rested curiously on something shining.

It was the nickeled hilt of the hunting-knife hanging at the old
forester's side and sparkling in the sunlight.

"Like a bayonet," thought Bogdan, and an idea flashed through his mind,
to whip the thing out of the scabbard and run it up to the hilt in the
hussy's body. But her rounded hips, her bright billowing skirts confused
him. In war he had never had to do with women. He could not exactly
imagine what it would be like to make a thrust into that beskirted body
there. His glance traveled back to the master, and now he noticed that
his stiffnecked silence had pulled him up short.

"He is gnashing his teeth," it struck him, "just like the tall Russian."
And he almost smiled at a vision that came to his mind--of the lord also
getting a smooth face and astonished, reproachful eyes.

But hadn't he said something about Marcsa just then? What was Marcsa to
him?

Bogdan drew himself up defiantly.

"I will arrange matters with Marcsa myself, sir. It's between her and
me," he rejoined hoarsely, and looked his master straight in the face.
_He_ still had his mustache, quite even on the two sides, and
curling delicately upwards at the ends. What was it the humpback had
said? "One man goes away and lets his head be blown off." He wasn't so
stupid after all, the humpback wasn't.

What Bogdan said infuriated the master. Bogdan let him shout and stared