CHAPTER XXXVIII.
In which it is shown how ghosts haunt churchyards.
The adherents of the disgraced faction did not cease persecuting Valentine Kalondai.
From the very first they had sent pursuers after him who had followed hard upon the fugitive; but at a certain inn, when they were already close upon him, two men, evidently instructed beforehand, met him with a fresh horse. The fugitive mounted and was instantly off again, while his pursuers thought it best to slowly ride their jaded nags back to town.
The new superrector, young Ignatius Zwirina, calculated thus: Valentine Kalondai will one of these days come back of his own accord to the neighborhood of Kassa. His beloved rests there in the churchyard ditch, and he will never be able to keep away from the spot where she whom he loves so much reposes.
So in the ditch where pretty Michal had been cast he kept nine musketeers in ambush, night and day, that they might seize Valentine when he came thither, and shoot him down if he sought to fly.
The trap was laid for him, and they made certain that he would fall into it.
Nor did he remain long away.
In the first stormy night, when the Lenten wind drove the shapeless clouds from one end of the sky to the other and shook the leafless trees, and the will-o'-the-wisps darted about among the graves, a lonely horseman approached the churchyard from the plains.