It was not Babinich himself. But in the camp there rose such commotion over the arrival of this detachment that Sapyeha went out to see what was taking place. Meanwhile officers from different squadrons flew in, crying,— “From Babinich! Prisoners! A whole band! He seized a crowd of men!” Indeed the hetman saw a number of tens of men on poor, ragged horses. Babinich’s Tartars drove nearly three hundred men with bound hands, beating them with bullock-skin whips. The prisoners presented a terrible sight. They were rather shadows than men. With torn clothing, half naked, so poor that the bones were pushing through their skin, bloody, they marched half alive, indifferent to all things, even to the whistle of the whips which cut them, and to the wild shouts of the Tartars. “What kind of men are they?” asked the hetman. “Boguslav’s troops!” answered one of Kmita’s volunteers who had brought the prisoners together with the Tartars. “But where did you get so many?” “Nearly half as many more fell on the road, from exhaustion.” With this an old Tartar, a sergeant in the horde, approached, and beating with the forehead, gave a letter from Kmita to Sapyeha. The hetman, without delay, broke the seal and began to read aloud:— “Serene great mighty hetman! If I have sent neither news nor informants with news hitherto, it is because I went in front, and not in the rear of Prince Boguslav’s army, and I wished to learn the most possible.” The hetman stopped reading. “That is a devil!” said he. “Instead of following the prince, he went ahead of him.” “May the bullets strike him!” added Oskyerko, in an undertone. The hetman read on. “It was dangerous work, as Boguslav’s scouts marched in a wide front; but after I had cut down two parties and spared none. I worked to the van of the army, from which movement great confusion came upon the prince, for he fell to thinking at once that he was surrounded, and as it were was crawling into a trap.” “That is the reason of this unexpected withdrawal!” cried the hetman. “A devil, a genuine devil!” He read on with still more curiosity,—