another one.

Indeed after a while a few dropped away from the pack and ran toward the party, after them followed others. But the sight of armed men confused them; some began to follow the sleigh, others stopped a few tens of steps from it, or ran around with mad speed, as if to urge themselves on to the equipage.

The attendants wished to fire, but Pan Gideon forbade them, lest gunshots might bring the whole pack to his people.

Meanwhile the horses, though accustomed to wolves, began to push to one side and turn their heads to their flanks with loud snorting, but soon something worse happened, and this raised the danger a hundredfold.

The young horse which the torchbearer was riding reared suddenly once, and a second time, and then rushed madly sidewise.

The rider, knowing that were he to fall he would be torn to bits the next moment, seized hold of his saddle-bow, but dropped his pot the same instant; the light sank in the snow deeply; the flame threw out sparks and was extinguished. The light of the moon was alone on that plain then.

The driver, a Russ from Pomorani, began to pray; the Mazovian attendants fell to cursing.

Emboldened by darkness, the wolves pressed on with more insolence, and from the direction of the wild boars some fresh ones ran up to them. A few came rather near, with snapping teeth, and the hair standing straight on their shoulders. Their eyes were all bloodshot, and a greenish light flashed from them.

A moment had come which was really terrible.

"Shall we shoot?" inquired one of the escort.

"Frighten them with shouts," said Pan Gideon.

Thereupon rose with keenness, "A-hu! a-hu!" The horses gained courage, and the wolves, impressed by the voices of men, withdrew some tens of paces.

Then a still greater wonder was manifest.

All at once forest echoes from behind repeated the shouts of the attendants, but with rising force, ever louder and louder, as it were outbursts of wild laughter; and some moments later a crowd of dark horsemen appeared at both sides of the carriage and shot past with all the speed of their beasts toward the wild boars and the wolves which encircled them.

In the twinkle of an eye neither wolves nor boars held the snow plain; they had scattered as if a whirlwind had struck them. Gunshots were heard, also shouts, and again those strange outbursts of laughter. Pan Gideon's attendants rushed after the horsemen, so that there remained at the sleigh only the postilion and the driver.

Inside the sleigh there was such mighty amazement that no one dared move a lip for some moments.

"But the word became flesh!" called out Pani Vinnitski, at last. "That must be help from above us."

"May it be blessed, whencesoever it came. Our plight was growing evil," said Pan Gideon.

"God sent those young knights!" said Panna Anulka, who wished to add her word.

It would have been difficult to divine how this maiden could have seen that those men were knights and young, in addition, for they shot past like a whirlwind; but no person asked for her reasons, since the older man and woman were occupied overmuch with what was happening before them.

Meanwhile, on the plain the sounds of pursuit were heard yet for the space of some Our Fathers, and not very far from the sleigh was a wolf with its back broken, evidently by a sling-shot. The beast was on its haunches and howling so dreadfully that every one shivered.

The man on the leading horse slipped down to kill the beast, for the horses were plunging with such violence that the sleigh-pole was cracking.

After a time the horsemen seemed black again on the snow field. They came in a crowd, without order, in a mist, for though the night was cold and the air very clear, the horses had been driven unsparingly, and were smoking like chimneys.

The horsemen approached with loud laughter and singing, and when they had drawn near, one of them shot up to the sleigh, and asked in glad, resonant accents,--

"Who is travelling?"

"Pangovski from Belchantska. Whom am I to thank for this rescue?"

"Stanislav Tsyprianovitch of Yedlinka!"

"The Bukoyemskis!"

"Thanks to your mightinesses. God sent you in season. Thanks!"

"Thanks!" repeated a youthful voice.

"Glory to God that it was in season!" continued Pan Stanislav, removing his fur cap.

"From whom did ye hear of us?"

"No one informed us, but as the wolves are now running in packs, we rode out to save people; since a person of such note has been found, our delight is the greater, and the greater our service to God," said Pan Stanislav, politely.

But one of the Bukoyemskis now added,--

"Not counting the wolf skins."

"A beautiful deed and a real knightly work," said Pan Gideon. "God grant us to give thanks for it as promptly as possible. I think, too, that desire for human flesh has left those wolves now, and that we shall reach home without danger."

"That is by no means so certain. Wolves might be enticed again easily and make a new onrush."

"There is no help against that; but we will not surrender!"

"There is help, namely this: to attend you to the mansion. It may happen that we shall save some one else as we travel."

"I dared not ask for that, but since such is your kindness, let it be as you say, for the ladies here will feel safer."

"I have no fear as we are, but from all my soul I am grateful!" said Panna Anulka.

Pan Gideon gave the order and they moved forward, but they had gone only a few tens of paces when the cracked sleigh-pole was broken and the equipage halted.

New delays.

The attendants had ropes and fell to mending the broken parts straightway, but it was unknown whether such a patched work would not come apart after some furlongs.

Pan Stanislav hesitated somewhat, and then said, removing his fur cap a second time,--

"To Yedlinka through the fields it is nearer than to Belchantska. Honor our house then, your mightiness, and spend the night under our roof tree. No man can tell what might meet us in that forest, or whether even now we may not be too few to resist all the wolves that will rush to the roadway. We will bring home the sleigh in some fashion, and the shorter the road is the easier our problem. It is true that the honor surpasses the service, but the case being one of sore need a man may not cherish pride over carefully."

Pan Gideon did not answer those words at the moment, for he felt reproach in them. He called to mind that when two years before Pan Serafin Tsyprianovitch had made him a visit, he received the man graciously, it is true, but with a known haughtiness, and did not pay back the visit. Pan Gideon had acted in that way since Pan Serafin's family was noble only two generations, he was a "homo novus," an Armenian by origin. His grandfather had bought and sold brocades in Kamenyets. Yakob, the son of that merchant, had served in the artillery under the famous Hodkievitch, and at Hotsim had rendered such service that, through the power of Pan Stanislav Lyubomirski, he had been ennobled, and then received Yedlinka for a lifetime. That life estate was made afterward the property of Pan Serafin, his heir, in return for a loan given the Commonwealth during Swedish encounters. The young man who had come to the road with such