into the town that day, from all quarters, as if a great banquet were to be given, or a lord lieutenant installed—gentlemen in coaches or on horseback, peasants sitting ten in a wagon, students, apprentices, peddlers, sacred-image sellers, and deceivers of all sorts.