T.aclawice, sir, and then he freed Warsaw!

'Good, my child. Then, alas, the Russians mustered a great force at Maciejowice and he was finally defeated and taken prisoner. My great - great - great - grandfather fought with Kosciuszko on that day, and later with Dabrowski's legions for the mighty Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte!

'And for his service to Poland was created the Baron Rosnovski, a title your family will ever bear in remembrance of those great days,' said N4nadek, as stoutly as if the title would one day pass to him.

'Ilx)se great days will come again,' said the Baron quietly. 'I only pray that I may live to see them!

At Christmas time, the peasants on the estate would bring their families to the castle for the celebration of the blessed vigil. Throughout Christmas Eve they fasted and the children would look out of the windows forthe first star, which was the sign the feast might begin. The Baron would say grace in his fine deep voice: Tenedicte nobis, Domine Deus, et his donis quae ex liberalitate tua sumpturi sumus,' and once they had sat down Wladek would be embarrassed by the huge capacity of Jasio Koskiewicz, who addressed himself squarely to every one of the thirteen courses from the barsasz soup through to the cakes and plums, and would as in previous years be sick in the forest on the way home.

After the feast Wladek enjoyed distributing the gifts from the Christmas tree, laden with candles and fruit, to the awestruck peasant children - a doll for Sophia, a forest knife for Josef, a new dress for Florentyna, the first gift Wladek had ever requested of the Baron.

'It's true,' said Josef to his mother when he received his gift from Wladek, 'he is not our brother, Matka.'

'No,' she replied, 'but he will always be my son.'

Through the winter and spring of 1914 Wladek grew in strength and learning. Then suddenly, in July, the German tutor left the castle without even saying farewell; neither boy was sure why. They never thought to connect his departure with the assassination in Sarajevo of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand by a student anarchist, described to them by their other tutor in unaccountably solemn tones. The Baron became withdrawn; neither boy was sure why. The younger servants, the children's favourites, began to disappear one by one; neither boy was sure why. As the year passed Leon grew taller, Wladek grew stronger, and both boys became wiser.

One morning in the summer of 191.5, a time of fine, lazy days, the Baron set off on the long journey to Warsaw to put, as he described it, his affairs in order. He was away for three and a half weeks, twenty - five days which Wladek marked off each morning on a calendar in his bedroom; it seemed to him' a lifetime. On the day he was due to return, the two boys went down to the railway station at Slonim to await the weekly train with its one carriage and greet the Baron on his arrival. The three of them travelled home in silence.

Wladek thought the great man looked tired and older, another unaccountable circumstance, and during the following week the Baron often conducted with the chief servants a rapid and anxious dialogue, broken off whenever Leon or Wladek entered the room, an uncharacteristic surreptitiousness that made the two boys uneasy and fearful that they were the unwitting cause of it. Wladek despaired that the Baron might send him back to the trapper's cottage - always aware he was a stranger in a stranger's home.

One evening a few days after the Baron had returned he called for the two boys to join him in the great hall. They crept in, fearful of him. Without explanation he told them that they were about to make a long journey. The little conversation, insubstantial as it seemed to Wladek at the time, remained with him for the rest of his life.

'My dear children,' began the Baron in a low, faltering tone, 'the warmongers of Germany and the Austro - Hungarian empire are at the throat of Warsaw and will soon be upon us.'

Wladek recalled an inexplicable phrase flung out by the Polish tutor at the German tutor during their last tense days together. 'Does that mean that the hour of the submerged peoples of Europe is at last upon us?' he asked.

The Baron regarded Wladek's innocent face tenderly. 'Our national spirit has not perished in one hundred and fifty years of attrition and repression,' he replied. 'It may be that the fate of Poland is as much at stake as that of Serbia, but we are powerless to influence history. We are at the mercy of the three mighty empires that surround us.'

'We are strong, we can fight,'said Leon. 'We have wooden swords and sfiields. We are not afraid of Germans or Russians.'

'My son, you have only played at war. This battle will not be between children. We will now find a quiet place to live until history has decided our fate and we must leave as soon as possible. I can only pray that this is not the end of your childhood.'