highly-coloured complexion--a noble fond of strong mead and hearty
revelry. Behind them were many nobles who had equipped themselves,
some with their own ducats, some from the royal treasury, some with
money obtained from the Jews, by pawning everything they found in
their ancestral castles. Many too were parasites, whom the senators
took with them to dinners for show, and who stole silver cups from the
table and the sideboard, and when the day's display was over mounted
some noble's coach-box and drove his horses. There were folk of all
kinds there. Sometimes they had not enough to drink, but all were
equipped for war.

The Cossack ranks stood quietly before the walls. There was no gold
about them, save where it shone on the hilt of a sword or the
mountings of a gun. The Zaporozhtzi were not given to decking
themselves out gaily for battle: their coats-of-mail and garments were
plain, and their black-bordered red-crowned caps showed darkly in the
distance.

Two men--Okhrim Nasch and Mikiga Golokopuitenko--advanced from the
Zaporozhian ranks. One was quite young, the other older; both fierce
in words, and not bad specimens of Cossacks in action. They were
followed by Demid Popovitch, a strongly built Cossack who had been
hanging about the Setch for a long time, after having been in
Adrianople and undergoing a great deal in the course of his life. He
had been burned, and had escaped to the Setch with blackened head and
singed moustaches. But Popovitch recovered, let his hair grow, raised
moustaches thick and black as pitch, and was a stout fellow, according
to his own biting speech.

"Red jackets on all the army, but I should like to know what sort of