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"You will spy, will you? Well, we have you now. And when next you walk the streets, if so you do, you will have cause to remember Michael Paovla and his friends." Patro frowned. "You are too handy with names," he said. "Trust only a dead dog." "Leave that to me," said Michael with a dark frown. "You," he said to Ivan, "you see this gun?
She reached out a heavy foot, and pushed Elinor away from her. "Not for thy pleasure," she said sneeringly. "No, Patro, no! They are to pay me over and over for my life. Drop for drop, pain for pain, I will take from them all I have myself suffered. They shall sleep cold, because so I slept all my childhood. They shall hunger because I did so. They shall beg in the streets while I listen.
"Have it your own way," said the smaller man, Patro by name. "I always do," she said simply. Then she studied the sleeping forms again. "I think it will be well, some time soon, to twist the legs of the small one," she said. "She would make a sweet cripple." " No!" said Michael. "You may not do so. I will not have it." The woman laughed. "Said I not that I have my own way?" she asked.
"Perhaps you are right," she said. "People are dance-mad these times. They are pretty enough to climb to any heights." Patro laughed. "Why laugh?" said Martha angrily. "Nothing, nothing, dear Martha, only that it is funny to think you are taking these children down from the heights where they belong so that they may climb back for your pleasure." The woman's brow grew black.
"Of course, the boys will bother a good deal, if they go free." "Certainly they would," said Martha. "We would never know where they would crop up, especially that Ivan one." "Suppose they do not eat?" asked Patro. "Eat, eat!" cried Martha. "Well, know you nothing of boys! And they will suspect nothing. You are brutes, brutes, remember, and I so kind and so sorry," she laughed.
"All right, Martha, you do," said Patro, "but believe me, it is better to take the greatest care of those little ones. Think what dancers they may make some day. There is a fortune in those little feet, I'll be bound. Be careful of them, watch them, and perhaps some day they may be prancing on the opera stage at St. Petersburg, or even here in Warsaw." The woman sat thinking for a little.
Warren they lifted and tied in the same manner on the opposite side of the great table. "There!" said the woman Martha. "Now you can see each other, and talk as long as you like." She looked at the men and laughed. "Where are you going?" said Ivan in Polish. "Well," said the woman, "I don't mind telling you in the least." "Don't do it!" warned Patro. "Why not? They are safe," said the woman.
"That is sound sense, Patro," she answered, and when the children came dizzily to consciousness again, she treated them with almost a rough kindness. But when they cried, she beat them, taking pains to let the blows fall where they would not leave visible scars or bruises. So passed the dragging hours, until Warren, unconscious and bleeding, was flung down at Elinor's side. "There!" said Michael.
Soon Michael and Patro picked Ivan up and carried him to the massive bench that stood at one side of the table, and seating him there, tied his legs in a clever fashion so that he was unable to reach the bonds, he was so wedged between the bench and table. The place must once have been a public wine room, and what furniture there was of the heaviest sort.
And if there be not, then there is an end of all society in life. May it turn out well, says Carneades, speaking shamelessly, but still more sensibly than my friend Lucius or Patro: for, as they refer everything to themselves, do they think that anything is ever done for the sake of another?
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