Hussein, "and can get no further. We want to stay here under your shed until this storm has passed. The room in your hut, I see, is scanty enough, but it is large enough to shelter one woman. The rain has wetted her to the skin. I wish her to dry her clothes and warm herself by the fire of your hearth."
"As you please, sir," said Nikou, and he called his wife to take charge of the girl, who was trembling in every limb.
Though Hussein seemed so careful for the comfort of Katarina, it was not in the least because he felt pity for the poor girl, it was the fear of Ibrahim Pasha which moved him. Katarina's violent fit of trembling, consequent on her excessive agitation, and the cold downpour of rain, had not been unnoticed by him. It made him feel exceedingly uneasy, for he was afraid that the girl might be attacked by some serious illness, and he dared not, for his life, present her to Ibrahim in her present condition.
The two horse-stealers also, old Joan Kumanitza and his son Petru, were full of anxiety. The brook which flowed behind Nikou's hut, and which the day before they had passed with perfect ease on horseback, was now swollen into an angry torrent which forbade all attempt at crossing.
"How long may it be," asked Hussein impatiently of the charcoal-burner, "before we may expect that confounded water to fall?"
"Who can tell?" replied Nikou. "It may abate towards midday to-morrow, or towards evening. It is impossible to say."
The Tartar chief muttered an oath. "We must at all events start as soon as the weather begins to clear up—cost what it will. Now bring us something to eat."
In the hut.
Nikou went into the hut; but scarcely had he shut the door behind him, than his wife rushed up to him, and, seizing his hand, dragged him to Katarina's couch.
"Nikou, husband, look! There lies the daughter of the Pastor of Seiburg."
"As I hope to be saved!" exclaimed Nikou, "it is the daughter of the Saxon pastor, who twice helped us in the direst need."
But Ravecca had not waited for this confirmation from her husband's lips. She fell down on her knees beside the girl, who still lay motionless before her, and seized her hand, which she covered with tears and kisses as she cried, in a low tone: "My little—flower the apple of my eye! Is it you? Have you fallen into the hands of those murderous thieves? Speak, speak, my violet! Do you know me? I am Ravecca—old Ravecca. Tell me that you recognise me!"
Katarina now, for the first time, became really conscious of her fearful position, and the pathetic attachment of the grateful old woman seemed to awaken the girl to a sense of her danger. Flinging her arms around the neck of the kind hearted Wallachian, she sobbed out in a voice choked with tears, "Oh, Ravecca, save me! Save me, dear Ravecca, from this hideous danger!"
