"What does it mean?" the young knight asked himself with astonishment.
He hailed those working at a distance and inquired whether they had come across anything else, but they too only found the corpses of men. At last the work was finished. The servants hitched their own horses to the sleighs, placed the corpses in them and drove to Niedzborz, to make an attempt there in the warm mansion, to restore some of the dead to life. Zbyszko, the Bohemian and two attendants remained. It crossed his mind that the sleigh containing Danusia might have separated from the train, or that Jurand's sleigh, as might be supposed, was drawn by his best horses and had been ordered to drive in front; and it might also be that Jurand had left her somewhere in one of the huts along the road. Zbyszko did not know what to do. In any case he desired to examine closely the drifts and grove, and then return and search along the road.
But nothing was found in the drifts. In the grove he only saw several glistening wolves' eyes, but nowhere discovered any traces of people or horses. The meadow between the woods and road now sparkled in the shiny light of the moon, and upon its white mournful cover he really espied dark spots, but those were only wolves that quickly vanished at the approach of people.
"Your grace!" finally said the Bohemian. "Our search is in vain, for the young lady of Spychow was not in the train."
"To the road!" replied Zbyszko.
"We shall not find her there either. I looked well in the sleighs for any baskets containing ladies' finery, but I discovered none. The young lady remained in Spychow."
This supposition struck Zbyszko as correct, he therefore said: "God grant it to be as you say!"
But the Bohemian penetrated further into his thoughts, and proceeded with his reasoning.
"If she were in one of the sleighs the old gentleman would not have separated from her, or when he left the train he would have taken her with him on horseback, and we should have found her with him."
"Come, let us go there once more," said Zbyszko, in a restless voice. It struck him that the Bohemian might be right, perhaps they had not searched enough where the old man was discovered, perhaps Jurand had taken Danusia with him on horseback, and when the horse fell, she had left her father in search of assistance, in that case she might be somewhere under the snow in the neighborhood.