“What do you want?” he asked sharply.
“I seek Pan Andrew Tenczynski.”
The guard shouted something, whereat five men in armor came running from a little house near the gate.
“Surround him,” said the guard. This was done, much to the astonishment of Pan Andrew. “One of you run to the house and call the captain,” next ordered the guard. “Tell him that a countryman is here demanding to see Pan Andrew Tenczynski.”
Pan Charnetski, trying to force his way out of the circle, was pushed back into the center by one of the armed men. At that he raised his voice in anger:
“Who are you that dare detain me here? I am Pan Andrew Charnetski, first cousin to the Tenczynskis and proprietor of an estate in the Ukraine. I demand that you confront me with an officer in authority and not treat me like one come here as an enemy.”
The men of the guard looked at each other in astonishment. Was it possible that this man did not know the truth—the report of which had already spread over the greater portion of Poland?
The captain came in a moment with the returning soldier. He broke through the ring and walked straight up to Pan Charnetski.
“What is your business here?” There was a certain pleasantness and courtesy in his voice that made Pan Andrew forget his anger for the moment.
“You have a civil tongue, young man,” he answered. “I take it that you are in command here?”
“I am.”
“Then I will tell you, as I have told your soldiers, that I am Pan Andrew Charnetski come this day from the Ukraine to see my cousin Pan Andrew Tenczynski on important business.”
“You come too late,” answered the captain. “It is strange that you have not heard, for this news is now all about the country. Pan Andrew Tenczynski lives no longer. His kin have departed from the city for a time, and may return, I know not when. I am here for the observance of order, for the protection of the estate against enemies of the family.”
Pan Andrew started. “My cousin is dead—and how?”
“It was like to nothing the city has seen these many years. For a long time there had been hot blood between the tradesmen and nobles. The issue came to a head through the dissatisfaction of Pan Tenczynski over some piece of armor that he had bidden a smith to make. He not only took the tradesman to task but refused to pay for the work he had done, whereat the whole guild rose against him. They pursued him through the streets and killed him in the Church of the Franciscans where he had sought shelter. It was a sad and grievous thing, and his family for fear of the mob fled the city. The gentle Elizabeth, our Queen—and may the blessing of Heaven be upon her!—hates all strife that may result in the shedding of blood, and she it was who persuaded our King to make peace between the townsfolk and nobles. He sent us here to protect this house, to be a guarantee against the shedding of any blood, for there are many who would willingly pillage this dwelling and kill the servants that are still here. We are but acting upon orders when we detain all persons who seek entrance here, and for the execution of these orders you must give us your pardon, since we seek but to avert further bloodshed.”
It seemed to Pan Andrew at that moment as if heaven had fallen about his ears.
“Let me give to Pan one piece of advice,” continued the captain.
“Most willingly will I receive it,” said Pan Andrew thoughtfully.
“Get yourself from the city as quickly as possible if you be of any blood ties with the Tenczynskis, or else if you stay change your name and manner of speech lest some assassin make a mark of you for the benefit of his party. . . . I greet you then with a hail, as is befitting between equal Pans, and request that, for your own safety, you depart quickly.”
“But—I must remain here. A band of pillagers, I know not whom exactly, though I think them the paid robbers of some one in high authority, have burned my house in the Ukraine and left not one stone upon another. My fields are ruined as well, and I am here to take refuge with my kinsmen, to bring them word of something very secret which must go at once to the ears of the King himself.”
“Alas,” answered the captain, “I can give you but little help. The King is at this moment in Torun where there are said to be plans against the military order of the Knights of the Cross—for he seeks there in the north peace at all odds. When he will return I know not, perhaps in a month, perhaps in a year. If you would await him here, I would, if I were you, settle in this town and take another name. Later there will come a retribution for these dark deeds against the Tenczynski family, and there will be more crows about the gallows.”
Saying which he turned away and called the guard again to its post.
Pan Andrew, however, stood motionless for a few seconds. The thoughts fairly burned in his brain. His friends, protectors, gone! The King away, he himself a fugitive here no less than in the Ukraine. From every side enemies pressed upon him, and what had he done to deserve such a fate? He was in a predicament even without this complication, for here he was in a great city where he had not a single friend. He had but little money, for what he had gathered had been invested year by year in his house and lands in the Ukraine. There were his wife and his son to be put in a place of shelter, and not only were the means lacking but there was even peril at every hand. Behind him at the gates of the city had appeared one foe—here in the city there were apparently many others. What to do? . . . Well. . . . Let God give. . . . There would be something.
Aimlessly he got into the wagon, turned it about, and made for the market again. There at least they might spend the day, procure water for the horses, and buy a little of something to eat. He found a place near one of the springs, unloosed the horses with the help of his son, and let them crop the short grass that grew near one edge of the market place, watering them with buckets that he filled at the spring.
Not until then did he seek comfort and counsel from his wife, who had always been his solace at such times; throwing himself down beside her on the wagon seat he told her the story of his late discoveries, the absence of the King, the death of his kinsman. For a second the woman’s heart quailed before the fresh difficulties, but she forgot self at the look in her husband’s face. Her quiet reply, “We will wait, for God is in the waiting,” filled him with courage again.
Joseph, however, was at that age when no sky remains long clouded. His heart had been beating fast with excitement ever since the sight of the city’s towers had loomed before them in the early morning, and his legs had been itching to get out of the wagon and explore the place. He began by taking a short excursion over to a little building near by, which at first glance had seemed to be a market building, but, when he approached it, proved to be a church with a low dome and round side windows. Although the church was of much interest to those who favored historical lore as being one of the oldest churches in Poland, it did not interest the boy greatly. He scrutinized the beggars at the door, a young boy with but one leg, a woman with a back bent to a curve, an old man with sightless eyes, praying continually, and many other wretched alms seekers. Crossing himself and muttering a prayer for God’s helpless creatures, Joseph turned and marched down Grodzka Street in the direction of the Wawel.
He had just come to a cross lane which led on the left to the Church of the Dominicans, and on the right to the Church of All Saints, when he noticed a Tartar boy in the street leading and constantly beating a large Ukrainian wolf dog. The wolf dog was on a leash—he had a strong hand-wrought collar about the neck—and he was turning now and then to glance back at his tormentor who was plying a short Cossack whip. Joseph watched the boy in amazement, wondering why he had the dog and why he was beating him—as a matter of fact the boy was acting out of pure viciousness—but neither of these questions found satisfactory solution in Joseph’s mind. In a very few minutes, however, another question rose with the suddenness of lightning, a question which required action for a solution, and this action Joseph was able to supply.
For at the moment that the boy and dog were crossing the church lane, there emerged from the farther footwalk a man dressed all in black like a priest, but wearing a collar which was not clerical since it opened in the front. He did not, however, for the moment attract Joseph’s attention; it was his companion that caught and held the boy’s gaze. For the companion was a girl of perhaps the same age as Joseph—she was walking by the side of the man in black and now and then grasping at his hand.
Joseph saw the dog no longer. His eyes were riveted on the girl. She seemed to him like an angel taken out of a Christmas play, or a spirit from a Festival of the Three Kings—in truth she might have been one of those beautiful figures come to life out of the wondrous stained glass windows in the church. Her hair was light—Joseph’s was dark. Her skin was as white as the finest linen, her eyes as blue as the skies above the Vistula; she wore a cloaklike garment of red that fell from her shoulders to her ankles and was girdled at the waist. It was embroidered in blue, with lace at neck and wrists; in front it did not meet completely but showed the second garment that she wore beneath, a mantle of blue that fell in folds even below the outer coat. And as she looked up, the country boy thought that he had never seen anything prettier on earth—so daintily she tripped along that she seemed to walk on clouds. Then for a moment he looked down at his hands, dirty, hard, and grimy; he looked at his clothes and found them dusty and worn after the long journey.
But if he had been in heaven at the sight of the girl, he came back to earth quickly. For the Tartar boy with the dog and the man in black with the girl were close together at the crossing of the roads when suddenly the maddened dog turned desperately at bay upon his tormentor and crouched for a powerful spring. Joseph shouted and rushed forward just as the dog leaped. The Tartar boy dropped the leather thong in a flash and darted down the walk out of reach of the dog’s jaws, but leaving directly in his path the man in black and the girl Blind with fury the dog sprang again, and in an instant he would have come down upon the girl who happened to be on the outside, had not Joseph at the same moment leaped and caught at the dog’s heavy collar.
He had dealt with dogs many times in the Ukraine, and he knew that no dog is vicious if healthy and well treated; therefore there had been no fear in this effort that he made, save for the peril, perhaps, that the dog might mistake him for the boy who had been beating him, and sink his teeth into his flesh.
His fingers caught the collar squarely. The grip held, and he went hurtling through the air like the tail of a skyrocket, as the dog’s leap, weighted by this unexpected load, fell short, and the girl drew back with a cry. But Joseph and the infuriated animal went rolling to and fro in a wild embrace on the hard surface of the road, he striving to make the beast pay attention to his words, the dog only becoming more and more frightened. But the boy knew, after the first second when all depended upon whether his grip held or not, that everything was safe and he could successfully avoid the paws and teeth of the dog. Thus at a favorable moment he released his hold quickly upon the animal’s collar, and scrambled to his feet, while a very dusty and possibly ashamed wolf dog tore off like a streak of lightning in the direction of the Franciscans’ church.
Somethingheavy but kindly fell upon Joseph’s shoulders and something light touched his cheek.
Looking up quickly from a survey of his garments, now more ragged and dusty than ever, he perceived that the weight was the hand of the man in black and that the lightness had been a kiss upon his cheek from the man’s companion,—her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright and her lips were still close to him. He was somewhat dazed from the shock of going to earth so quickly with the dog, but he thrilled with pleasure and happiness from the kindly touch and the kiss.
He stepped back to brush himself, and then gazed squarely at the man and girl.
His cheeks grew rosy with that first meeting of eyes. For in the man’s there was an ocean of gratitude and a suggestion of a tear, and the girl’s eyes blazed forth frank admiration.
“You were so quick,” she exclaimed. “Would that I could spring like that. It was brave of you——”
His tongue found no words. Boys of fifteen, even if aged by experience, have little to say when praise is bestowed so freely.
Moreover the man gave him no opportunity. “Remarkable,” he said, “remarkable. As swift a leap as I ever saw,” and then blinking with his eyes as if the light hurt them, added, “or hope to see.”
“It was nothing,” Joseph stammered. “Often in the Ukraine I have dispersed dogs in a fight.” And then thinking that this perhaps sounded like boasting, said further, “As do many boys of my age in that country.”
“From the Ukraine?” The man in black looked at him with interest. “How do you happen to be so far from home?”
“Tartars or Cossacks burned our house. We have been traveling this day more than two weeks in a cart only to find ourselves homeless here. Father had kinsfolk in this city, but the head of the house is dead and the others are away.”
“Where are your people now?”
“In the market place.”
“H’m,” the man muttered to himself, “homeless and in the market place. And what will they do?”
The boy shook his head. “I think that my father will find us some shelter,” he said finally. “He was thinking——” He hesitated for he had been taught never to speak of troubles before strangers, though the girl peered straight into his eyes with great kindness and sweetness.
“There is something curious here,” thought the man. “The boy’s face has a high degree of intelligence and his speech is the speech of one who has listened to good words. A noble action this—I think in good faith that the whelp might have had his teeth in the child’s throat.” Looking down upon the boy he said, “You have rendered us a noteworthy service, you have saved my niece from much painful injury; will you not accompany us to our home that we may hear your whole story and perhaps in our turn——”
The boy’s face reddened. “Nay,” he said, “I wish no reward. What I did——”
The girl caught him up. “Indeed you do my uncle wrong. He meant but this: we live humbly, will you not come and rest for a moment until you may join your people?”
“I ask pardon,” the boy said quickly.
Whereat the man laughed, for their speech and expression had been over-serious for children, though it still was an age when children grew to be men and women often over a single night. In some provinces girls of fourteen or fifteen were considered grown women and even given in marriage. Boys at that age had seen much of the rough side of life, of war and battle and cruelty.
“I will go with you,” Joseph added, kissing the cuff of the gown of the man in black as he had always been taught to do in his home.
They turned to the left past the Church of the Franciscans, to the right through a short lane, and then to the left again into the most curious street of the world of that day.
It was the Street of the Pigeons, famed throughout all Europe as the dwelling place of scholars, astrologers, magicians, students, and likewise doctors, brothers of the Church, and masters of the seven arts. In the worst end of the street, the upper end near the city wall, clustered the squalid dwelling places that were once the homes of Jewish refugees, fleeing from persecution in all parts of the world. Terrible poverty had existed there, and when the Jewish inhabitants finally moved to their own city, Kazimierz, across the river, the buildings which they left were scarcely fit for human beings to live in. They were, in the first place, very old and out of repair—they were built for the most part of wood, though the fronts on the street were sometimes of brick covered with rough cement or mortar. The upper stories usually overhung, and the roofs were covered with loose boards nailed in place, serving instead of tiles or shingles. Rickety staircases on the outsides of these buildings led from the street or from interior courts up to the dwelling places on the third and fourth floors, where, at the time of this story, lived family literally heaped upon family in terrible disorder and poverty.
Thieves and murderers crouched there in hiding during the day, bands of lawless men had their haunts there in cellar or attic or other den. A fire in the year 1407 had swept through this street and through St. Ann’s, clearing out many of these undesirable places, but unfortunately not destroying all of them.
In the lower end of the street on the side toward the University of Krakow there was more respectability since students and masters of the university inhabited there. A large students’bursaror dormitory stood near the corner where Jagiellonska now meets the Street of the Pigeons. In this lived many students; others put up near by in groups or with private families, since it was not until late in the 1490’s that the authorities compelled the students to live in university buildings.
The prestige of the various colleges and the reputation of the men who taught there had drawn to Krakow not only genuine students but also many of the craft that live by their wits in all societies, in all ages—fortune tellers and astrologers, magicians and palmists, charlatans, necromancers, and fly-by-nights who were forever eluding the authorities of the law. Here somewhere on the Street of the Pigeons they all found lodging.
In the rooms above the street, in the kitchens beneath the street, these men plied their trades. Self-termed astrologers read in the stars the destinies of the gullible; they foretold happiness to trusting peasant girls who came to them for advice in their love matters, they prophesied disaster to merchants who, held by fear, might be induced to part with much money; they cheated, they robbed, and often on provocation they killed, until after many years they gave the street a certain unsavory reputation. Against the machinations of these men the influence of the university was ever working, and the first great blow that many of these magic crafts and black arts received was struck by Nicholas Kopernik, better known as Copernicus, many years later when Joseph Charnetski was a very old man; Copernicus, working with rough implements, even before the telescope had been invented, proved to men for the first time that the heavenly bodies, stars and planets, move in the skies according to well-fixed and definitely determined laws, subject only to the will of the Creator of the universe, and that they have nothing to do with the destinies of individuals.
All about them in the street flitted men dressed in long robes like that of the guardian of the little girl, though all the robes were not alike. Some were clerical with closed front and collar, others were open and flowing with great sleeves like a bishop’s gown, some were of blue, some were of red, some were of green. Joseph noticed one robe of ermine over which was worn a chain of heavy gold, at the end of which hung suspended a great amethyst cross.
They passed a house, part wood and part stone, where were gathered at opened doors a great group of young men in plain black robes, much less sumptuous than some others which they had seen, all the members of the group engaged in a lively altercation, as the guardian informed the boy and girl, concerning the movement of the stars. One was contending that the firmament of stars moved for one hundred years to the west—another (and this was backed by a written argument from the old Alphonsian tables from Spain) that the stars moved constantly in one direction without change.
Passing this group they came to a dwelling, the front of which was stone. The door was set back from the street and flanked by short projecting buttresses on either side, put there as if to caution the emerging inhabitant to look carefully to right and left before proceeding—a caution not unwise at night. The windows above were not only crossed by wooden shutters that opened and closed like doors, but also barred with iron. The man in black took from the folds of his gown a huge brass key, which he fitted into the outside door, turned it in the lock with some labor, and then threw the portal open.
They stepped over a small board which served as a threshold, and passed through a dark passageway which led to an open court. At the end of the court was the flat wall of a monastery, without windows or doors. On the right was a low, one-story building, and on the left rose a ramshackle structure of wood, four stories high. Outside this building, leading to the apartments on the second and third floors, was a wooden staircase hitched to the wall by wooden clutch supports and strengthened by a single wooden upright. In the middle of the court was an old well with a bucket on a rope attached to a wheel.
The staircase creaked as they ascended, and seemed to Joseph to swing just a little. It gave him such a dizzy sensation that he clutched at the wall, fearful lest the whole structure should become loose and topple down. But the man only smiled as he saw the boy’s sudden movement and assured him that the staircase was safe enough. They went up one flight past the first landing, and then on to the second. Here they stopped and the man reached into his gown for another key, a smaller one this time.
Just as they were entering the apartment on the third floor opposite this landing, Joseph noticed that there was still one more floor above them even though the main staircase ended with the third floor. The entrance to this top floor, which appeared to have been at one time a loft or storeroom, was gained by climbing a crude, ladderlike staircase with a single rail, which was fastened at a slight angle against the wall. The door to which these steps led was directly above the farther end of the landing, and to Joseph’s surprise appeared to be of metal. From its shape and size the boy decided that it was a window that had been changed into an entrance, while at its right a square aperture had been cut in the wall probably for the purpose of giving light. In an instant they were in the apartment where the man and girl lived, and Joseph had no further chance to study the loft which in some unexplainable manner had aroused his curiosity.
This apartment was stuffy and poorly lighted, but the furnishings were not poor. There were tapestries and great oaken chairs, a heavy table in the middle of the room, several huge chests, and a sideboard upon which some silver glistened.
The girl ran quickly to a shutter and threw it open, whereupon the light streamed in through a myriad of small glass panes set in lead. Quickly she set before Joseph and the man in black, small goblets which she filled with wine; a few pieces of broken bread were placed before them on the table, and they all ate, Joseph rather voraciously, although striving to disguise his hunger.
“Now tell us your story,” the man bade him.
Joseph related it briefly, emphasizing for the most part the arrival of his father and mother and himself in the city that morning, and the dilemma that faced them in procuring lodgings.
The man in the black robe listened attentively, and when the boy had finished he struck the table a light blow. “I think I have it,” he said. “Wait here for me and take what refreshment you will. I will be back in a few moments.”
He went out through the door and hurried down the stairs to one of the apartments below.
The girl pushed her chair closer to Joseph’s and looked up into his eyes.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“I am Joseph Charnetski.”
“Joseph,” she said. “I like the name much. Mine is Elzbietka.”
“My father is Andrew Charnetski,” continued Joseph, “and we lived in the country of the black lands in the Ukraine. It was lonely in our neighborhood, for the nearest neighbor was sixty staja away, yet we never felt fear of Cossack or Tartar, though others did, for my father always treated them well. We were therefore surprised not long ago when there came to us a former servant, a friendly Tartar, who said that we were in some danger, and although my father laughed, I know that he gave the report some credence since he took the Tartar aside and talked with him privately for a long time. He is not one to reveal his fear, however, and we remained in our house as before with the warning all but forgotten by my mother and me.
“Then one night before we went to bed, my mother, who was working upon some sewing, saw a man’s face peeping in through the thatch at one corner of our house. It was a face that she had never seen before; it was not one of the servants of our place or any place next to ours; it was a villainous face and it made such an impression on her that she screamed aloud, alarming us all.”
“Yes?” the blue eyes were full of interest.
“That night my father came into the room where I was sleeping, bade me dress quickly, and in a short time led me and my mother through a little door in the rear of the house that I had never seen opened before, since it had always been fastened with nails. Outside this door we found ourselves in a passageway dug out of the earth like a cave, and through this we crept until we emerged into a shed some distance from the other dwellings where two of our best horses were hitched to a cart. That my father had already taken such precautions unknown to us assured me that he had feared something, the nature of which he had kept from us.”
“But you know now?”
“Nay—the most curious part is yet to come. My mother and I climbed into the wagon where a goodly supply of food had been stored, while my father, moving swiftly, wielded a forked stick with such effect, in one corner of the shed, that he soon unearthed a pile of vegetables which had been covered over with tree branches and leaves in order to preserve them. I thought at the time that he was about to put some of them into our wagon for food, but to my surprise he chose only one.”
“And that——”
“A pumpkin.”
“Apumpkin! But why——”
“I know no more about it than you. When everything else in our wagon had been eaten, father refused to give it up—this was ten days later, of course, when we were on the last stages of our journey; and once, indeed this very morning, a man who had evidently pursued us from the Ukraine offered my father the pumpkin’s weight in gold in exchange for it—but my father refused.”
“Did you learn whose face your mother saw in the thatch?”
“That I did not, but what came later proved that my father had acted wisely in leaving our house secretly and in a hurry. For when we stopped in a village a few days later to rest our horses, we saw a neighbor who had traveled from our part of the country on horseback. He had passed our place on the day after we left. Every building had been burned to the ground, he told us, and the land itself looked as if a battle had raged there; the wheat was down and the crops were burnt, and holes had been dug everywhere as if the invaders had hunted for hidden treasure.”
“Your father has the pumpkin now?”
“It is safe in his possession—though why he refused its weight in gold I cannot see. But I think he would not be pleased that I have told all this about it, although I know that the secret is safe with you. Now tell me something of yourself. This man whom you called uncle—is he your father’s brother?”
“That he is. My mother and father died in the plague that spread through the town when I was small. He is a Master of Arts in the university and a very great scholar,” she added proudly. “His name is Nicholas Kreutz and among those most famed in the university in alchemy he is indeed the greatest. He is not a servant of the Church, though a good Christian, and he seeks, as do many others, the secrets of his craft.”
The scholar-alchemist appeared suddenly in the doorway and smiled at them.
“I have just ascertained,” he said, seating himself at the table, “that if it pleases your father there is a haven for you all here in this very house. There is not much to pay, and a shelter, however lowly, is better than the sky when night falls. Your father might sell his pair of horses—horses bring a good price at present, I hear—and he could live here until some suitable employment appears. Unless,” he added, “the place is too humble——”
“Indeed that cannot be,” said the boy eagerly. “Gladly at this minute will he welcome any roof for the sake of my mother who is somewhat tired after the long journey from the Ukraine. I cannot go too swiftly to tell him of this news. But only assure me that you are in sober earnest about this matter.”
Elzbietka sprang up from her chair. “Did you but know him as well as I, you would not doubt.”
At that the alchemist enveloped her with his long arms from which hung the black sleeves of his gown, until she smiled out from the embrace at Joseph like one caught between the wings of a great raven or crow.
“Hurry and tell your people,” she commanded him, “and bring them back here. Indeed, I never knew what a mother was. If I but please her——”
“That you will,” shouted Joseph. “I will go as soon as Pan Kreutz unlocks the door for me below.”
“Tell your people that it is the floor beneath us that is unoccupied,” directed the alchemist as he let the boy out through the gate. “There are only two rooms there, a large and a small one, but they will serve your purposes for the time, I believe.”
Joseph thanked him with all his heart and set out on the run for the market place. The Street of the Pigeons seemed to unwind before him as he ran and he was soon in the street leading directly to the Cloth Hall.
Turning there, past one corner of the Town Hall, he ran directly by the cloth markets and headed for the little church near which his father had unloosed the horses. But no sooner had his eyes fallen upon the wagon and his father and mother standing in it, than he stopped suddenly in astonishment. Then like an arrow leaving a bow he darted forward, for what he saw set his heart beating faster than it had beaten in all that eventful day.
The stranger that they had left in the mud by the roadside that morning stood by the side of the wagon with a crowd of ruffians at his heels threatening and shouting at Pan Andrew and his wife. The stranger carried a huge club, and the ruffians, of whom he appeared to be the leader, were armed with staves and stones and were shouting angrily as if intent on harming the man and woman above them. Pan Andrew, in facing them, had stepped in front of his wife, to shield her if stones were thrown; and the sight of the resistance, and the cries of the leader and his attackers, soon brought a huge crowd surging about the wagon, for it was now close on to noon, and the morning’s business of the market was well-nigh finished and many citizens and farmers were eating or resting in the shade of the trees about the square.
Joseph darted through the crowd and leaped up on the wagon, to stand by his father’s side.
“Ha, we have the cub as well,” shouted the one who had boasted of the name Ostrovski in the early morning. “He is a wizard like unto the father, and a witch like the mother, for it was he who made my horse fly straight up to heaven this morning with a blow upon the flank.”
At that a great skulk in the crowd let fly a stone at the three which missed Pan Andrew but narrowly.
“Magicians, wizards, witches,” hooted the crowd.
“It is the man who is the worst,” shouted the self-named Ostrovski. “It is he who hath bewitched my brother and cut off his head and changed the head into a pumpkin. If he be honest, let him deliver that pumpkin over to me in the sight of all, that I may give Christian burial to my brother’s brains. . . . An’ he will not, let him face my charge. He is a wizard, yea, and one condemned by church and court and precept. At him! Kill him! But save me the pumpkin which is the head of my brother!”
Absurd as these accusations seem to-day, they did not seem so in the fifteenth century. For men were then but beginning to see the folly of many superstitions and cruelties that had been prevalent since the Dark Ages; they believed that certain persons had malign powers such as could transform others into strange animals; they thought that by magic men could work out their spite upon others in horribly malicious ways; that food could be poisoned by charms and milk made sour.
And to raise the cry of wizard against a man, no matter how peace-loving and innocent he might be, was enough to start rough and brutal men, yes, and women, too, into active persecution and unlawful deeds.
This was the method that the stranger had adopted in order to get his revenge upon Pan Andrew, and not only revenge, but that which he sought even more keenly, the possession of the pumpkin that the country gentleman had refused to deliver to him early in the day. He had been about the city seeking out certain friends or followers in order to raise the cry of wizard, and then he had with them searched through the city until they came upon Pan Andrew and his wife.
“The pumpkin, the pumpkin—it is my brother’s head,” he kept shouting.
Pan Andrew, on his side, only smiled back derisively upon him, and gathered in the pumpkin where no man could seize it without taking as well a blow from his heavy sword, and the attackers, being more cowards than men, made no attempt to approach the wagon at the side that he was facing. Some armed with large stones were, however, sneaking around to get behind him, and others in front were preparing to send a volley of missiles upon him, when there rushed into the turmoil a man of venerable appearance, clad in a brown robe with large puffy sleeves and pointed hood. He was of moderate stature, firm of gait, and bore himself like a man in the prime of life.
A priest he might have been, a brother of some order he seemed, but a scholar he was certainly, for there was that in his face and a droop to the shoulders that proclaimed him a man of letters.
“Cease—cease—cowards all!” he shouted in a commanding tone of voice. “What persecution goes on here?”
“The man and the woman and boy are workers in magic, wizards and a witch,” said the leader roughly. “Keep your hands off, for we are admonishing them.”
“Wizards and witches—fiddlesticks!” shouted the newcomer, pulling himself up in the wagon until he stood beside Pan Andrew. “This is but an excuse for some such deed of violence as this city has seen too much of in the past twelve months. To attack an honest man—for to any but a blind man he appears as honest—a weak woman, and a defenseless boy—Cowards all, I say! Disperse, or I will call the King’s guards to disperse you.”
“It is Jan Kanty himself,” said one of the rioters in a loud whisper that all about him heard. “I’m off, for one.” And throwing his stick to the ground he took to his heels.
If there had been no magic in Pan Andrew, his wife, or his boy, there was magic in the name of Jan Kanty, and a very healthy magic, too, for at once every hat in that crowd came off, and men began to look askance at each other as if caught in some shameful thing.
“The good Jan Kanty,” was whispered on every side, and in the briefest second imaginable the crowd had melted until there remained not one person, not even the leader of the ruffians who had begun the attack.
Amongthe most remarkable personages of Krakow’s age of glory in the fifteenth century was a certain scholar-priest by the name of Jan Kanty. He had been educated at the University of Krakow in the period of late Scholasticism when the chief teachings were still mere expositions of the Seven Arts of which Grammar was the king. However, a full life and much contact with men had made Jan Kanty a well-rounded man. He loved learning for its own sake, but he honored most of all its precepts and its application to life, and he gave himself over in his cell-like quarters on the lower floor of the old University building, now long since destroyed by fire, to the creation of new points of view on old subjects, to comments on the conduct and opinions of the masters and doctors of the university at the great church councils of Europe, and to an intellectual chronicle of his age.
His life was saintly and his cell was as much visited, perhaps, as is his shrine in the magnificent old university library to-day. The peasants loved him especially, and this was rather curious since the men from the farms rarely sought the advice of the men of the university; they were, in fact, somewhat shy of the dispensers of higher learning. They were not shy of Jan Kanty, however. They came to Krakow to ask his opinion on the weather in the seasons of grains and vegetables, they called upon him for decisions in disputes between landowners, they consulted him concerning the proper kind of food for their live stock, they questioned him on all problems having to do with morals or religion, and they accepted his rulings with as much finality and satisfaction as if they had been the rulings of Heaven.
Therefore his name was one to be reckoned with everywhere, inside the city and out. He hated above all things cruelty of man against man, or of man against something helpless, a horse, or a dog, or a child. And when he saw one man and a woman and a boy of honest features and good appearance harassed by some hundred men, he did not hesitate but rushed into the midst of the flying stones without regard to his own safety or comfort.
“Peace be with you,” he said to Pan Andrew when the crowd had scattered, “and with you, my daughter,” putting his hand upon the woman’s head. “What may be the cause of such mischance? You are strangers here?”
“Strangers and worse. Homeless,” said Pan Andrew.
“You are come from a long distance?”
“The Ukraine.”
The kind shoulders rocked in agitation. “My—my—but surely you have friends in town?”
“I have none. I had a friend here and sought him, but he is dead. My house is burned by Tartars, my wealth is gone. I am pursued by men who seek my life and the one possession that I have left.” Here he touched the pumpkin with his foot.
“But why this accusation of magic?”
Pan Andrew smiled. “A trick it was to raise feelings against me in the public square and then to despoil me of this possession. I think that he who raised the storm against me here has followed me many miles across the border, and I believe that he is the agent of some more powerful person. There is much to this, my good—my good—— You are a priest?”
“Men call me so. I am but a servant of the Father of us all.”
“Then, good father, hear me! I seek to do no man wrong. I am helpless in a world of plotting and troubles and I seek only a place where I may this night provide shelter for my good wife and my boy.”
“Come with me then,” said the scholar-priest. “I will at least offer you the hospitality that my cell affords. . . . Nay—hitch your horses to the wagon and drive through that lane yonder which leads to the Street of St. Ann.”
Pan Andrew was already adjusting the harnesses when Joseph tugged at his sleeve. “Father,” he urged, “father, I know of a place where we can stay.”
The father looked down at him in astonishment. “You,” he answered, “you? And how did you find such a place?”
“A scholar and his niece live there. They took me to their house. There is a space below them at the head of a flight of stairs.”
Jan Kanty interposed. “Come at any rate to my dwelling, and there we can make plans. If the boy has found a place, and his face and words seem truthful, then we can talk at better length there at our ease than here in the busy square.”
A few minutes later they stopped in front of the largest of a number of buildings which made up the university. On the way there Joseph had noted that almost every man they passed on the street had doffed his hat to Jan Kanty, and once a whole company of knights had saluted him with drawn swords. He seemed to pay but little attention to these courtesies, however, for his mind was busy with the problem of the present, and when he alighted from the cart and led the three to his little cell on the ground floor just at the right of the door, he was still pondering.
Once inside the house, however, Pan Andrew, disregarding Joseph’s information for the minute, begged an immediate audience with Jan Kanty alone, and while the boy and his mother were eating some food which the scholar had placed upon a table in the corridor just outside his cell, he began to address his host in a low tone.
Their voices buzzed as Joseph and his mother ate. Only once did the boy catch distinct syllables, and that was when the priest asked Pan Andrew, “That, then, is the pumpkin that you have brought from the Ukraine?”
Pan Andrew must have nodded, for he made no verbal answer. He had not dropped the precious vegetable from his hands during the entire conversation. Joseph heard no more of the talk, for he began at that moment to tell his mother of his own adventures of the morning.
As he progressed with his story she ceased eating and stared at him. “Why, this is a very miracle,” she said. “As soon as Pan Andrew has finished with the good father in the next room, we will go straight about procuring the lodging of which the scholar told you. . . . And the poor child—she lost her father and mother in the plague? Indeed, I think that God must have sent us to her.”
Jan Kanty at the farther end of the cell listened to Pan Andrew’s tale to the very end. He asked a few questions which the other answered and then the two began to converse rapidly though in low tones.
At length Jan Kanty passed his hand across his eyes as if thinking very deeply. Then he said, “It seems to me that there is one course open to you. You have enemies in the city, you believe, and therefore you must remain for the present unseen. I advise a change of name, for such subterfuge is no sin where the end to be gained is righteous. For your present needs you can obtain money by selling your horses and cart; if you wish I will send a man with them to the horse market in the plain below the Wawel. They would be but an encumbrance to you at best, and moreover they will bring a pretty price since they are of good stock and well fed.”
“This money will not last me forever,” said Pan Andrew. “I must think of some employment besides.”
“I have thought of that,” continued Jan Kanty. “I know of employment which might suit your case even though it be a humble task.”
“It cannot be too humble for me,” answered the other quickly, “provided it brings enough return for the support of my wife and boy.”
“Good! Excellent!” exclaimed the scholar. “Then I have just the thing. You were a hunter in the old days, I presume?”
“Why, yes,” said Pan Andrew, wondering.
“And you can sound the horn?”
“That I can. And if I do say it, with more skill than any hunter in the Eastern Marches.”
“Good! . . . But yet one thing. This news which you have imparted to me should be for the ears of the King alone. The treasure which you guard should be returned to him, it should become the property of the commonwealth. I know not what harm it has already done in the world; I only hope that it may do no more. Would you leave it with me for safe-keeping, perhaps?”
“Would that I could. But it was the oath that I took to my father that it should never leave my hands while life remained—save to one person, and that person, the King of Poland.”
“Then God be with you. Rest here until the horses are sold and then after hearing your son’s story we will think of to-morrow.”
He called the mother and boy into his cell. “Why, here,” he said on hearing the story of Joseph’s adventure from his mother’s lips, “is the thing arranged to perfection. I know the place you mention and I know the scholar Kreutz as well. A curious man, and of certain strange disposition, but honest and sincere and a seeker after light. He is, I think, feared by the common people as are also many dwellers in the next street which has been since olden times inhabited by sorcerers and their ilk, and the court of his house is but little frequented. They tell strange tales of him, sometimes, most of which I know to be false. But it is just the place for your dwelling at present, since there is little likelihood of your being disturbed there.”
At this so great a feeling of thankfulness came upon Joseph’s mother that she would have fallen to her knees and asked the good father for his blessing, but he restrained her.
“Nay, daughter,” he said, “it is I who need thy blessing, since I know what fortitude and courage thy kind heart possesses.”
She kissed his hand nevertheless, as did Joseph immediately afterward, and Pan Andrew turned away quickly lest they should see that his eyes were moist, for there is such power in kindness well bestowed that it touches the wells of human feeling. There was, too, something in this scholar-priest that went at once to the heart, some fine quality of feeling and spirituality that set him apart, though ever so sweetly and gently, from other men.
A servant of the university was dispatched to sell the horses and cart, and Joseph with his father and mother sat down to await the man’s return.
While they were waiting, there came a knocking upon the outside door. Jan Kanty went to it at once. A woman stood there, with a baby in her arms, not in the attitude of one asking for alms but of one seeking advice. She came, it seemed, from the Black Village and was suffering much from pains that took her legs and arms and neck.
Jan Kanty questioned her quietly. “Where do you sleep?” he asked.
“On the floor, reverend sir,” she answered. “And the aches and pains are so strong that I can stand them no longer. It is certain that a devil possesses me and I would that you should pray him away.”
“Is the floor made of stones?”
“It is.”
“Are the stones ever wet?”
“No, reverend sir, except in spring.”
“Is the earth damp beneath the stones?”
“Why—yes—perhaps,” she said. “Sometimes when the well water is not much used it overflows, for there is a source there, and sometimes when they have been drawing water carelessly the overflow leaks down beneath the stones.”
“Then take heed to what I say and the aches and pains will pass. Take stones and build a low wall between the well and the side of your cottage. Make this waterproof and then dig a drain that will carry the water away from your house. Hang your bedclothes often in the sun and be sure that they are always dry. Change every week the boughs upon which you lie; thus will the pains go away.”
She kissed his hand and departed.
Then came a peasant who complained that worms were coming up from the ground and were destroying the young shoots of his plants.
“Could you but say a prayer, father,” the man supplicated, “the worms will cease.”
“It is for you to prevent them,” said Jan Kanty. “Sprinkle all the earth about the plants with ashes which you take from your stove. If this does not prevent the worms, then rise early in the morning and pour water about the plants. The worms will then come to the top where the water is and you may kill them.”
Then stooping over a high desk he began to write upon a long scroll of parchment, the end of which hung far over the desk almost to the floor. He used for writing the quill of a pigeon thrust into a piece of oak wood.
Joseph curled up on a bench that ran along beneath the windows and closed his eyes. What a day it had been! And what might the future hold?
His thoughts, which at first had begun to run slowly, suddenly became brisk and grew fantastic. He seemed to see himself bearing armor, a shield, and a sword, fighting desperately with a great dark-browed Tartar who had instead of a head a huge yellow pumpkin. Then the Tartar suddenly took off his head, and carrying it in his arms, climbed up a steep ladder to a room that seemed to hang from the stars. Out of it came lightning and flashes of strangely colored light, and suddenly the Tartar emerged, now with the head of a dog, and the pumpkin floating along beside him as if it were but a ball of feathers in the wind. The scratching of Jan Kanty’s quill grew fainter and fainter, and the fantastic world dimmed slowly in blackness.
Joseph was fast asleep.
When he awoke the room was no longer filled with sunshine. A single candle lantern was burning at the farther end of the cell and by its light he could see his father, Jan Kanty, and his mother busied with something that lay in front of them upon the table. He rubbed his eyes to make sure that he was awake—yes, it was the mysterious pumpkin from which his father was slicing away the outer rind with a huge knife. It was a curious pumpkin, that vegetable—the rind was so hard and brittle that the knife scraped on it as if it were cutting or whittling away a piece of board. Joseph, fascinated, watched the process, almost afraid to breathe. Little by little the hard pieces dropped to the floor like bits of shell as the blade cut them through.
“I think,” the father was saying in a low voice, “that I hold here in my hand the reason for the attack on my house in the Ukraine, and that the man who has hounded us to-day knew very well what this pumpkin shell contained. He had been told that I had it in my possession; he knew the exact size of my property, and he quickly put two and two together when he saw this pumpkin, and only this pumpkin, in my wagon. The reason that I made no effort to conceal it was, of course, to allay any suspicion concerning it.”
“But,” interrupted Jan Kanty, “a pumpkin at this time of year is likely to create some curiosity among those who give the matter a second thought. This is a late pumpkin, and I suppose that in all Poland it would be hard to find another such in midsummer.”
“True,” replied Pan Andrew, “but I had to risk that. Long ago when I was worried over this sacred charge and feared lest some enemy might discover its existence and attempt to rob me, there came to me the idea of a shell like this as an excellent means of concealment. Since that day there has never been a time, summer or winter, when there was not a pumpkin shell in readiness for an emergency, and many an experiment was I obliged to make, indeed, before I was able to preserve a shell in the good condition of this one.”
At this moment he cut away the last piece of the rind.
The room was suddenly filled with the light of a thousand candles. Colors of the rainbow fell upon the walls—a huge center of radiance like the sun in the heavens blazed into being at the very place where the pumpkin shell had been but a moment before. Flickering, dancing flecks of light leaped about the room and transformed its gloom into the brilliancy of day—and then there was again but the light of the little lantern, for the father had placed that which the pumpkin contained in a bag furnished by Jan Kanty, and was busy tying up the open side when Joseph came rushing up to the table.
“Father,” he cried, “what was it? What was the light which came from that which you took from the pumpkin?”
The father’s voice was kindly but firm. “In time, Joseph, you shall know. It would be but a care to you, a matter of more worry than you suspect, if you knew what responsibility we are carrying here. If it is mere curiosity, be assured that knowledge will bring nothing but pain. If it is real interest, I will tell you plainly that in due time you shall be informed of all that has passed. Just now—it has cost me so much that I have not the heart to burden your young life with its secrets.”
He broke off, and, after a short silence, changed the subject.
“We will go now to that place which you have found for us. While you slept the reverend father and I have been to see your friends. He has seen to it that the rooms have been made comfortable, and there we shall stay, at least for the present.”
St. Ann’s Streetwas as black as pitch when they emerged from the habitation of the scholar-priest. He insisted on accompanying them and carried his little candle lantern for aid, which, though it threw a faint light upon the ground a step or two ahead, yet had not much more light than the stars which shone down from a moonless sky. Pan Andrew with his wife on his right arm followed Jan Kanty, and Joseph brought up the rear. They had taken but a few steps along the narrow footwalk by the side of the road, when something damp and clammy was forced into the boy’s right hand; he gave a little startled jump, but reassured himself at the next minute that it was nothing but the nose of a stray dog that had sought his hand as a token of friendly greeting.
“And as I live,” thought Joseph as he reached down and felt a great shaggy head, “it’s like the wolf dog that leaped at Elzbietka this very day. Yes—it’s about the same size—and here: the collar is exactly the same that I had my fingers through. I know its feel by those little knobs that almost tear the flesh. Father! Father!” he called.
Pan Andrew turned about quickly. “What is it?”
“A dog,” answered the boy, “a friendly dog.”
“Bring him along with us,” said the father with a laugh, “we can’t have too many friends just now.” And at that they continued on their way.
Now of all the creatures that God has put in the world a dog is the most curious, and sometimes, one might think, the most discerning. For when this same animal had broken loose in the morning, his first impulse, which he had followed, had been that of flight. His second impulse was to look for a friend, since no dog can live without a friend. The Tartar boy had already departed. The dog had seen too much of him as it was. Also by virtue of a rare instinct which dogs, and sometimes horses, possess, the wolf dog had realized fully that the boy who had leaped at his collar was not an enemy. Perhaps it was the boy’s touch, perhaps it was some quality in the tone of his voice, but the animal knew that Joseph was used to dogs and knew as well that he was just in his treatment of them. Therefore he had searched all day throughout the city streets, and when he came upon this little group of people in the dark street his sense of smell told him that here was a dog lover, and marvel of marvels, it was the same dog lover that had sprung upon him earlier in the day!
They turned at length from St. Ann’s Street into a side lane that is known to-day as Jagiellonska, and followed it for a short distance until they reached the Street of the Pigeons. Here they turned to the left and walked for a few steps until suddenly just before them rose a babel of subdued voices. Father Jan Kanty stood stock-still. The others also came to a halt and remained motionless except for the dog, which strained at Joseph’s hold upon his collar.
“Stay,” said the scholar, “I will go forward to see what may be in the air.” And holding his lantern at the height of his head, he plunged into a crowd of black-robed figures that had formed a circle in the very middle of the street.
“Students,” he cried aloud, as he swung his lantern first to this face and then to that, “students. And what devilment make you here now?”
The crowd broke before him at a touch. Either he was much feared by them or greatly respected—that Pan Andrew could see—perhaps both.
“A duel,” he exclaimed as he reached the center of the crowd, where a space lighted by a lantern upon the ground had previously been obscured by the bodies of the lookers-on, “and what means it?”
Two young men, both students, with their black university robes lying beside them on the ground, stood facing each other with unfastened underjackets. Slender Italian dueling swords or foils, held firmly in the clasped fingers of their bared right arms, had clashed the instant before Jan Kanty entered the arena.
“A duel,” he repeated. “Do you not know that dueling has been forbidden I know not how many times within these streets bounding the university? Do you not know that it is punishable by fine or imprisonment even, if the duelers are students?”
His hands groped fearlessly for the weapons. “This is no play duel,” he cried, as he gathered them in.
Indeed it was not! The young men were fighting with naked rapiers! In most of the students’ duels the points of the weapons were capped with buttons to make them less dangerous, or if the engagements were to be with broadswords, the opponents wore breastplates and heavy gauntlets and helmets. But here stood two young men without a single precaution against injury, and it was quite evident that one of them would have been badly wounded, had not the scholar brought the fight to an end.
“What means this?” he repeated. “Who may you be?”
Holding the lantern close up to the face of the nearer, he cried out suddenly in astonishment, “Johann Tring! As much would I have thought of seeing you here as I would have of seeing our own Lord Cardinal. You whom I thought more a slave to a crucible than to a sword. And your name?” he thundered at the other.
“Conrad Mlynarki of Mazovia,” answered the student, thrusting his weapon back into his girdle and letting his eyes drop for shame.
“A Mazovian! Well, it rejoices me that you are ashamed, and there was perhaps reason for your anger, since I hear that Mazovians are insulted without much thought these days. Go to your room! I will hear your story to-morrow. And you”—he turned to the remnants of the original crowd, those few who remained, maliciously hoping to see punishment meted out to the offenders—“betake yourselves to your bursars with all possible speed, for if I see one of you here when I return, I will notify the authorities in the morning.”
“As to you, Johann Tring,” he addressed the other student when he stood alone with him in the middle of the street, “are you not ashamed at such a public brawl?”
“I am not,” said the student quickly and without flinching at the look which Jan Kanty gave him.
At this moment Pan Andrew and the others came up to them. In the light of the lantern Joseph glanced at the face of the student, Johann Tring, and received almost a shock—a feeling at least of violent repulsion. It was not that the face was distorted, indeed it was not, the eyes were bright and piercing, and the hair was black—the carriage of the body was erect, and the whiteness of the skin where the collar was rolled back stood in remarkable contrast to the hair and the blackness that lay about him. But the nose was thin and mean, the mouth was small and smug, and out of the eyes came a look that signified an utterly selfish spirit behind them. For one so young this expression was strange, and even more than strange; it was unnatural, and this unnaturalness was more apparent, even, to a boy of Joseph’s age than it might have been to an older and maturer man who was used to much selfishness and meanness in the world.
“Now what caused this quarrel?” Joseph heard the scholar ask the question rather sharply.
“It is too long to tell at once——”
“Yes, but briefly.”
“He insulted me.”
“What did he say?”
“More things than one, but chiefly chided me about my studies. Asked me if I had learned yet how to make gold out of iron or brass or leather and said that he would collect old shoes all over the city if I would transmute them into precious metal.”
“And this upon no provocation?”
The young man hesitated, yet there was something compelling about Jan Kanty that caused men to speak the truth to him. “I did ask him if the frogs in the North country spoke Mazovian,” he answered in a rather sour voice.
“Yes, and I thought it was something like this,” spoke Jan Kanty quickly. “Why must one always aggravate these Mazovians to their swords? I warn you here and now that, swordsman though you may be, the Mazovians are much more nimble with blades than with tongue.”
“But he said further,” went on Tring in self-justification, and being unable to express himself clearly in Polish continued in German, much to Joseph’s distress, for he could not understand a word.
“Have more caution, Tring,” said the scholar at length. “Since you are not enrolled as a regular student of the university you must be even more careful in your conduct than if you were. . . . Since it is you who have first drawn your weapon, it must be you who make peace. Go to-morrow at dawn and kiss your opponent upon the cheek and sue him for pardon.”
This advice sat hard upon Tring’s temper, but he was so much influenced by the scholar that he finally bowed his head in consent.
“And further than this I might say, Johann Tring, that such occurrences bring you no credit. I know not much of your studies these days, though I think sometimes that you keep company more with necromancers and astrologers of little merit than with such worthy men as Pan Kreutz and his equals. These are dark days when men look with suspicion upon all who engage in investigation whether it be honest or dishonorable, godly or selfish. Are you still at Kreutz’s?”
“I am.”
“Then come with us since we are bound for his dwelling. This Pan and his wife are taking the rooms below Kreutz’s.”
The young man tried to peer into the darkness beyond the lantern light to see who the new tenants might be, but none of the Charnetskis were visible.
They walked ahead a few steps until they came to the door where Joseph had been in the afternoon. Jan Kanty reached up and pulled the wire which hung down from above the door, and in a few minutes an old bent woman with a lantern scrutinized their faces from the open doorway and admitted them.
“All will be well now,” said Joseph’s father. “We need not trouble you further.”
“It has been otherwise than trouble,” protested the scholar. “You will be well and comfortable, I am sure, for all the arrangements have been made. To-morrow I shall send you the man who will tell you of your new duties. And now good night to you, Pan Andrew—Kovalski”—he hesitated a bit over the assumed name—“and may peace be with you.”
“And with you.” They all repeated it.
The kindly figure of the gentle, loving, saintly old man passed out into the darkness again. The woman slammed the door and bolted it heavily when the Charnetskis—now the Kovalskis—Johann Tring, and the dog were inside.
“At last,” said Pan Andrew, “we are at home.”
They passed through the passage with its pointed arches and emerged into the court, the woman leading the way with her lantern. Here Tring bade them good night and went to his room on the right-hand side of the court. Joseph felt at parting from him something of the same dislike that he had experienced when the lantern light had fallen upon his face in the street; the face was one that might easily come to haunt a man in his dreams, and yet it was in daylight but an ordinary face, like that of a thousand other students, who possessed neither the gift of beauty nor the curse of ugliness—yet in that yellow gleam of the lantern there had been upon the features some indefinable threat of malignity.
The woman led them to the stairway on the left. As they ascended these same stairs that Joseph had climbed earlier in the day, the whole staircase seemed even more shaky and rickety than it had appeared in the light of day. The woman moved ahead of them freely, but Pan Andrew and his wife and Joseph clung to the railing as if for protection in case the boards should fall away beneath their feet.
At the first landing the door stood open. Out from this door came the welcome beam of a candle, lighted by the hands of Elzbietka Kreutz. The father with this candle in his hand at once inspected the little quarters. There were but two rooms, one of them fortunately large and of good shape, so that while one end of it must serve as a bedroom for Pan Andrew and his wife, there was ample room at the other end for the general living quarters of the family. The smaller room at the back Joseph would sleep in. The woman who had opened the door had been busy all the evening preparing the place for occupancy, expending some of the money which Pan Andrew had given her, for bare necessities, a rug, wooden eating utensils, chairs, and beds.
He had left his name as Andrew Kovalski with the woman, the name which had been agreed upon with Jan Kanty, a name in itself one of the most common, since it signified a smith—and the alchemist and his niece having been advised of the kinship with the Tenczynskis, willingly pledged silence concerning the true name.
“Well, wife,” said Pan Andrew when they were alone and the door fastened, “this is better than we dared hope.” Thereupon he laid down upon the table in the large room the precious round parcel which had not left his hands at any time since they had set out from Jan Kanty’s cell. “Best of all we are safe here; the door is heavy, the front of the building is of stone, and from the rear no one could climb over the wall without danger to himself. It is, indeed, the wall of a monastery to which none but monks have access. Above us is the alchemist, Kreutz, and below on the ground floor are the old woman and her son, both of whom take care of the building and watch the gate at night.