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THE KNIGHTS OF THE CROSS.

woman might be the drop which would overflow the measure of injustice, and that the day of judgment, wrath, punishment, and terror would come.

Then they moved toward Spyhov; but they did not place Danusia on the wagon, they bore her in front of the procession on the litter strewn with flowers. The bell ceased not to toll, it seemed to summon and invite them; and they moved on across the broad plain singing in the immense golden light, as if the departed were conducting them really to endless glory and brightness. It was evening, and the flocks had returned from the fields when they arrived. The chapel, in which they laid the remains, was gleaming from torches and lighted tapers. At command of Father Kaleb seven young girls repeated in succession the litany over the body till daylight. Zbyshko did not leave Danusia till morning, and at matins he placed her in a coffin which skilled workmen had cut out of an oak-tree in the night-time, and put a plate of gold-colored amber in the lid above her forehead.

Yurand was not present, for strange things had happened to him. Immediately after reaching home he lost power in his feet, and when they placed him on the bed he lost movement as well as consciousness of where he was and what was taking place there. In vain did Father Kaleb speak to him; in vain did he ask what his trouble was. Yurand heard not, he understood not; but lying on his back, he raised the lids of his empty eyepits and smiled with a face transfixed and happy, and at times he moved his lips, as if speaking with some person. The priest and Tolima thought that he was conversing with his rescued daughter, and smiling at her. They thought also that he was dying, and that with the sight of his soul he was gazing at his own eternal happiness, but in this they were mistaken, for, deprived of feeling and deaf to all things, he smiled whole weeks in the same way. Zbyshko, when he set out at last with the ransom for Matsko, left his father-in-law in life yet.