rascals!" We began to run, but I suddenly turning round, presented
my piece, and shot the nearest dead on the spot. Schell fired his
pistols; our oppressors did the same, and Schell received a ball in
the neck at this discharge. It was now my turn; I took out my
pistols, one of the assailants fled, and I enraged, pursued him
three hundred paces, overtook him, and as he was defending himself
with his sword, perceiving he bled, and made a feeble resistance,
pressed upon him, and gave him a stroke that brought him down. I
instantly returned to Schell, whom I found in the power of two
others that were dragging him towards the carriage, but when they
saw me at their heels, they fled over the fields. The coachman,
perceiving which way the battle went, leaped on his box, and drove
off full speed.

Schell, though delivered, was wounded with a ball in the neck, and
by a cut in the right hand, which had made him drop his sword,
though he affirmed he had run one of his adversaries through.

I took a silver watch from the man I had killed, and was going to
make free with his purse, when Schell called, and showed me a coach
and six coming down a hill. To stay would have exposed us to have
been imprisoned as highwaymen; for the two fugitives who had escaped
us would certainly have borne witness against us. Safety could only
be found in flight. I, however, seized the musket and hat of him I
had first killed, and we then gained the copse, and after that the
forest. The road was round about, and it was night before we
reached Parsemechi.

Schell was besmeared with blood; I had bound up his wound the best I
could; but in Polish villages no surgeons are to be found: and he