uncle's tenantry, with skates and sledges, guns and torches, were
pouring to the rescue as we shouted to them from the cottage.

They had searched for us almost since midnight, fearing that something
terrible had detained Father Cassimer and his company from mass. There
were wonderfully few wolves shot in the retreat, and we all went home
to Count Emerich's house, but not in triumph, for with us went the
body of the Russian, of which old Wenzel was one of the bearers. The
unanimous determination we expressed to bring him to justice as a
murderer, was silenced when Emerich shewed us in confidence a letter
from the Russian minister, and a paper with all our names in a list of
the disaffected in Upper Lithuania, which he had found in Theodore's
pocket-book. After that, we all affirmed that Wenzel's gun had gone
off by accident; and on the same good Christmas-day, Count Emerich,
with a body of his retainers, escorted the Lady Juana to a convent at
the other end of the province, the superior of which was his aunt.
There she became a true Catholic, professed, and, as I was told,
turned to a great saint. There is a wooden cross with his name, and a
Latin inscription on it, marking Count Theodore's grave, by our old
church on the edge of the forest. No one ever inquired after him, and
the company of that terrible night are far scattered. My uncle and his
sons all died for the poor country. The young cousins are married to
German doctors in Berlin. Constanza and her brother are still single,
for aught I know, but they have been exiles in America these fifteen
years. Father Cassimer went with them, after being colonel of a
regiment which saw hard service on the banks of the Vistula; and it
may be that he is still saying mass or hunting occasionally in the Far
West.

The last time I saw Wenzel and Metski was in the trenches at Minsk,