CHAPTER XXII.
After abundant snow, followed severe frosts, with bright, dry weather. In the daytime the frosts sparkled in the rays of the sun, ice bound the rivers and stiffened the swamps. Clear nights came, during which frost increased so much that trees in the forest burst with explosions; birds approached houses; the roads became dangerous because of wolves, which collected in great numbers and attacked, not only single people, but even villages. Men, however, rejoiced in their smoky cottages at their firesides, predicting a fruitful season after the frosty winter, and awaited the near holidays joyfully. The princess, with her court and Father Vyshonek, had left the hunting-lodge and gone to Tsehanov.
Zbyshko, notably stronger, but not strong enough yet to travel on horseback, had remained with his men, Sanderus and the Cheh, with the servants of the place, over whom a steady woman exercised the authority of housekeeper.
But the soul in the knight was rushing to his young wife. The idea that now Danusia was his, and that no human power could take her away, was to him an immense solace, indeed, but, on the other hand, that very same idea intensified his yearning. For whole days he had sighed for the moment in which he could leave the lodge, and he was meditating what to do then, whither to go and how to win over Yurand. He had moments of oppressive alarm, it is true, but, on the whole, the future seemed to him delightful. To love Danusia and split helmets with peacock-plumes on them was to be his life employment. Many a time the desire seized him to talk about this with the Cheh, whom he had taken now into his affection, but he remembered that Hlava, devoted with whole soul to Yagenka, would not be glad to talk about Danusia; bound moreover by a secret, he could not tell him all that had happened.
His health improved daily. A week before Christmas he mounted a horse for the first time, and, though he felt that he could not work yet in armor, he was comforted. He did not think that the need would come suddenly of putting on a breast-plate and a helmet, but he hoped in the worst event to have strength enough soon to do that were it needed. In
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