"I knew you'd come," he stammered forth at last--"knew that I had friends who would not leave me undefended to the tender mercies of this pack of wolves."
No one made any response. They stood drawn up in an unbroken line, their eyes looking beyond rather than at him, in embarrassment. Engelbert was the first to break the silence.
"You have summoned us, and we have come--but our time is short; tell us what you want us to do."
For a moment Boleslav wondered at being addressed in this curt, somewhat surly fashion, by the comrade who, of all others, had been his favourite. But it was only for a moment. Why should he doubt them? Had they not come? And then, incoherently enough, he related how his father's disgrace had descended on him, and what he had resolved to do, with their help.
All the time a pair of shining eyes watched him from the other side of a rubbish heap, and a woman's figure that sat cowering there trembled like an aspen.
"They are here--they are in the village!" she had called out to him in timid excitement, as she had flown into the yard like a Mænad. At first he had not recognised her in a light cotton skirt, a bed-jacket buttoned over her panting bosom, and a handkerchief of many colours on her head, tied under the chin, according to a fashion of the peasant girls in the neighbourhood.
"They gave me these things to put on," she had added apologetically, on observing his puzzled looks.
And then in pleasure at the news that his friends had arrived, he had forgotten her, till, while waiting for them on the bridge, he had caught sight of her hovering about the ruins. The head-dress had fallen on her neck, and the wild black tresses escaped, and waved in confusion about her sunburnt face. She seemed to be smiling absently to herself.
He was ashamed to think his friends had seen this woman, and decided to pay her off and dismiss her on the spot, so that they should not encounter her again.
"Nothing, _Herr_," she replied, guiltily lowering her eyes.
"Ah, _Herr_," she murmured, "I was so glad."
"Because I had got safely back here again."
What strange fascination had this spot of earth for the abandoned creature who had suffered on it nothing but shame and degradation and endless misery? He remembered to have heard of domestic cats who, when the house to which they belong is deserted by its inhabitants, prefer to starve beneath its mouldering roof than to take up their abode elsewhere. And if this cat-like propensity were incurable in her--what then? After all, perhaps it would be cruel at this moment to pass sentence of banishment upon her. She might as well stay till to-morrow morning, so long as she kept out of his way.