CHAPTER LVI.
Only on the ninth day after Yagenka had gone did Zbyshko appear on the boundary of Spyhov, but Danusia was so near death then that he had lost every hope of bringing her alive to her father. Next day, when she answered disconnectedly, he saw at once that not merely was her mind shattered, but that her body was seized by sickness of some kind, against which there was no more strength in that child exhausted by captivity, confinement, torment, and continual terror. It may be that the noise of the desperate encounter between Zbyshko, Matsko, and the Germans had overfilled the measure of her fear, and that the sickness had come in that moment. It is enough that fever had not left her from that day till almost the end of the journey. This had been a favoring circumstance thus far, for Zbyshko had brought her like a dead person, without consciousness or knowledge, through the terrible wilderness by means of immense efforts.
After they had passed the wilderness and entered a grain country where there were land-tillers and nobles, toils and dangers were over. When people learned that he was bringing a child of their own race rescued from the Knights of the Order, and moreover a daughter of the famed Yurand, of whom minstrels sang so many songs, in castles, houses, and cottages they outstripped one another in services and assistance. They furnished provisions and horses. All doors stood open. Zbyshko had no further need to carry her in the cradle between horses, for sturdy youths bore her in a litter from village to village with as much care and reverence as if they were bearing a sacred object. Women surrounded her with the tenderest attention. Men, while listening to the narrative of the wrongs wrought on her, gritted their teeth, and more than one of them put his iron armor on straightway and seized his sword, axe, or lance to set out with Zbyshko and avenge "with addition," for it did not seem enough to that stern generation to avenge one wrong by another evenly.
