# The Knights of the Cross/Volume 2/Chapter 57

* CHAPTER LVII.
* They came at last with the remains of Danusia to the pine forests of Spyhov, at the edge of which Yurand's armed guards stood night and day watching. One of these hurried off with the news to old Tolima and Father Kaleb; others conducted the procession by what was at first a winding and sunken, but later a broad forest roadway, till they reached the place where trees ended, and open, wet lands began, and sticky morasses swarming with water-birds; beyond these quagmires on a dry elevation stood Yurand's fortress. They saw at once that the sad tidings concerning them had reached Spyhov, for barely had they emerged from the shade of the pine woods onto the bright open plain when to their ears came the sound of a bell from the fortress chapel. Soon after, they saw many people, men and women, coming toward them from a distance. When this company had approached to a point within two or three bow-shots Zbyshko could distinguish persons. At the head of the procession walked Yurand himself, supported by Tolima, and feeling with a staff out in front of his body. It was easy to distinguish the master of Spyhov by his immense stature, by the red pits in place of eyes, and by the white hair which fell to his shoulders. At his side in a white surplice, and holding a cross in his hand, walked Father Kaleb. Behind them was borne a banner with Yurand's ensign; with it moved the armed "warriors" of Spyhov, and behind them married women with veils on their heads, and young girls with hair hanging loose on their shoulders. In the rear of the procession was a wagon on which they were to place the remains of Danusia.
* On seeing Yurand, Zbyshko commanded to put down the litter,—he himself was carrying the end next the head,—then he approached Yurand and cried in that terrible voice with which immense pain and despair express themselves,—
* ​"I sought her till I found her and freed her, but she preferred God to Spyhov."
* And pain broke him utterly, for he fell on Yurand's breast, embraced him, and groaned out,—
* "O Jesus! O Jesus! O Jesus!"
* At this sight the hearts of the armed attendants were enraged, and they fell to beating their shields with their spears, not knowing how to express in another way their pain and their desire for vengeance. The women raised a lament, they wailed one louder than another, they put their aprons to their eyes, or covered their heads with them altogether, and called in heaven-piercing voices: "Ei! misfortune! misfortune! For thee there is gladness, for us only weeping. Ei! misfortune! Death has cut thee down! The Skeleton has seized thee! Oi! oi!"—while some of them, bending their heads backward and closing their eyes, cried: "Was it evil for thee with us, O dearest flower; was it evil? Thy father is left in great mourning, while thou art there in God's chambers! Oi! oi!" Others again told the dead woman that she had not pitied her father or her husband in their tears and loneliness. And this wail of theirs and this weeping were expressed in a half chant, for those people could not express their pain otherwise.
* At last Yurand, withdrawing from Zbyshko's arms, reached out his staff in sign that he wished to go to Danusia. That moment Tolima and Zbyshko caught him by the arms and led him to the litter; there he knelt by the body, passed his hand over it from the forehead to the hands of his dead daughter, which were crossed, and he inclined his head repeatedly, as if to say that that was his Danusia and no other, that he knew his own child. Then he embraced her with one arm, and the other, which had no hand, he raised upward; all present answered in the same way, and that dumb complaint before God was more eloquent than any words of sorrow. Zbyshko, whose face after the momentary outburst grew again perfectly rigid, knelt on the other side, silent, resembling a stone statue; round about it became so still that the chirping of the field crickets was heard and the buzz of each passing fly.
* At last Father Kaleb sprinkled Danusia, Zbyshko, and Yurand with holy water, and began "Requiem æternam." After the hymn he prayed aloud a long time; during the prayer it seemed to the people that they heard the voice of a prophet, for he begged that the torture of that innocent ​woman might be the drop which would overflow the measure of injustice, and that the day of judgment, wrath, punishment, and terror would come.
* Then they moved toward Spyhov; but they did not place Danusia on the wagon, they bore her in front of the procession on the litter strewn with flowers. The bell ceased not to toll, it seemed to summon and invite them; and they moved on across the broad plain singing in the immense golden light, as if the departed were conducting them really to endless glory and brightness. It was evening, and the flocks had returned from the fields when they arrived. The chapel, in which they laid the remains, was gleaming from torches and lighted tapers. At command of Father Kaleb seven young girls repeated in succession the litany over the body till daylight. Zbyshko did not leave Danusia till morning, and at matins he placed her in a coffin which skilled workmen had cut out of an oak-tree in the night-time, and put a plate of gold-colored amber in the lid above her forehead.
* Yurand was not present, for strange things had happened to him. Immediately after reaching home he lost power in his feet, and when they placed him on the bed he lost movement as well as consciousness of where he was and what was taking place there. In vain did Father Kaleb speak to him; in vain did he ask what his trouble was. Yurand heard not, he understood not; but lying on his back, he raised the lids of his empty eyepits and smiled with a face transfixed and happy, and at times he moved his lips, as if speaking with some person. The priest and Tolima thought that he was conversing with his rescued daughter, and smiling at her. They thought also that he was dying, and that with the sight of his soul he was gazing at his own eternal happiness, but in this they were mistaken, for, deprived of feeling and deaf to all things, he smiled whole weeks in the same way. Zbyshko, when he set out at last with the ransom for Matsko, left his father-in-law in life yet.