All the kurens sat down in circles in the evening, and talked for a
long time of their deeds, and of the achievements which had fallen to
the share of each, for repetition by strangers and posterity. It was
long before they lay down to sleep; and longer still before old Taras,
meditating what it might signify that Andrii was not among the foe,
lay down. Had the Judas been ashamed to come forth against his own
countrymen? or had the Jew been deceiving him, and had he simply gone
into the city against his will? But then he recollected that there
were no bounds to a woman's influence upon Andrii's heart; he felt
ashamed, and swore a mighty oath to himself against the fair Pole who
had bewitched his son. And he would have kept his oath. He would not
have looked at her beauty; he would have dragged her forth by her
thick and splendid hair; he would have trailed her after him over all
the plain, among all the Cossacks. Her beautiful shoulders and bosom,
white as fresh-fallen snow upon the mountain-tops, would have been
crushed to earth and covered with blood and dust. Her lovely body
would have been torn to pieces. But Taras, who did not foresee what
God prepares for man on the morrow, began to grow drowsy, and finally
fell asleep. The Cossacks still talked among themselves; and the sober
sentinel stood all night long beside the fire without blinking and
keeping a good look out on all sides.



CHAPTER VIII

The sun had not ascended midway in the heavens when all the army
assembled in a group. News had come from the Setch that during the
Cossacks' absence the Tatars had plundered it completely, unearthed