"Health! health!" said the attendants in answer to the snorting. But that calm was not to the taste of the youngest Bukoyemski, who turned toward the mansion and cried to the absent Krepetskis, while he beckoned with his hand an invitation. "But come out here, ye sons of a such a one! O Stump, show thy dog snout; we will soon put a cross on it with our sabres!" Then he bent toward the carriage. "Your ladyship," said he, "that Martsian and his company are not in a hurry to attack us, neither he nor his bandits from the wilderness." "But do bandits attack?" asked the lady. "Oh-ho! they do, but not us. And there are many of them in the wilderness of Kozenitse, and in the forest toward Cracow. If his Grace the King would grant pardon, enough would be found of those bandits right here in this neighborhood to make two good regiments." "I should rather meet bandits than Pan Martsian's company, of which people tell in Belchantska such terrible stories. I have not heard of bandits attacking a mansion." "They do not, for a bandit has the same kind of sense that a wolf has. Consider, young lady, that a wolf never kills sheep or horned cattle in the neighborhood where his lair is." "He speaks truth," said the other brothers. Yan, glad of this praise, explained further. "The bandit attacks no village or mansion near his hiding place. For if neighboring people should pursue, they, knowing the forests and secret spots in them, would hunt him out the more easily. So bandits go to a distance, and plunder houses or fall upon travellers in great or small parties." "Have they no fear?" "They have no fear of God. Why should they fear men?" But Panna Anulka had turned her mind elsewhere, so, when Pan Serafin came to the carriage, she began to blink and implore him. "Why should I stay in the carriage when no attack threatens? May I not go on horseback?" "Why?" asked Pan Serafin. "The sun is high. It would burn your face. There is one who would not like that." Thereupon she withdrew on a sudden to the depth of the carriage, and Pan Serafin turned to the brothers,-- "Have I not told her the truth?" But not being quick-witted, they missed the point of the answer. "Who would not like?" inquired they. "Who?" Pan Serafin shrugged his shoulders. "The prince bishop of Cracow, the German emperor, and the king of France," answered he. He gave the sign then, and all started. They passed Belchantska, and advanced again among tilled fields, fallow land, meadows, and broad wind-swept spaces which were bordered on the horizon by a blue rim of forest. At Yedlina they stopped for a second rest, during which the brewers, the citizens, and the peasants took farewell of Father Voynovski--and before evening they stopped for their first night rest at Radom.