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The knights sent a challenge to Jurand, who immediately accepted it under the condition that they would send away the soldiers and that three of them would fight with him and two of his companions on the boundaries of Szlonsk and Spychow.
While the men of Bogdaniec were perishing from German arrows, the Raubritters of Szlonsk fell upon their homes, burned their buildings, and slaughtered or took into slavery the peasants. Wojciech remained alone, the heir of a large but devastated tract of land, which formerly belonged to the whole family of wlodykas. Five years afterward he married and he begot two sons, Jasko and Macko.
He was a descendant of the Piasts of Szlonsk and the son of Bolko, Prince of Opole. Zbyszko had heard of him at the court of Witold; and now while standing behind the princess and Danusia, he recognized the archbishop by his abundant hair which being curled, made his head look like a kropidlo.
It seemed to him that he knew those sounds, and that nobody else was playing but she his child! his darling.... He therefore fell upon his knees, clasped his hands to pray, and listened shivering, as in a fever. Just then a half-childish and as if ardently longing voice began to sing: "Had I the dear little wings Of a gosling, I would fly To Jasiek at Szlonsk."
But the greatest danger which threatened the traveler on this road, was from the German and Germanized knights of Szlonsk, whose castles were erected here and there near the boundaries.
"I devised nothing, but I must tell you one thing, that we are in Poland and the law of this country punishes severely those who are guilty of acts of violence." "Very well, but the transgressors have no difficulty in crossing the frontier. Indeed, I know that Szlonsk is also in Poland, yet there the princes themselves quarrel and attack each other.
Afterward he was killed in a forest by an urus. The sons grew up under the mother's care. Her maiden name was Kachna of Spalenica. She was so brave that she conducted two successful expeditions against the Germans of Szlonsk to avenge former wrongs; but in the third expedition she was killed.
The canon of the fara beard Macko's confession and offered them hospitality; they remained there over night, and started the next morning. Beyond Olkusk, they turned toward Szlonsk, and on its boundaries, they proposed to ride toward Wielkopolska.
And weeping began to tear his gigantic body. Above, the longing voice continued to sing amid the undisturbed silence of the night: "Would that I might sit In the little Szlonsk garden To gaze upon little Jasiek The poor orphan!" In the morning a stout, bearded German retainer began to prod the ribs of the knight lying at the gate.
Formerly there had been much cultivated land in Bogdaniec; but after the battle at Plowce where the family Grady perished, there was a scarcity of working hands; and after the invasion of the Germans from Szlonsk and after the war of Nalenczs with Grzymalits, the formerly rich fields became overgrown with trees. Macko could not help it.
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