The soldiers, who had disposed themselves in the servants' hall, heard that cry and fell into the room with a rush. Kmita showed them with his hand the corpses at the wall. "Murdered! murdered!" repeated he, with hoarse voice. They ran to look; some came with a taper, and held it before the eyes of the dead men. After the first moment of astonishment came noise and confusion. Those hurried in who had found places in the stables and barns. The whole house was bright with light, swarming with men; and in the midst of all that whirl, shouting, and questioning, the dead lay at the wall unmoved and quiet, indifferent to everything, and, in contradiction to their own nature, calm. The souls had gone out of them, and their bodies could not be raised by the trumpet to battle, or the sound of the goblets to feasting. Meanwhile in the din of the soldiers shouts of threatening and rage rose higher and higher each instant. Kmita, who till that moment had been as it were unconscious, sprang up suddenly and shouted, "To horse!" Everything living moved toward the door. Half an hour had not passed when more than one hundred horsemen were rushing with breakneck speed over the broad snowy road, and at the head of them flew Pan Andrei, as if possessed of a demon, bareheaded and with a naked sabre in his hand. In the still night was heard on every side the wild shouts: "Slay! kill!" The moon had reached just the highest point on its road through the sky, when suddenly its beams began to be mingled and mixed with a rosy light, rising as it were from under the ground; gradually the heavens grew red and still redder as if from the rising dawn, till at last a bloody glare filled the whole neighborhood. One sea of fire raged over the gigantic village of the Butryms; and the wild soldiers of Kmita, in the midst of smoke, burning, and sparks bursting in columns to the sky, cut down the population, terrified and blinded from fright. The inhabitants of the nearer villages sprang from their sleep. The greater and smaller companies of the Smoky Gostsyeviches and Stakyans, Gashtovts and Domasheviches, collected on the road before their houses, and looking in the direction of the fire, gave alarm from mouth to mouth: "It must be that an enemy has broken in and is burning the Butryms,--that is an unusual fire!" The report of muskets coming at intervals from the distance confirmed this supposition. "Let us go to assist them!" cried the bolder; "let us not leave our brothers to perish!" And when the older ones spoke thus, the younger, who on account of the winter threshing had not gone to Rossyeni, mounted their horses. In Krakin and in Upita they had begun to ring the church bells. In Vodokty a quiet knocking at the door roused Panna Aleksandra. "Olenka, get up!" cried Panna Kulvyets. "Come in, Aunt, what is the matter?" "They are burning Volmontovichi!" "In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!" "Shots are heard, there is a battle! God have mercy on us!"