"He will bite not that way only!" exclaimed Godfried.
"Bah! he will pay ransom!" lazily replied Danveld.
"Even if he should return everything, in a year he will have robbed twice as much."
"I shall not object as to the girl," repeated Zygfried; "but this wolf will yet make the sheep of the Order weep more than once."
"And our word?" queried Danveld, laughingly.
"You spoke differently...."
Danveld shrugged his shoulders. "Did you not have enough pleasure?" he inquired. "Do you wish more?"
Others surrounded Jurand again and commenced to brag before him, praising the upright conduct of Danveld, and the impression it made upon the members of the Order.
"And what bone breaker!" said the captain of the castle-archers. "Your heathen brethren would not have treated our Christian knights so!"
"You drank our blood?"
"And we give you bread for stones."
But Jurand paid no attention either to the pride or to the contempt which their words contained: his heart swelled and his eyelashes were moist. He thought that he would see Danusia in a moment, and that he would see her actually by their favor; he therefore gazed at the speakers almost with humility, and finally said: "True! true! I used to be hard on you but ... not treacherous."
That instant a voice at the other end of the hall suddenly cried: "They are bringing the girl;" and immediately silence reigned throughout the hall. The soldiers scattered to both sides, because none of them had ever seen Jurand's daughter, and the majority of them did not even know of her presence in the castle on account of the secrecy with which Danveld surrounded his actions; but those who knew, whispered to one another about her admirable grace. All eyes turned with extreme curiosity toward the door through which she was to appear.
Meanwhile a warrior appeared in front followed by the well-known servant of the Order, the same woman that rode to the court in the forest. After her entered a girl dressed in white, with loose hair tied with a ribbon on the forehead.
And suddenly one great outburst of laughter, like the roaring of thunder, rang through the entire hall. Jurand, who at the first moment had sprung toward his daughter, suddenly recoiled and stood as pale as linen, looking with surprise at the ill-shaped head, the bluish lips, and the expressionless eyes of the wench who was restored to him as Danusia.
"This is not my daughter!" he said, in a terrifying voice.