Old Goloto, my uncle, has made many swords. Even, sometimes for the gentry that lie a night or so at our hamlet of Rusk when they are journeying along the highway. And my uncle has a saying that every sword he makes grows to resemble its owner.

I do not know. But upon our rare visits to the manor house, where the boyar Sayanski--the nobleman, our landowner--has a collection of rarities, my uncle has taken up various weapons and said--

"This belonged to an out-at-heels adventurer who served the devil more than God." Or, "This was cared for, once, by a khan of the Turks."

Why specks of rust along the blade, and a gilded hand guard should make him say the first, or the glint of blue in a scimitar's steel, and the faint lines of chasing that once had been inlaid with gold should hint to him the second, is hard to say. But, whether or no, old Goloto's words often proved true.

Certainly, he was a plain smith, a God-fearing man, who held no intercourse with the evil spirits. He alone of the good men of Rusk knows the truth of the bewitched sword of Ayub.

But of this weapon and what befell at the manor house on that Winter night in the year 1610 of Our Lord he has not spoken, save to me.

What my eyes beheld and what Old Goloto told me I shall set down in few words, being no clerk or even bandura player, like Blind Foma, who was Ayub's friend.



We were taking our ease on the bench in front of the tavern-that is, Sayanski, the landowner, sat at one end and my uncle and Foma at the other, while I-the lad Gregory-teased the innkeeper's wolfhound.

It was the quiet hour before sunset, a warm day in early Summer. The drone of the locusts out on the steppe, and the rustle of the reeds along the Dnieper's bank were louder than the low voices of the men. By the whipping post across the highway the girls were giggling and Ima, my young cousin was the worst of them.

But I heard the boyar, Sayanski say that he only sat at the tavern to watch for the coming of his relative, who was an officer in the Moscow guards. He had said the same thing for a month; still, he always drank a good deal of the tavern's best mead. He wore a soiled neckcloth, and his eyes were never still; some said he kept his hands in his pockets so much because his sleeves had no lace, others argued that his fingers were counting over his monies.

I was wondering whether he really looked for his relative, the officer, or whether he liked the smack of the mead, when my uncle spoke up.

"Might that be him?"

Old Goloto never called Sayanski "my lord" like Foma and the rest. We all looked up and saw a rider entering the sloboda with a led horse.

Now those were uncertain times, and Rusk is in the open steppe country on the highway that runs from Moscow south, along the Dnieper to the Black Sea. We were on the frontier kept by the armies of the Empire, and in our time we saw many an affray between river pirates and the barges of Greek and Armenian merchants, and many a raid by the Tatars from the steppe. So we looked twice at every stranger.

This one, however, was not the landowner's relative, because he approached from the south. He was a man big around the barrel as a wine keg, with his long sheepskin coat thrown back, for the heat, and his high, black sheepskin hat on the back of his head. So, we saw that the front part of his head was bald and sunburned.

"That's a good horse," said my uncle.

The stranger rode a black stallion, massive in the chest, but with good length of limb and a fine head. Well that it was so, for the rider must have weighed more than two hundred pounds.

"Pig of an innkeeper!" he roared, when he reined in. "Don't you know when a Cossack is thirsty?"

At this summons the tavern keeper came out, promptly enough, with a mug of corn brandy, but he hung back when he noticed that the stranger had no coins ready. Nor did he have sword or purse hanging from his broad leather girdle.

"Dog of the ----!" growled the Cossack, his black eyes seeking us out. "Good sirs, did you ever see the like? Here a Christian knight who has smoked his pipe in the mosques of Constantinople must go with a dry gullet at the pleasure of this mid-wife!"

At this Blind Foma smiled down one side of his greasy face. From eye to chin on the other side his cheek had been ripped up by a wild boar's tusk: this eye had been torn out, and the other was feeble. The children were afraid of him, and I always crossed my fingers when I met him o' nights near the Witches' Wood on the river bank.

The tavern keeper rubbed his chin and stood first on one foot, then on the other. Sometimes the Cossacks heaped good coins upon him, and spoil taken from the Turks and Tatars. At other times they gutted his cellar and whipped him to square the reckoning.

They were a wild folk from the southern steppe, who were always riding to a war, or from one. My uncle did a deal of work for them, sharpening their swords, or mending their cuirasses or shoeing their beasts with good leather. He never complained when he lacked of pay, because he said that if it were not for the knights of Kazakdom the Turks and Tatars would come over the steppe and burn our villages.

Ima, Goloto's devilkin of a daughter, always liked to see the Cossacks come along the highway, for at such times there would be dancing and music. Just now she was standing at the stallion's head, twisting her toes in the dust and shaking back her long, black locks as she did when she wanted to be noticed.

Ayub, as the Cossack was called, reached into the pack of the led horse and pulled out a silver goblet, throwing it at the tavern keeper by way of paying his score for the mead. After the innkeeper had examined the goblet he fell to rubbing his hands and called Ayub a noble knight. But the Cossack grunted and asked Ima to fetch him the mead. She looked at my uncle.

"Give the Cossack his drink," said Goloto in his slow fashion, and she did so.

Ayub chuckled and took one of her locks in his big paw admiringly but without trying to kiss her as most men did.

"Have you any more trinkets like that, Cossack?" Sayanski, the boyar, spoke up, pointing at the goblet, although his eyes were studying the big stallion.

When Ayub emptied his sack in the road and a fine Moslem helmet rolled out, with a pearl-studded girdle and a dagger shaped like one of our sickles, Sayanski went over and picked them up and said he would give Ayub two gold sequins for the lot and then he would have money for whatever he wanted.

"As you like," responded the Cossack, dismounting-for our mead was famous.

And the tavern keeper muttered under his breath as Sayanski paid over the coins. The sequins did not amount to a fourth the value of the things, and if the landowner had let Ayub alone the tavern would have been the gainer.

"I see that you have borne yourself like a bogatyr-a hero-in the wars, my fine fellow," went on Sayanski and this time his eyes dwelt on the stallion. "How is it that you lack a sword?"

Ayub, who was taking the saddle off the black made no response.

"Doubtless," said Sayanski again, raising his voice, "you broke your sword on the thigh bone of a Moslem. Why should a knight like you trouble to care for two horses? I will give you a fine sword and a score of bright byzants for the stallion. Come, will you sell him?"

"Not for a piece of the true Cross," answered the Cossack.

"For thirty byzants?"

For the first time Ayub looked at Sayanski carefully, and for some reason my uncle took his clay pipe from his lips and leaned forward, although he is not at all hard of hearing and the landowner had spoken in a high, clear voice.

But the Cossack only said that he was hungry, and that the innkeeper should roast the quarter of a sheep and bring him a cask of corn brandy. After feeding and bedding down the stallion and the led horse himself in the stable, he came back and swore that things were dull in our village. He sat down on his saddle and smoked a pipe of my uncle's tobacco, and shouted for the bandura players to strike up a measure and the girls to dance.

Ah, it was a fine feast we had that evening when Ayub spent his two sequins and even the dogs were fat. Blind Foma played, but he could never play fast enough for the Cossack, who jumped in among the villagers and began to leap and shout, striking his silver heels on the earth in the wild dance of the South.

"Eh-eh! That is how it should be done, you sluggards! ---- take you; what dolts you are!"

It made my blood throb. And Ima began to show off, as usual, spinning around in the dance like a sprite whirling up a chimney's smoke. When she danced that night her eyes were dark and her cheeks paled. The moon had come up over the osiers behind the inn, at the river bank, and the people looked like shadows. Ayub had eyes only for my cousin, when she danced, and thereafter he cherished her in his heart, although I did not know this until the time came when he first used the bewitched sword.

It was long, long ago. Who can forget a night like that? The warm breath of the hay fields was about us, but even when the good people were merriest the chill breath of the river came up, through the Witches' Wood, and Blind Foma lifted his head and shivered as if some one had touched him on the cheek.



The next morning after I had watched Ima drive off the two cows to the fields, I ran around to the inn, keeping out of sight of Goloto's forge, because I wanted to see what Ayub was up to.

He was not in the tavern. In the middle of the road he lay, his booted feet stretched wide, his scalp lock stretched out above his head in the dust, snoring louder than a dozen wolfhounds. So I waited until the sun should stir him up from his sleep. And presently Sayanski came along, riding his brown mare on business of his own. Seeing Ayub, the boyar tickled his bald forehead none too gently with a whip, and the Cossack sat up snorting.

"I hear, Ayub, that you have squandered all your money in carousing. Tck! Tck! Well, a man like you must have his fling, I suppose. You'll want some money to go on with, of course."

As Ayub did nothing but yawn and spit, Sayanski continued.

"What do you say to twenty-five gold byzants for that stallion?"

A man who has looked long on the pot is a dour fellow to prod out of his sleep, as I have come to know when Old Goloto was wakened on the morn after a Christian feast day.

Ayub looked up, his heavy brows drawn down.

"Have you really twenty-five gold pieces?"

Sayanski actually laughed and began to count them out, quickly enough, from his pouch. To make sure he counted them back again into his other fist.

"There my fine fellow, you can see them."

"Aye, you have them. Well, if you were to offer me twenty-five thousand byzants and a talisman that would make Satan himself turn tail you couldn't have my stallion."

And then Ayub stretched himself out again with his arm across his eyes to keep out the sun and began to snore. Sayanski thrust the coins back into his pouch as if they were hot, and his thin face grew red. He raised his whip to beat the Cossack, but seeing that I was watching from the hedge, he rode off saying under his breath that Ayub was a ditch-born dolt.

But before he went he spoke to the tavern keeper, saying that the Cossack should have neither bed nor board without paying down for it, and the tavern keeper promised because he feared the landowner. In the village of Rusk were many who feared Sayanski's visits, and the reckoning of his interest books. Still, my uncle said, who ever heard of a village without an owner, or a serf without a master?

So that morning the Cossack took his beasts out of stable and went off toward the river. We thought he had crossed Father Dnieper and gone off on the Tatar side of the river, perhaps to steal horses.

That night, however, Blind Foma said Ayub had cleared a patch of land not far from the village, at the edge of the wood.

He built himself a hut of osiers, woven together, and plastered it over with wet clay that hardened when it dried. Then he made a low, flat stove of stones, covered with the clay, for a bed when the frost came.

Foma went to live with him, as the bandura player was accustomed to do when his company was welcomed and there was food to be shared. Together they made nets for bird snares and other woven nets for fish. Ayub added a wattle shed to the open end of the hut, for his horses, so that they could be near the stove in Winter, and worked hard for a while with one of my uncle's scythes cutting hay which he stacked behind the hut.

In the evenings, when they were most apt to be awake at the same time, I went often to the hut by the river, to listen to their stories.

Ayub, when I brought some of my uncle's tobacco, would tell me how the Cossacks of the Siech-the war encampments-made great skiffs to row down the river to the Black Sea and tackle the Sultan's fine craft. And how the comrades of his kuren had died, one by one-some nailed to a cross by the Poles, some burnt alive by the Moslems; others drowned in a tempest on the water, others with their brains scattered by their foes' pistolettes. Fine tales they were.

Best of them, however, was the account of how Ayub had chased a Tatar over the steppe through the tall grass as high as the riders' heads, until the black stallion gained on the Tatar horse, and their hoofs struck fire so mightily that the whole steppe was soon in flames, whereupon the Tatar's horse began to fly through the air with its tail aflame, going higher and higher until it was galloping around the stars like a streak of red fire. Ayub asked me if I had never seen a star shooting down to earth with a flaming tail. To be sure, such things were!

But Ayub was very anxious to know if I ever saw such an event near Rusk, because he wanted very much to mount the black stallion and rush to where the Tatar landed on earth again and put an end to him.

"Eh-eh!" Ayub would chuckle when he had finished this tale. "You are a good lad, Gregory, and some day you will have a horse like mine, and chase a Tatar all the way to Cathay. ---- take me if you won't!"

When harvest time came he went into the fields with our people and for a few days did the work of three men. He was stronger, even than Old Goloto in his prime, when my uncle could thrash any two men in the district.

After that he and Foma had a grand carouse at the inn, and when the first snow came down on the steppe, instead of riding south to the wars, Ayub took to sitting in my uncle's smithy, helping him at times mending saddles, or with the bellows when Old Goloto had a tough piece of work in hand. So he managed to be at the forge when the girl Ima came in at noon with our barley cakes and cheese and varenukha-corn brandy.

Then Ayub would follow her with his eyes, and chuckle when she teased him. When she sat in the doorway combing her hair or trying on a new cap, he said sometimes that she would make a pretty handful for a husband.

"Well," Ima would say, tossing her head, "I won't marry you, anyway, Ayub. Why, you would take your black horse and go off somewhere or other and then the Tatars would send back your head in a basket!"

"True, as God is my witness," Ayub would answer. And he never laughed when he said that.

"I hear," Goloto would put in, "that the Moslems are tearing the robes off the holy batkos, the good Christian priests in the South. Why don't you mount and ride across the border and teach them a thing or two, Ayub? You could break the sultan across your knee-crack, like that!"

"The ---- take the sultan and all the Moslems, too!" And the Cossack, chin on fist, would sit and look at my cousin.

At such times, however, Ayub was moody. His eyes would grow heavy and he would sit without moving. Then he would be restless as a fish out of water, and take out the big black horse, to ride him down the highway and back, the stallion tearing over the hard-packed snow with arched neck and flying mane. Horse and rider would be steaming like mad when they came back. I thought perhaps Ayub was looking for his enemy, up among the stars, to come down to earth near Rusk.

Whenever he passed Sayanski, who was always about his business on the brown mare, the landowner would rein in and gaze after the stallion as if Ayub owed him rent monies that Sayanski would one day collect.

But when Christmas drew near, his excellency's temper changed for the better. At least he gave Ayub the sword that was bewitched.

Sayanski said it was a pity that Ayub should lack a sword, while he had so many in his collection. The weapon he bestowed on the Cossack was a heavy one with a long hilt and a splendid scabbard of leather in which was an inscription inlaid in gilt. Sayanski said this inscription was a charm.

Whoever wielded the sword could cut through the body of an enemy as easily as through a tallow candle. An iron shield or a shirt of Turkish mail would fall apart at the touch of the heavy brand.

Now Sayanski knew this for two reasons. He had the weapon from a wandering gypsy in the Astrakahn market place, and the gypsy had stolen it from the tomb of a Turkish khan, where splendid things were kept, among them the magic sword that the Moslems feared to handle after the death of its owner. We, along the border, had heard the tale.

Also, Foma, who recked a little of Moslem script, said that the writing on the scabbard was the legend

Steel will not turn aside the edge of this sword when the right hand wields it.

Only, Sayanski warned Ayub that he must not tamper with the weapon, or take it from scabbard to hew wood or quarter a sheep, or the edge would be dulled. Ayub tended it carefully, too, because once I saw him studying the blade and tapping it with his great fingers as if he feared it might break in his hands.

Truly, a fine gift. And Sayanski asked not a kopeck in return. The people of Rusk stared mightily when Ayub appeared among them with the sword slung from his girdle, but the Cossack was pleased.

"Eh-eh! This sword will match the magic of the Tatar who is chasing around among the stars. Gregory, my lad, when he comes down we'll soon finish him off!"

I thought perhaps on Christmas eve when the spirits, as every one knows, are up and about, Ayub's enemy might ride down into Rusk in flames. God willed otherwise, as I shall relate.



The man who came to Rusk several days before Christmas was not the Tatar, but a splendid nobleman, Varslan. A sledge drew up at the smithy one day when Ima had just brought our noon bite, and Ayub was in his hut sleeping on his stove.

A runner of the sledge was broken and Varslan ordered my uncle to mend it. He was a tall man, wrapped up in a sable coat that came to the tops of his polished boots. A heyduke waited on him-a fine officer's servant in a red kaftan.

"Is this the sloboda of Rusk, fellow?" The gentleman asked of my uncle. "Then direct me to the estate of the landowner, and be quick about it!"

When Old Goloto had pointed out the roof of the manor house near the edge of the wood, the nobleman swore that he'd be roasted in a brazen ox if he would lie here in such a sheep's trough a night after the sledge was mended. He tapped his snuff box and flicked the lace at his throat, scowling until his glance fell on Ima, who had drawn herself off into a corner, instead of hanging around as usual. Then the boyar saluted her politely and asked her name. When he would have taken her hand she slipped away.

"Go to the manor house," he ordered his heyduke, "and inform the worthy Sayanski that the Cornet Varslan, his cousin, is arrived. I will follow at once."

After he had given some more directions about the sledge, he looked around for Ima, but she had vanished. He took out his painted snuff box again, and walked off. His long saber, hung upon a low baldric, slapping against his boots-a tall man, quick moving, a fine weapon at his side. So the officer, Sayanski's cousin, came to Rusk.

And that very evening he visited the tavern of the landowner, although Sayanski had not been there for a month. They sat down at the table next to Ayub and Blind Foma, where I was-for already the excitement of the coming festival was upon us children, and I wanted to see all that was going on.

We all bowed when the two nobles came in, but Sayanski took no notice of us, as he was whispering to his cousin. The Cornet ordered wine and cursed the innkeeper because it was not better. He sat back on his stool as if it had been a lord's chair, and drank half a bottle, pulling at his mustache in silence the while, his sable coat thrown back, showing the lace and fine blue cloth of his uniform. No one presumed to speak aloud, except Ayub who was trying to persuade Foma to play a piece.

So it happened that every one was sitting looking at them, and Sayanski was fingering his neckcloth restlessly, when the officer leaned back too far and lost his balance. He fell against Ayub, and got to his feet without assistance.

"A pox on you, for a clumsy lout! Can't you keep from bumping into a man like me!" The gray eyes of the Cornet were cold.

"Health to you, excellency. Indeed I didn't move from my seat," answered Ayub, without growing angry.

We all thought that the officer was provoked at his own clumsiness and wanted to make out that Ayub had jostled him.

"I say that you did! A fine ataman, by all the saints, to sit guzzling in a village!"

Not until then had we known that Ayub was captain of a kuren of Cossacks. Perhaps the Cornet Varslan had noticed some mark of his rank, or had heard of him. I do not know. Anyway, the officer was working himself into a magnificent rage.

Ayub merely chuckled and looked around as if it were a good joke.

"Mother of God!" cried Varslan. "Do you laugh at me?"

"Why should I? When a fellow has a bottle of wine inside his skin like you, he feels like joking sure enough."

"Ah, you call me fellow-you, a lick-spittle ruffian!"

Varslan laid his hand on the hilt of his saber and aimed a kick at the stool on which Ayub sat. The big Cossack, however, rose to his feet so quickly that the stool spun away from under him. As he moved his fingers touched the hand guard of the weapon Sayanski had given him, and he shook his head from side to side like a bear confronted by one of the wolfhounds.

We all sat very quiet, and the landowner went over to a corner of the narrow room as if his boots would make too much noise. I was wondering if the Cossack would cut Varslan in two pieces with his magic sword, but Ayub drank the rest of the mead that was in his tankard and wiped his mustache lazily.

"Eh, Cornet," he muttered, "this tavern is very small. Still it is much better than a box of a room six feet by two by three-the kind a fellow lives in after he is dead."

Varslan frowned, as if puzzled by this, and Ayub took Foma by the arm and moved to the door, stopping to pay his score and bid us good night. It seemed to me that the officer was more angry than before, for some reason or other. Before long he went out, leaving the reckoning to Sayanski, who tramped along at his heels. I waited a moment and followed, pulling up my coat, for the night was bitter without.

The two men from the manor house were standing in the highway, talking and, after pretending to walk around the tavern, I tiptoed up to the hedge, glad that the moon was behind clouds just then.

Varslan was saying that the Cossack was a coward, and he could not make him stand his ground-whatever he meant by that. Then Sayanski pulled at his sleeve and said-

"Hush!"

But as they moved off I heard Varslan answer.

"It will be simpler, you confounded dog, to take the horse another way. You will gain nothing from the sword, after all. Without doubt my dear cousin-I'll find amusement enough to pass the time."

Then they released their horses and rode away. I wasted no time in circling the village in running to my uncle's cottage, because it looked as if the two gentlemen had meant to quarrel with Ayub, so that Sayanski could get his hand on the black stallion, in some way or other. The thought troubled me, the more so that I found my uncle and Ayub together in the smithy, although it was then late at night.

Old Goloto would listen to no words from me, but thrust me out of the door, shutting it tight and barring it from within. I lingered outside, shivering, because Ayub ought to know what I had heard.

The two talked within a long time, and when the bellows began to hiss and my uncle's hammer to strike on the anvil, I knew that they would not come out for a long time. Enough of their speech had reached me to show that Ayub had come to my uncle to have an edge put on his sword-the bewitched weapon that Sayanski had given him.

So I crossed over to our cottage and warmed myself by the stove where Ima was busy sewing the last silver threads on a kind of tinsel cap. She put it on and looked at me saucily, saying that she would get more cakes and pennies thrown to her tomorrow night-Christmas eve-than I would, when we went to the manor house to sing carols.

"I am too old to go around with the children," I answered proudly. "Ayub says that soon I will have a horse and ride off to the wars."

"Pah! Ayub is too lazy to move off his stove."

Still, she kissed me good night without pinching me, and I heard her singing by the stove.



Christmas eve was cold. Ice had formed along the banks of Father Dnieper-solid, snow-coated ice at the shore, thin, gray ice farther out. Only in mid-river did the black current run past us without a coating.

When the full moon came up over the bare branches of the Witches' Wood, by the river bank, we children gathered together and went from cottage to cottage, singing carols and scrambling for the tidbits thrown to us by the good people.

The Witches' Wood we shunned, perhaps because the chill breath of the river was to be felt under the skeletons of trees, perhaps because it was the night that the river spirits were apt to climb ashore and snatch away goats or babies. Especially the folk of Rusk maintained that a data-baba, a woman hob-gob, lived in the wood. Many people had seen the hob-gob o' nights, so she was surely there.

You may be sure we skirted the trees when we went to sing at Ayub's hut. The Cossack chuckled at us and gave us a fine mess of warm sausages that we ate as we tramped away toward the manor house, on the other side of the wood. I could see Ayub looking after us, his eyes following Ima like a dog's. It struck me then what a pretty thing she was, in her silver cap, like a fine princess. Perhaps because she had not teased me the night before-

At the manor house, which was splendidly lighted with real candles, we sang "Come, Holy Spirit," and Varslan came to one of the doors and joined in with a strong, mellow voice. Then he scattered kopecks with both hands, as if he had been drinking, and we were soon shouting, over having money-actually money-in our fists. Going back to the village, some one dared us to go around by the river, through the Witches' Wood.

We began by taking hands and running as hard as we could, skipping and shouting. But before long the uneven ground and the thickets separated us, and I heard some of the girls crying. I shivered-it was so quiet under the tall trees where little clods of snow and bits of ice fall down on the snow crust with a strange rattling, and the shadows of the thickets all looked like old women waiting to jump out on us. A girl screamed aloud behind me and I started to go back out of the wood.

It was a frightful, whimpering cry, as if one of the children had seen the evil hob-gob.

I heard it again, nearer as I went through the last fringe of bushes and saw the river in front of me. Then I stopped, surprised.

None of the other children were around, except Ima-I knew her silver cap in the bright moonlight, and her flying black hair. She was running away from two men, and they were the Cornet Varslan, and his heyduke. And she was passing out from the bank to the snow-coated ice.

It was a strange, new game, I thought, as I watched them. The men overtook Ima, who struggled in their hands like a wild pony of the steppe caught for the first time. It was when she cried out again that I understood she was afraid.

For she broke away from them and ran, as if the Evil One were after her, her shining black boots flying over the thin, gray ice out from shore. I heard Varslan laugh as he tried to catch her; then he stopped and called out angrily. She looked over her shoulder, just as the ice at the current's edge gave way and she dropped into the black water.

Ah, that is a thing my mind's eye can see even now-the rush of the dark water, Ima's glittering cap floating downstream, and the two men standing looking out from where the ice was still safe. I must have been running then, toward them, for presently I was shouting at Varslan and weeping at the same time.

"Go, and bring her back, excellency. See, there she is! Hurry, hurry and swim after her."

I was tugging at his sleeve the while, but the two stared out at the current and looked at each other. The heyduke shrugged his broad shoulders and shook his head. Varslan was repeating under his breath:

"Mother of God-how cold it must be! What a fool-what a fool!"

Then he noticed me and drew his arm away with a frown.

"Excellency," said the heyduke, "it's that brat of the smith's."

"Gregory," Varslan spoke evenly now as if nothing had happened at all. "Your sister, or cousin, or whatever she was, slipped on the ice, and it broke under her. Hm, yes. We were playing a game, d'ye understand?"

But I could not take my eyes from the black water, where Ima's cap was no longer to be seen.

"D'ye understand? We could not aid her-it was not safe."

My knees were trembling and my throat seemed to be stuffed with something. By the time I reached the men Ima was beyond any help of mine. They spoke together in a low tone and moved off toward the manor house. By and by I felt that my hands were numb and the tears frozen on my checks. I hated Varslan, yet could not understand why.

Reaching the shore I looked back, just on the point of calling to Ima to come after me. Then for the first time I realized that she was dead and began to run through the wood.

In front of me a dark figure stepped from a shadow, but I was not frightened. It was Blind Foma, the moonlight gleaming on the scar on his cheek. He said he had heard Ima scream.

When I told him what had happened at the river his lips drew back from his teeth on the side of his face away from the scar, and he started to feel his way through the trees toward Ayub's hut. I ran on, thinking of nothing but of finding Old Goloto.



My uncle never moved hand or eye while he listened to my tale. Then I heard him muttering and saw that both his hands were gripped in his beard. He did not take his hands away nor did his lips stop moving. Once he looked up and asked if Blind Foma had surely said that it was Ima's voice. Then his brown face grew pale and he reached up one hand toward the sword he kept over the mantle.

"Will you go to the manor house and punish Varslan?" I cried. "I hate him! It was an evil game that he played, and Ima was frightened."

Old Goloto looked at his hand, in the firelight, and commenced shaking his head from side to side.

"Ai-a! They are the boyars-gentlefolk. Nay, nay, Gregory----"

Never before or since have I heard my uncle curse a man. His eyes were set and his hands shook. Then he stumbled out of the cottage, without cap or coat; yet he did not take his sword and he went toward the river.

I could not abide in the cottage, nor would my thoughts turn from Varslan and his heyduke. I walked over the snow, following the beaten paths until I came to the manor house, which was still glowing with candles. Below the house the chimes in the church were sounding the midnight carol. The door stood open, and I entered the long hall, going into the dining chamber.

Here a fine fire was crackling away on the hearth, and Varslan and Sayanski were sitting near it with steaming glasses of varenukha. The officer heard my step, but, seeing that I was alone sat back in his chair, holding the long saber over his knees.

"Give him some money," said Sayanski after a while.

Now I remembered that, all the time, I had held some of Varslan's kopecks clutched in my fist. I threw them down at his feet, and he looked at me curiously.

"The ----!" said Sayanski. "We can't have any doings like that. Come, imp, haven't you told your uncle that Ima was drowned-" he coughed-"an accident, mind you? Well, it's high time you were about it-"

He stopped and both of the men rose. A board creaked behind me, and I saw that Ayub stood in the door of the dining room. Just then the heyduke entered with a tray and a pitcher of the smoking brandy, and he set the things down with a clatter when he saw the Cossack smiling at him.

Ayub did not seem to be restless or moody this night. He took off his high, sheepskin hat and bowed, his scalp lock wiggling on his shaven head.

"Health to you, good sirs," he said in his slow voice. "I am the ataman Ayub of the Ural encampment, whom you called hard names at the tavern a while ago. I hope, by the saints, you haven't forgotten! Nay, finish your glass, Cornet Varslan."

He strode toward the table, the loose boards squeaking under his weight, and clanked his new sword, scabbard and all, down beside the tray so that the pitcher and the heyduke, too, jumped.

"Dog," he growled at the attendant, "don't you know when a Cossack is thirsty?"

The heyduke grinned under his mustache and backed away, looking at his master, so Ayub filled himself a glass and emptied it down his throat, and then told me to run along to my uncle. But I did not go further than the door, because Varslan spoke up, staring the while at Ayub as if he were a stranger.

"----ed if I wasn't drunk at the inn. You spoke of it yourself, ataman, at the time, I think. Will you take another glass with me?"

For some reason the officer had changed. He did not seem to want to quarrel with Ayub now.

The Cossack shook his head. "Nay, Cornet Varslan, you will not drink another mug of this brandy."

The officer frowned, pulling at his mustache as he watched Ayub. I saw that Sayanski was rubbing his hands together, looking from one to the other as if well satisfied.

"You were pleased to try to kill me, Cornet," smiled Ayub, "to have the black stallion for your cousin. That is a small matter. But now, by the Cross, you have the blood of a young girl on your hands. So if you don't take up your saber I'll have to clip your mustachios and mark you for a murderer----"

In a trice the Cossack's brows drew down and his teeth gleamed. Varslan had whipped out his sword and stepped toward him. Ayub had his weapon clear of the scabbard Sayanski had given him, and parried as the officer slashed wide. The two blades struck fire with a great clash. Ayub warded the saber by simply stiffening his massive right arm, although Varslan had put all his height and weight into the blow.

Then Varslan stepped back, biting his lip. And Sayanski's eyes seemed to pop out of his head of a sudden, and he swore as if greatly puzzled by what had happened. But the Cossack advanced eagerly, cutting and thrusting, crying-

"To one of us life: to the other death!"

I wondered why, if Ayub's sword was bewitched, he had not slashed the saber in two, and ended Varslan right there.

But the air was humming with the vibrating steel and the two fighters were ringed in flashes of light, where the candle glow caught the steel of the blades.

Clash-cling: clang-clang! It was a brave sight!

Ayub stepped aside suddenly and cut down, but not at his foe. The heyduke had been stealing toward him, thrusting a chair at his legs. A drawn saber was in the man's hand, yet it did not serve in the least to check the Cossack's stroke that shore through coat and flesh severing the heyduke's body in two-save for the spine.

Groaning, the man fell on his knees, clutching at his entrails that were slipping out of the great gash. Then the two swordsmen were at it again, cling-clang-cling!

Sayanski went white, and felt with one hand along the mantle against which he stood. I saw a long pistol gleam in the firelight, and cried a warning to Ayub.

"'Ware of Sayanski!"

To this day I know not if it was an accident or not, but the flying tip of Ayub's blade caught the face of the landowner, under the nose. Sayanski cried out and dropped the pistol. Most of his upper lip and some of his teeth had been cut out by the sweep of the heavy blade. Pressing both hands to his mouth, he commenced to walk up and down, staggering against the chairs.

Varslan was not a coward. His mouth set and his eyes gleamed under beads of sweat. He was a match for Ayub in skill, but he had seen the Cossack's sword slice through flesh and bone and gristle as if through the tallow of a candle, and he gave ground continually, biding his time to strike inside the swinging blade of Ayub.

It so happened that he backed against the hearth, and felt the pistol strike against his foot. After a swift thrust, he reached down with his left hand and raised the weapon. His hand held it out in front of him for the time that a man could count five slowly. Then Varslan's body toppled over on the hearth.

His head had been slashed from his shoulders.



In our village of Rusk the good people tell wayfarers of the bewitched sword of Ayub, and how the servants of Sayanski, coming up from church after the midnight mass, found two men dead in the dining chamber, one with his body cut in twain, the other with no head to his body, and Sayanski voiceless.

Surely, our people will say, the sword was enchanted that did this. And they look at me askance, sometimes, because I ride the pony of Ayub-the one he had used for a pack animal-that the Cossack gave me when he rode away to the wars that same night.

Sayanski himself never uttered a word concerning what happened at the manor house, because he left Rusk to live in Moscow-going off in a closed carriage. And it is true that our village is the gainer by his leaving.

Only once did my uncle speak of the sword. This was one noon, when we were sitting on the stools that had been Ayub's and Ima's, in the days when the Cossack was one of us and the girl had brought us all a bite at midday.

"Gregory," he said, "the sword that Sayanski gave to Ayub was not bewitched. But it was accursed of an evil mind. The stem of the blade, the part that fitted into the long hilt, had been filed almost through where the flaw could not be seen. A blow would have broken it off."

I thought of the dismay of the three men who had watched the fight in the manor house, when Varslan's first stroke failed to take effect: yet I thought, too, of the great cuts that had killed two of the men.

"The ways of Providence are past finding out," my uncle went on meditatively. "Ayub was angered, and he was one of the strongest of men. As for the weapon he used-he suspected that the sword given him was not right, and brought it to me the night before the fight. I discovered the flaw, and fitted a new blade upon the old hilt-a blade tempered and edged to the taste of a Christian warrior."

END

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