“They disappeared that day after the riot,” he thought to himself as he sat in the inn, “and were nowhere to be found. The earth might have opened and swallowed them whole. No other Charnetski in Krakow answered their description—I had well given them up for lost and with them a castle and coffers of gold in the Ukraine. For when Ivan, himself, promises, then there is profit to be had. I return to the Ukraine, but there is no word from them there. My men are even now riding from city to city in the vain hunt. Meanwhile I, answering some tiny voice of wisdom that speaks from somewhere into my ear, come back here.” He struck the table with his fist. “Men call me Bogdan Grozny—Bogdan the Terrible,” he exclaimed, “but terror often has brains. This venture has begun in luck and must end well. And once I get what I seek from that white-faced Pole he shall rue the day of my humiliation at the Krakow Gate.” And with the thought of that adventure a look of hatred came into his eyes. His attention was diverted for the moment by the sight of a beggar with a dirty bandage across his face working from table to table at the inn, begging for alms in a whining tone. As the beggar came near, the man dropped a coin in the outstretched hand and whispered, “You come late to-day.” “Pardon me, master, I thought I had a scent.” The beggar seemed to expect a blow, and assumed a defensive attitude, when the man smiled. “No matter, the work is done,” he whispered. “Mount your horse to-night and ride like the wind for Tarnov. There you will send out our brothers to bring in the men who are hunting. It may take three weeks—but hurry before the first fall of snow comes.” The beggar took the orders, ambled out of the inn quietly just as he had come in, and proceeded in like fashion until he was well along the street which skirts the market on the west. Then suddenly stepping behind a house buttress he tore the bandage from his face and ran with all speed for the gate on the Mogilev Road in order to get through unchallenged before the night watch came on duty. He passed through, sauntered down the road until he came to a small peasant cottage with a stable in the rear; here he found the horse which he had ridden to Krakow, and with a single word to the owner of the house, who seemed to understand his movements fully, galloped off to the distant bridge where ran the Tarnov Road. The man at the inn continued to ruminate. “That stoop-shouldered misbegotten thing that calls himself Stas came to us like an angel from heaven. Often had I noticed him in here talking and making free with all the beggars, and even at first look of him, I thought to myself that here was such a man as might serve a purpose for me sometime. So I have the landlord bring him a friendly glass, and talking as he drinks it, he drops a word about the new trumpeter who never goes forth in the daytime!