CHAPTER XXXVII.
Matsko was preparing for his journey, and Yagenka did not show herself in Bogdanets for two days; this time she spent in counselling with Hlava. The old man met her on the third day while going to church. She was on the way to Kresnia with her brother and a considerable number of armed attendants, for she was not sure that Vilk and Stan kept the bed yet and might not make an attack on her.
"I wanted to call at Bogdanets after mass," said she, greeting Matsko, "for with you I have urgent business, but we can talk of it now."
Then she rode out in front of the retinue, not wishing evidently that the young men should hear their words.
"Then are you going surely?" asked she, when Matsko was near her.
"Yes. To-morrow, with God's help, not later."
"And to Malborg?"
"To Malborg, or no, whithersoever it happens."
"Then listen to me. I have thought long over what I should do, and now I wish to ask advice of you. Formerly, you know, when father was living, and the abbot had strength in him, it was different. Besides, Stan and Vilk thought that I would choose one of them, and they restrained each other. But now I shall be defenceless; I shall be in Zgorzelitse as behind a palisade, as in a prison, for surely I shall suffer wrong from those two. Say yourself, is this true or not?"
"It is true; I also have thought of it."
"And what have you thought out?"
"Nothing; but I must say that this is a Polish country, and punishments of the law for violence to a maiden are terrible."
"That seems well, but 'tis not difficult to spring over the boundary. I know too that Silesia is a Polish country; still the princes quarrel and attack one another. Were it not for that my dear father would be living. The Germans have
