ga to defend Pan Pociej,122 who had been deserted
on the field of battle and had received twenty-three wounds. In Lithuania
they long thought that both had been killed; but both returned, each as
full of holes as a sieve. Pan Pociej, an honourable man, immediately after
the war had wished to reward generously his defender Dobrzynski; he had
offered him for life a farm of five houses, and assigned him yearly a
thousand ducats in gold. But Dobrzynski wrote back: "Let Pociej remain in
debt to Maciej, and not Maciej to Pociej." So he refused the farm and
would not take the money; returning home alone, he lived by the work of
his own hands, making hives for bees and medicine for cattle, sending to
market partridges which he caught in snares, and hunting wild beasts.

In Dobrzyn there were numbers of sagacious old men--men versed in Latin,
who from their youth up had practised at the bar; there were numbers of
richer men: but of all the family the poor and simple Maciek was the most
highly honoured, not only as a swordsman made famous by his _switch_, but
as a man of wise and sure judgment, who knew the history of the country
and the traditions of the family, and was equally well versed in law and
farming. He knew likewise the secrets of hunting and of medicine; they
even ascribed to him (though this the priest denied) a knowledge of
higher, superhuman things. This much is sure, that he knew with precision
the changes of the weather, and could guess them oftener than the farmer's
almanac. It is no marvel then that, whether it was a question of beginning
the sowing, or of sending out the river barges, or of reaping the grain;
whether it was a matter of going to law, or of concluding a compromise,
nothing was done in Dobrzyn without the advice of Maciek. Such influence
the old man did not in the least seek for; on the contrary, he wished to
be rid of it, scolded his clients, and usually pushed them out of the door
of his house without opening his lips; he rarely gave advice, and never to
common men; only in extremely important disputes or agreements, when
asked, would he utter an opinion--and then in few words. It was thought
that he would undertake to-day's affair and put himself in person at the
head of the expedition; for in his youth he had loved a combat beyond
measure, and he was an enemy of the Muscovite race.

The aged man was walking about in his solitary yard, humming a song, "When
the early dawn ariseth,"123 and was h