"To Pan Serafin's; defence there is easy. Vilchopolski is there. So are the Bukoyemskis and other foresters. Krepetski will try to take you back, but will fail. And later on Pan Serafin will conduct you to Radom, or farther. That will be settled with the priests. Here is the wagon! Fear no pursuit. It is not far to Yedlinka, and God gives a wonderful evening. I will bring your clothing to-night. If they try to stop me I will not mind them. May the Most Holy Mother, the guardian and protectress of orphans conduct you!" And taking her by the hand like a child, he seated her in the wagon. "Move on!" cried he to the driver. It was growing dark in the world, and the twilight of evening was quenching, but from the remnant of its rays the stars in the clear sky were rosy. The calm evening was filled with the odors of the earth, of leaves, and of blossoming alders, while nightingales were filling with their song, as with a warm rain of spring, the garden, the trees, and the whole region. CHAPTER XVII That evening Pan Serafin was sitting on a bench in the front of his mansion, entertaining Father Voynovski, who had come after evening prayers to see him, and the four Bukoyemskis, who were stopping then permanently at Yedlinka. Before them on a table, with legs crossed like the letter X, stood a pitcher of mead and some glasses. They, while listening to the murmur of the forest, were drinking from time to time and conversing of the war, raising their eyes to the heavens in which the sickle of the moon was shining clearly. "Thanks to your grace, our benefactor, we shall be ready soon for the road," said Mateush Bukoyemski. "What has happened is passed. Even saints have their failings; then how must it be with frail men, who without the grace of God can do nothing? But when I look at that moon, which forms the Turkish standard, my fist is stung as if mosquitoes were biting. Well, God grant a man to gratify his hands at the earliest." The youngest Bukoyemski fell to thinking. "Why is it, my reverend benefactor," asked he at last, "that Turks cherish some kind of worship for the moon, and bear it on their standards?" "But have not dogs some devotion toward the moon also?" asked the priest. "Of course, but why should the Turks have it?" "Just because they are dog-brothers." "Well, as God is dear to me, that explains all," said the young man, looking at the moon then in wonderment. "But the moon is not to blame," said the host, "and it is delightful to gaze at it when in the calm of night it paints all the trees with its beams, as if some one had coated them with silver. I love greatly to sit by myself on such a night, gaze at the sky, and marvel at the Lord God's almightiness."