"No. Something happened when I was with her last, that's all."
"Well, we had been strolling in the garden for an hour or more, mooning and spooning, and I had also been reciting verses to her, and she had laughed at them, and it seemed to me that only the angels could laugh like that, when suddenly there came bouncing towards us a little pet puppy, a tiny beast about five weeks old, just able to patter along the ground with his little paws, who wagged his little tail and fawned upon Nelly in the most comical manner when he got up to her, at the same time sticking up one little ear high in the air, and holding the other little ear down. Why he should do so I didn't know; perhaps he had been taught it, I thought. Nelly thereupon stooped down towards the little dog, and, seizing the point of its little erected ear with two of her pretty snow-white fingers, raised it into the air. The little puppy wriggled and whined, but Nelly, smiling all the time, threatened it with the index finger of the other hand. 'Come! stop it, stop it! no whining! It's not pretty,' she said, till the poor little creature gradually grew quiet, and remained suspended in the air by its ear. Then Nelly put it on the ground again, and the little puppy, softly whimpering, tripped off again, while Nelly never ceased smiling at it. Well, after that I scarce waited to get into my overcoat and wish her good-bye. I think that's all the leave-taking she deserves, and don't suppose I shall ever meet her again. No, my friend, my ears could never stand such manœuvres."
Thus it was that the little puppy-dog saved my friend Toni from a life-long danger.
VI
THE RED STAROSTA
CHAPTER I
THE JUDAS-MONEY
Have you ever heard of the Bialystok Dominion? There lie the huge Sylvan wildernesses of Lithuania, the native home of the Ure-ox, the ancestor of horned cattle, the king of all oxen; in every other part of Europe it has been exterminated. They are now the quarry of the Russian Tsar, and only the Romanovs and their guests possess the privilege of hunting them down.
But Bialystok is still more famous for its wondrously beautiful Palace, which worthily bears the name of "the Polish Versailles." Built in the Italian renaissance style, embellished within and without by the sculptures and the paintings, the bronzes and the mosaics of the most eminent masters, surrounded by the most lovely ornamental gardens in the world, in which the exotic trees in winter time have whole wooden houses built around them, so that pomegranate and citron trees bloom in the open air during the spring, and Bruin comes from the depths of the surrounding forests to pluck the citrons from the trees and roar over his unaccustomed food—the Palace of Bialystok is one of the most wonderful places in the world.
And this famous Palace is connected with no one family name. At every fresh human generation it carries a different family name on its forehead. It has belonged successively to the Moskowskis, the Potoccy, the Branickis, and the Czernuskis. And popular tradition says that before it belonged to them it was the possession of the "Red Starosta."