and from my own son! However, the provincial has given me permission to
make the disclosure _in articulo mortis_. Who knows whether I shall
return alive! Who knows what will happen in Dobrzyn! Brother, affairs are
frightfully, frightfully confused! The French are still far away, we must
wait till the winter is over, but the gentry may not restrain themselves.
Perhaps I have been too active in stirring up the insurrection! They may
have understood me ill! The Warden has spoiled all! That crazy Count, I
hear, has rushed away to Dobrzyn; I could not head him off, for an
important reason: old Maciek has recognised me, and if he betrays me I
must needs bow my neck beneath the penknife. Nothing will restrain the
Warden! My life matters little, but by that disclosure I should destroy
the foundations of the plot.

"And yet! I must be there to-day, and see what is going on, though I
perish! Without me the gentry will run wild! Farewell, my dearest brother!
Farewell, I must hasten. If I perish, you alone will sigh for my soul; in
case of war, the whole secret is known to you--finish what I have begun,
and remember that you are a Soplica."

Here the Monk wiped away his tears, buttoned his gown, drew on his cowl,
and quietly opened the shutters of the rear window; evidently he jumped
through the window into the garden. The Judge, left alone, sat down in a
chair and began to weep.

Thaddeus waited a moment, before he jingled at the latch; when the door
was opened he went in quietly and bowed low.

"My dear uncle," he said, "I have spent here but a few days, and the days
have passed like a flash. I have not yet had time to enjoy fully your
house and your own company, but I must depart, I must hasten away at once;
to-day, uncle, or to-morrow at the latest. You remember that we have
challenged the Count; to fight him is my affair, and I have sent a
challenge. Since duelling is prohibited in Lithuania, I am going to the
borders of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw; the Count, of course, is a braggart,
but he does not lack courage, and will appear without fail at the
appointed place. We will settle accounts; and, if God grants me his
blessing, I will punish him, and then will swim over the Lososna, where
the ranks of my brothers await me. I have heard that my father in his will
bade me enter the army, and I have not heard that that will has been
cancelled."

"My dear Thaddeus," said his uncle, "have you been scalded with boiling
water, or