CHAPTER XXXI.
But news of what had happened in Schytno preceded Brother Rotgier and roused astonishment and alarm in Tsehanov. Neither the prince himself nor any one of his court could understand what had happened. A little while earlier, just as Mikolai of Dlugolyas was starting for Malborg with a letter from the prince complaining bitterly that Danusia had been stolen by disorderly comturs of the boundary, and asking with a threat almost to send her back straightway, a letter came from the master of Spyhov, announcing that his daughter had not been taken by Knights of the Cross, but by ordinary bandits of the border, and that soon she would be freed for a ransom. The envoy did not start, for it did not occur to any one that Knights of the Cross had forced such a letter from Yurand under threat of killing his daughter. It was difficult to understand what had happened if one believed the letter, for marauders of the boundary, as subjects of the prince and the Order, attacked one another in summer, not in winter, when snow would show their traces. Usually they fell upon merchants, or robbed throughout villages, seizing people, and driving their herds away; but to attack the prince himself and bear off his foster child, the daughter of a powerful knight who roused terror everywhere, was a deed which seemed simply beyond human credence. But to that, as to other doubts, the answer was Yurand's letter with his seal, and brought this time by a man whom they knew to have started from Spyhov. In view of these facts no suspicion was possible, but the prince fell into such rage as no one had seen for a long time, and commanded his men to hunt down bandits along every border, inviting also the Prince of Plotsk to do likewise, and spare no punishment on the turbulent.
Just at this juncture came news of what had happened in Schytno.
And passing from mouth to mouth it arrived with tenfold increase. Yurand, it was said, had gone with five others to Schytno; he had rushed in through the open gate and com-
