No one laughed, no one sneered, no one stirred. A superstitious awe seemed to have struck the onlookers dumb. The breath of the winter evening met their faces with an icy tooth. Had some one spread the news of what had happened within, among the crowd that waited outside, or had they divined it by instinct? Here too was profound silence; here too a path was made for them, which they followed, bending their footsteps riverwards with bowed heads. CHAPTER XIV The glow in the evening sky faded. A violet vapour hung about the bare tracery of the tree-tops, and showers of sparkling crystals rained from the branches. Boleslav ground the snow under his heel. His breath curled in front of him in slender columns. The keen frosty air was balm to his fevered face. He had sent Regina on before, and was trying to regain calmness and presence of mind in solitary wandering, for his brain boiled like a witch's caldron. The curse stood out intangibly in his ruminations; it was like the bogey that little children people the darkness with. He saw it everywhere; it haunted him. How well his father's old enemy had availed himself of the opportunity of doing what probably he had long connived at, putting the son under the same ban as the father. But it was a terrible reflection to think he might have deserved that curse. As it was, he had not merited it; a thousand times no! What the veteran priest in his dark suspicion had alluded to as an accomplished brutal fact, had really only swept his soul with phantom wings. Now that his conscience was awakened to the danger of the situation, the danger itself was over. After all, he ought to be indebted to the pastor for showing him the yawning precipice that lay at his unwary feet. "Think no more of it," he said to himself; "I am the master, she the servant, and I should be an accursed----" He stopped. Was he not already accursed? Then he laughed at his foolish fears. It was childish to mind. Bah! he was too susceptible. At all events, this day should be the beginning of a new epoch in his relations with the outer world. The possession of the iron cross was a proof that he was not dishonoured or outside the pale of law and justice. With it he might, if he had the courage, outwit the knavish tricks of his personal enemies, and appeal to the assistance of the Courts. If the judge of the district had chosen to condone the fire by ignoring it, he might in his turn light a fire that would send forth such a blaze that the very holes where the incendiaries skulked would be illuminated. But it would involve dragging his father's dealings also into the fierce light of day. Could he dare to disturb the peace of the dead, like a body-snatcher, and blazon forth the shame of his house in the face of all the world?