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The words of the old man would spread secretly through the village; the lad who heard them would vanish suddenly from home, would steal mysteriously through the forests and swamps, pursued by the Muscovites, would leap to hiding in the Niemen, and beneath its flood swim to the shore of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, where he would hear sweet words of greeting, “Welcome, comrade!” But before he departed, he would climb a stony hill and call to the Muscovites across the Niemen: “Until we meet again!” Thus there had stolen away Gorecki, Pac, and Obuchowicz; Piotrowski, Obolewski, Rozycki, Janowicz, the Mirzejewskis, Brochocki and the brothers Bernatowicz, Kupsc, Gedymin, and others whom I will not enumerate; they had abandoned their kinsmen and their beloved land, and their estates, which were seized for the Tsar’s treasury.

This Major, by birth a Pole from the little town of Dzierowicze, according to report, had been named Plutowicz in Polish, but had changed his name; he was a great rascal, as is usually the case with Poles that turn Muscovites in the Tsar’s service.

There is a Russian proverb: ‘All can be donewith caution!’ and another proverb, ‘Roast your own meat on the Tsar’s spit,’ and a third proverb, ‘Harmony is better than discord.’ Tie the knot tight and put the ends in the water. We will not make a report, so that nobody will find out. ‘God gave hands to take with’that is a Russian proverb.”

He had the police sergeant pulled in by the ears; the man stood there pale, trembling, and scarcely alive. ‘How dare you,’ shouted Kirilo with a voice of thunder, ‘course in spring a pregnant doe, here under the nose of the Tsar?’ The amazed sergeant in vain swore that he had not yet begun his hunting, and that with the august permission of the Master of the Hunt, the beast coursed seemed to him to be a dog and not a doe. ‘What!’ shouted Kirilo, ‘do you dare, you scoundrel, to say that you have more knowledge of hunting and the varieties of beasts than I, Kozodusin, the Tsar’s Jagermeister?