Vertessy could not forbear from quietly smiling at this discreet coat-turning rhetoric. With his drawn sword he motioned to his soldiers to lower their weapons, and return to the barracks, simply leaving the usual sentries at their posts.

The noisy assembly then gave one long cheer for the General, and after threatening every sort of distant object with their sticks and clenched fists, tumultously dispersed.

Kamienszka, after the odd dispersal of the rioters, trotted alongside the General into the courtyard of the barracks, where they both dismounted and hastened into the waiting room. Each of them had something urgent to say to the other which could not be expressed in public.

"Sir," the General hastened to say, he was determined to have the first word—"whoever you are, you have rendered me a very important service which I hope to be able to repay."

"I come from the midst of danger, General," replied the heroic lady very quickly, like one anxious to economize his moments and count his words; "a dangerous rebellion has broken out in the midst of the county, and by mere accident I have got the leading strings of it in my hands. For a moment, however, I ran the risk of being strung up myself. The visitation of this strange epidemic has afforded a band of desperate fanatics with the opportunity of accomplishing a long-cherished design. Here is the proclamation which in a few days will fly over the whole realm."

The General read through the document handed to him with the utmost astonishment.

"Love of loot, revenge, popular stupidity, will be powerful allies in such a frantic enterprise, which, if it but gain the upper hand, will, in a few weeks, change the whole appearance of the map of Europe. At present the flame is but a tiny one. It has only burst forth in a few villages. To-night they are going to attack the Castle of Hetfalu. That will be the beginning of it."

The General's face quivered. So the words of the condemned man had been true!

"There they will murder both master and servants. Murdered they must be in order that the participators in the outbreak may find retreat impossible. This will be the beginning of a desperate struggle."

The General rang a bell. He whispered a few words in the ear of the adjutant who answered the summons, and then sat down and began writing very rapidly, at the same time beckoning to Kamienszka to go on.

"General, at present the conflagration may be stamped out by a single effort. A bold hand, which does not shrink from a bad burn, may cover up the mouth of the volcano if instant action be taken. But not a day, not an hour, not a moment, should be lost. The thing must be done at once. In a day, an hour, a moment, things might happen which could never be made good again."

A rattle of chains was audible at the door, two sentries were bringing in the prisoner, behind them came the provost-martial.

The General, who never ceased writing, thus addressed him:

"Young man! have those chains taken off your hands, ask my adjutant for a sword, and gird it on!"

Young Hetfalusy opened his eyes wide with astonishment. He allowed them to take the chains off his hands, and gird a sword to his side, and did not at once observe that a couple of yards away from him stood a strange youth, who found it very hard not to burst into tears, and fall upon his neck at the sight of him, so miserable did he look.

The General had at last finished his correspondence, and gave his whole attention to young Hetfalusy.

"Now listen patiently to all that I am going to say. Take these letters, choose the best horse from my stables, and hasten to the leaders of the military cordons one after the other. Each one of them will place at the disposal of the captain accompanying you one half of his effective strength. As soon as you have gathered together half a battalion, hasten with them to Hetfalu, as to the rest that will be provided for by written instructions. Your own heart will tell you what you ought to do. You are going to rescue and defend your family. There the hand of God will be over you. If it please Him to carry your sentence into execution His will be done, if you return alive the past shall be forgotten."

The youth did not know what to answer, his voice died away in his throat. All he could do was to sink down in silence by the General's side, press his hand to his lips, and shed tears.

"Get up, get up, and be off! You have not to thank me for this. You must thank God and this worthy gentleman who has dared so much for your sake."

Only then did the youth cast a glance upon Kamienszka, and it seemed to him as if he dimly saw, conjured up before him, through the misty veil of his tears, the vision of a form from other days.

The Polish lady hastened up to him, pressed his hand, and whispered in his ear:

"Not a word now! We shall have plenty of time presently."

"Then you do know each other?" said Vertessy. "What could the youth be dreaming of to deny his friend a little while ago?"

And with that he gave the heroine's hand a vigorous grip, for he had every reason to still call her a man.

"Sir," said he, "I fancy I am not making you a bad offer if I ask you to come and have a hasty breakfast with me and your young friend, and then choose one of my horses and buckle on one of my swords. You are not the man I take you for if you do not feel inclined to follow your comrade and share his danger."

Hetfalusy, with an expression of alarm, would have interrupted him; but the girl thrust him aside, and her flashing eyes seemed to impose silence upon him.

"Thank you, General," she manfully replied. "I anticipated that offer, and I accept it. As for our breakfast we can have that in our saddles. We have no time to stay."

"You are right," said Vertessy, squeezing the soft downy hand whose steel-like muscles did not betray the woman, "you must hasten. This mad rebellion must be overthrown as rapidly as it has arisen. Should the movement extend to other parts of the county you will not find me unprepared."

Meanwhile the steeds were led out below the gate. The attendant captain rushed out, half dressed, bringing a sword with him for Kamienszka, which she hastily buckled on like a man.

The General escorted them down to the horses, and the three cavaliers swung themselves into their saddles. Vertessy pressed once more the heroine's hand, and said to her with soldierly frankness:

"Mr. Kamienszki, I have a great regard for you!"

"Not Kamienszki but Kamienszka!" murmured the lady softly, and with that she spurred her horse and galloped after her comrades.

And now for the first time a light dawned in Vertessy's mind, and he understood it all.

"A marvellous woman!" he muttered, gazing after her till the distance hid her from his eyes.

The streets were quite quiet, nobody was about, the General's own heart was afflicted by the stillness. A beneficent calm, so often the reaction from extreme excitement, came over him.

And now he had time to hasten back to the peaceful house opposite.

His heart beat so violently with joyful anticipation, the pulses of his hands and temples throbbed so tumultuously as he strode through the quiet rooms.

In the ante-chamber he encountered the doctor, who advanced towards him with a smile and stretched out his hand.

"You have a joyful house now," said he.

"What do you mean?" exclaimed Vertessy, stammering with delight; he knew very well, all the time, what the doctor meant.

"A wee, wee cherub has arrived," whispered the doctor—"and 'tis a boy cherub too," he added with a still broader smile.

The next moment Vertessy was kneeling down before his wife, and pressing her hands hundreds and hundreds of times to his burning lips.

And the wife, with a sweet and blissful smile, looked down upon her husband like one of those whom the prayers of their beloved have called back from the world beyond the grave.

"With God there is mercy!" was all that she could say.



CHAPTER XVI.

'TIS WELL THAT THE NIGHT IS BLACK.

At the Castle of Hetfalu everyone was quietly sleeping. None had any thought of that black spectre which is the enemy of all living creatures, which constrains the huge watch-dog to dig up graves with his hind feet, which bids the night owl utter her dismal notes on the housetop alongside of the creaking weather-cock, which sends into the vestibules and corridors its living visiting-cards in the shape of those large, black, night-moths with pale skull-like effigies painted on their backs as upon tombs, beneath whose feet the furniture creaks and crackles, which makes that tiny invisible beetle hidden between the boards of the beds begin tick-tick-ticking like a fairy watch, eleven times in succession, by way of showing that the witching hour of night is close at hand.

Oh! there is such a great unanimity among these dumb creatures of the night and darkness.

The wind blew gloomy-looking clouds before it across the sky, clouds which hastened away from that district; which jostled one another as they scudded along, some high, some low, and kept on changing their shapes as if they feared lest something might catch them there. Some of them had blood-red linings from the flames of distant conflagrations, and these flew rapidly along, trying to force their way through in advance of the rest; but these others sped along still faster, lest they, too, should be enkindled.

And in the darkness disorderly masses of men might have been dimly seen assembling in the roads and stealthily proceeding towards the castle. In the tap-room of the csarda evil counsellors are discussing the destruction of all the dwellers in the castle.

Three separate opinions are fighting for the supremacy. Numa Pompilius is in favour of an open, heroic attack, as became the epigoni of the valiant Sarmatians; with battering-rams, ballistas, and other classical instruments of warfare, he would have fought breast to breast, eye to eye with the foe.

Ivan, on the other hand, is more practical. He knows his own people better, and anticipates much greater success from an insidious surprise in which the warriors shall stealthily crawl over walls and through windows upon the unguarded and unsuspecting garrison, and massacre them in their dreams.

The wife of the headsman sits on the table opposite the two commanders-in-chief with a mocking smile upon her lips, and her huge muscular arms crossed over her bosom. From time to time she utters a scornful laugh and grunts disapprovingly.

"Do what you like," she said at last, "neither of you knows anything about it. The buffalo-catcher would proceed cautiously and the cripple would run like a 'bull' at the gate."

"And what would you do, I should like to know," snarled Ivan.

"I know something, and I know how to keep it to myself. When you two have made a mess of it, then I shall come forward."

The commanders began to be jealous of her influence. The first success always wins the heart of the mob, they must make sure of that anyhow.

"Call in the Leather-bell," cried Ivan to the doorkeepers.

The old fellow was shoved in.

"The castle watch-dogs know you, don't they?" he was asked.

"Know me? of course they do," replied the worthy man. "Why, I brought up Tisza and Farkas myself. I give them bread every day. Why, they sniff my pockets even now whenever I go along there."

"They know you still better, you knacker you, I'll be bound," said Dame Zudar to Ivan derisively.

Ivan caught up a knife from the table and would have stuck the woman with it had not Thomas Bodza stayed his hand. He did not like these squabbles at all.

"This is not the time for wrangling," said he.

Only very reluctantly did Ivan allow himself to be pacified and induced to continue the conversation.

"Here in this handkerchief are some pieces of meat, do you think you can get the dogs to take them with soft words?"

"Why not? I have only to call them by name, and they will come to the doors of their kennels and eat it out of my very hands."

"Then look sharp and set about it."

The Leather-bell was such a good fellow that he was never able to resist the slightest command. He accepted the commission, although he knew very well that the dogs would be poisoned. He consoled himself with the reflection, however, that nobody had told him so beforehand.

"But look here, gentlemen, you don't want to do his honour, the squire, any harm?" he inquired of Ivan, with a foolishly smiling face.

"No, old 'un, no."

"Nor the young squire either?"

"No, nor him either, not for all the world."

"Nor the heyduke? He is my godson, you know."

"No, nor him either, old 'un, but do look sharp."

"You only want to find out whether there is poison in the castle or not, don't you?"

"Yes, yes. Devil take the fellow! Be off, or I'll knock some of your teeth down your throat."

And the poor Leather-bell scuttled off.

"And now bring Mekipiros hither!"

They dragged the poor half-idiotic creature into the room. His thick, bristly hair hung right over his eyes. He was grinning and evidently in a good humour. But he could speak no longer, of course, since he had lost his tongue; whatever they said to him he could only reply: "Hamamama!"

This with him was the expression of happiness and contentment, both question and answer.

"Mekipiros! come hither and drink," cried Ivan, holding to his mouth a straw-covered pitcher full of spirit, which he to whom it was offered did not remove from his lips till it was quite empty. Then he returned it to Ivan with a joyful "Hamamama!"

"Look now, blockhead! You can climb up a rope anywhere, can't you?"

"Hamamamama!"

"All right, I'm not deaf! You can scale the roof of a house by means of a rope then?"

The hideous monster rubbed his hands with joy at the proposal.

"And then you will drag me up after you by means of the same rope, do you understand?"

The dwarfish abortion rushed with a howl of joy at Ivan, caught the fellow round the knee, raised him high in the air, and leapt up and down with him, by way of showing that he was as light as a bag of feathers, till Ivan, by dint of shouting and pummelling, contrived to free himself from the creature's grasp.

"The fellow has the strength of an ox," said he to Thomas Bodza, seizing the thick-set creature by the hair, and lugging him hither and thither, which appeared to infinitely delight the speechless monster. Whenever he succeeded in getting hold of one of Ivan's hands he covered it with kisses, whereupon the other, with an air of disgust, kept rubbing them on the tails of his coat, as if he could not wipe them sufficiently.

"He will do very well as food for their guns," whispered Ivan. "If the people in the castle hear a noise, and guess our subterfuge, they will shoot Mekipiros, for we will send him on in front. Why, even with a couple of bullets in his body the fellow will be able to scramble up the wall. He's like a toad."

Meanwhile the Leather-bell returned and announced that the dogs had gobbled up all the meat thrown to them.

"Oh, they made no bones about it," cried he.

"Then we can go," said Ivan, thrusting a rusty military pistol into his breast-pocket.

Dame Zudar hastened towards her matted waggon and leaped upon the box-seat. For a moment a long, sharp knife flashed betwixt her hands, and she peered at it closely to make sure that its edge was all right, immediately afterwards it vanished again nobody knew whither. Then she laid hold of her whip and lashed up the horses.

The road they followed passed by the hut of the Death-Bird. The old witch was huddled up in her doorway, and began counting those who passed, marking them off one by one, with her crutch: "One, two, three—One, two, three."

She never went beyond three, therefore every third was a marked man.

When her daughter passed by with the rector and Ivan she laughed aloud.

"Ha, ha, ha! A splendid company truly! A schoolmaster, a headsman's apprentice, and a nice young bride! Whither are you going such a dark night? A splendidly dark night! Just the night for thieves and murderers; just the night for those intent on rapine and burning! On you go! On you go! Worry the great gentry, root out your landlords, and after that fall yourselves into the hands of the headsman! The less people there are in the world the nicer it will be."

None of the rioters durst molest her though she stood right in their way, and spoke so that everyone could hear her. They all took care to give her a wide berth.

Thomas Bodza distributed his people along the road, and occupied every exit from the castle. One detachment he hid behind a haystack, with another he seized the beehives, and with a third the distillery. The servants who lived outside he overcame after a short resistance, and then bound them tightly and locked them up.

Inside the castle nobody was yet aware of what was going on outside. Not a single servant slept there. The young squire, in his terror of the epidemic, would not suffer one of them to sleep in the castle, the only people inside there besides himself were old Hetfalusy and the doctor.

Ivan then chose out six of the bravest of his followers, amongst them the watchman in whose sylvan hut they had held their secret meetings, Hamza, the sexton, and Mekipiros, whose mouth they had to gag, to prevent him from uttering his eternal "Hamamama!"

Poor Mekipiros! A little while ago he was able to pray, now he could not utter an intelligible word!

It was not difficult to get into the courtyard. The Leather-bell opened the gate for them. Inside the dogs were lying near the well stiff and stark, nothing had betrayed the venture.

And now Ivan produced a long strong rope, and tied on to it a lot of pack-thread, at the end of which a heavy piece of lead was fastened. Round the roof of the castle ran a metal gutter, which terminated at the corners in old-fashioned dolphins. On to one of such dolphins Ivan threw the pack-thread noose, and seizing hold of the re-descending lead plummet, hoisted up the rope likewise. It was really a capital idea. Mekipiros was to clamber up the rope, he knew the trick of it. He was to be the anima vilis by means of whom they were to find out whether the folks in the castle were asleep or not.

When he got to the top he was to pull up Ivan after him, and then the united strength of the pair of them would do the same by the others. They would then creep into the castle through the attics and open the doors, which were locked on the inside, to admit their comrades.

Nothing could have been more circumspectly conceived.

When the rope was firmly fastened to the top of the gutter Ivan hurried up Mekipiros and shoved the free end of the rope into his hand.

The little monster did not trust himself to shout but expressed his satisfaction in a lowly murmured "Hamamamama!"

The next moment he was clambering up the rope like a strange sort of huge spider, climbing rapidly higher and higher with agile hands and feet, occasionally he even helped himself along with his teeth. In a few moments he was sitting on the back of the copper dolphin, delighted to have found a steed in a monster similar to himself, and from thence he shouted: "Hu, hu, hu!" like an owl.

"Will you shut up!" called Ivan, in a voice of suppressed fury. "The beast will betray us! Haul up, can't you?"

Ivan clutched hold of the rope with both hands.

Mekipiros with vigorous tugs hoisted him upwards, hauling up the rope with his short arms as easily as if there were no weight attached to it.

"How I wish he would let him fall," murmured Dame Zudar to herself.

Thomas Bodza had much the same sort of wish in his own heart. Each of them had his or her particular reasons for wishing Ivan's plan to fail.

But Mekipiros did not let him drop. He hoisted him up right on to the roof and helped him to climb up on to the metal gutter.

Ivan scarce felt his feet once more, however, when, instead of expressing his gratitude, he expended his pent-up rage on his companion.

"You mad bullock, you, why did you roar out just now, eh?" he whispered in the ear of Mekipiros, and he viciously tugged at the stunted monster's bristly hair with one hand, at the same time holding his other hand before his mouth to prevent him from screaming out.

At that same instant Mekipiros turned upon Ivan with flashing eyes, seized him round the thighs and holding him fast embraced, hauled him along the roof. For a second the pair of them tottered on the very edge of the gutter, but then Ivan clutched the metal cornice and held on to it convulsively with both hands.

"Hamama, hamama, hamama!" howled the enraged monster. Like a heavy load of sin, he hung on to the legs of his prey, squeezing his knees together in an iron embrace, worrying his enemy's calves with his teeth, kicking and cuffing him, and striving to hurl him into the abyss below.

Ivan was fairly mad with terror.

"Help!" he roared, in a voice capable of arousing the Seven Sleepers, "help! He is killing me!"

"I knew what would be the end of it!" cried Dame Zudar, gnashing her teeth. "The poltroon is betraying us himself. Let him perish if he does not know how to live."

"Scoundrel!" Bodza shouted to him. "What! cannot you die speechless like a Julius Caesar? And when the common cause demands that you should keep silence too! Fie upon you, I say!"

Ivan, in his desperation, writhed over the gulf beneath him, and forgetting everything but the horrible death awaiting him, bellowed hoarsely to those standing below:

"Help, for the love of Christ. Men, I say! do not let me perish! I am falling! I am dying. Woe is me! Spread straw underneath, can't you? Hold a carpet below me! Mercy, mercy! Let me go, Mekipiros! I beseech you, for God's sake, let me go!"

But it was no part of Mekipiros' plan to plunge down to the ground all by himself. For the last hour or so he had been joyfully awaiting this sweet moment, for this he had laughed, for this he had frisked about so uproariously. He was unable to conceal his delight. If only he could be alone with his tormentor at that giddy height, suddenly seize him, and hurl him down with himself from the roof, fly for a few seconds through the air, and then lie stretched upon the earth in a smashed and broken mass, so that it would be impossible to distinguish the one from the other—ah! then how happy he would be!

And—better than that even—his victim had clutched hold of something in the very act of falling, and so the delicious moment was indefinitely prolonged! He heard how his prey roared for help, saw how he writhed convulsively in the desperate hope of saving himself, how half out of his mind he even begged him, Mekipiros! for life: "Mekipiros, dear good Mekipiros, let me go, and plunge down alone!"

"Hamamama! hamamama!" gurgled the monster with a grim cruel voice, and he kicked the wall with his feet to make Ivan let go the quicker, and buried his scanty teeth in the fleshy legs of his victim, and worried him like a dog.

"Mercy, mercy! Help! I can hold out no longer!" gasped Ivan, his sinews beginning to stretch beneath the pressure of the double load. No help was possible. Those standing below cursed him for rousing the castle with his shouts. The narrow edge of the gutter was gradually slipping through his nerveless fingers. And now one hand relaxed its hold, and only by a last convulsive effort did he manage to hold on for a few seconds by the other.

"Hamamama!" screeched the monster, and then a yell, as of the lost, resounded from height to depth, and a huge round, black, writhing, coil came bounding rapidly to the ground, and there, the next instant, lay a mangled mass of flesh, in which perhaps at one time two souls had dwelt.

"And now let us see what the next can do," growled Dame Zudar, leaning nonchalantly back in her waggon, and crossing her arms over her breast like an impatient singer at a concert who waits for his turn in the programme to come while his colleagues are boring the public to death with their dismal performances.

At Ivan's first howl two lights had become visible in the two corner chambers of the castle, and presently both of these lights were observed hastening to the central hall only, a few moments later, to be extinguished. Then the iron shutters were banged down with a crash, only one square piece in the middle still remained raised.

The besieged were on their guard.

Now, Numa Pompilius, you have a fine field before you for the race of glory. Advance! put your ladders to the walls, hurl your beams against the foe, sling your stones against the roof, begin the struggle, and inspire the combatants with martial fury! Let shouts and yells and curses supply the place of thundering artillery! The enemy is aroused and expectant!

"Forward, ye heroes! The hour of the red dawn of our day of triumph is at hand. Victory to the valiant!"

The excited mob heard not a word of this classical appeal, its ears were too full of its own howlings, as it pressed into the courtyard.

Then from that window square, which had remained uncovered by the shutter, a shot resounded, at whose sharp report the hideous hubbub suddenly grew dumb, and during the lull a strong manly voice addressed the rioters:

"That was only a blank shot. If you do not instantly leave the courtyard we will fire among you with bullets."

"Let us depart hence, my noble patriots, let us depart!" stammered the Leather-bell. "It is Squire Szephalmi who commands it. It is not well to play games with him. He has a lot of six-barrelled firearms inside with three bullets in each barrel. A mischief may befall some of us else. We have wives and children at home. Let us go home, my dear fellow patriots. Early to-morrow morning we will send a deputation."

The greater part of the mob shared this good opinion, and began to show their respect for firearms by clearing out of the courtyard.

But Numa Pompilius, full of the fury of despair, barred the way against his retreating host.

"Miserable, cowardly deserters! What! a single blank shot is sufficient to turn you back! Holus-bolus, 'sicut examen apum,' ye decamp at the word of a single foe! Fie, fie upon you, ye dregs, ye sweepings of humanity!"

The bellicose commander spat in his disgust at the fugitives again and again, and overwhelmed them with all sorts of choice epithets. Finally he snatched up an axe, and declared that if nobody else stirred he would go and batter down the door of the castle single-handed.

But the Leather-bell threw his arms round the body of the enthusiastic hero lest he should hazard his life in so perilous an enterprise. Nay, he would not even let him enter the courtyard, but went so far as to seize the axe he held in his hand regardless of the kicks and cuffs he received during the struggle.

Dame Zudar laughed scornfully at this tragicomical scene.

"Why don't some other of you fellows hold him back too?" she cried. "He likes nothing better than not to be let go. Don't you see what a business he makes of it to rid himself of that feeble old man, whom he could throw to the ground with half a hand if he had a mind to. Get out of my way, will you? Men are out of place in a joke of this sort. My mother was a witch and I'm one also. Do you know that I can open every door before you with a single word. All you have got to do is to sharpen your knives."

And with that she opened the wicker covering of her waggon, which hitherto had been kept tightly closed, and as easily, as if she only held a down cushion in her hand, she hauled forth little Elise.

The child's hands were tied in front of her, and her head was completely enveloped in a thick woollen wrapper so that she could neither see nor cry out.

Dame Zudar removed the wrapper from the little girl's head, and ordered her to stand upright.

Then she produced a half burnt wax taper, the relic of some past funeral, lit it, and placed it between the child's fettered fingers.

"The woman is not quite right," growled shaggy-headed Hanak. "She lights a candle so that they may be better able to fire among us."

"Have no fear, shaggy pate. They will not fire at you. Go and huddle behind the doorpost if you like. I mean to go alone into the courtyard, and will draw the snake out of its hole with my bare hand."

The besiegers did not need much persuasion to hide themselves. When Dame Zudar passed through the gate with the child, everyone, not excepting Thomas Bodza, hastened to make himself scarce.

The child she sent on in front with the lighted taper sticking between its fettered fingers. She followed close behind. She had no fear of bullets now.

When they came in front of the open square in the shutter, she made the child stop, and bade it kneel down.

Then with a loud resounding voice she shouted up at the windows:

"Old Hetfalusy, are you there? Young Szephalmi, are you there?"

There was no answer.

"It is of no use denying yourselves. I am here to carry on my process against you. It is the old, old suit in which my father lost his life and my mother her reason. I have also brought along with me a tribunal which cannot be corrupted. I am now the stronger party."

"Take yourself off!" a hoarse, broken voice suddenly cried from the window; it very much resembled old Hetfalusy's.

"Oh, I'm to take myself off, eh!" cried the virago defiantly. "Am I not standing then on my own ground? Is not this corner of the house whose windows I am now rattling, built on the plot of ground belonging to my forefathers? Is not this ground my own? Are not these very stones, these very blades of grass on which I now trample, mine, mine, mine?"

"It may very easily be yours for ever, you wretched creature," said another voice, the voice of the younger squire. "If you do not go away, you shall die on the very spot."

The barrel of a gun flashed between the shutters, and the headsman's wife could see that it was pointed straight at her heart.

Quickly she pulled the little girl towards her.

"Aim away, Szephalmi!" she cried. "I have even taken the trouble to bring a light that you may see to aim straight."

And with that she snatched the candle from between the child's fingers, and held it so that it lit up her face.

"Look now! A pretty child, ain't she? Those blue eyes, those soft lips resemble someone you loved very much at one time, don't they? It would be a shame, wouldn't it, to make this tender, slender shape a target for bullets, wouldn't it?"

The barrel of the gun sank slowly down.

"How do you suppose now, Szephalmi," continued the virago, her face radiant with infernal malice, "how do you suppose now that the headsman's wife managed to get hold of this gentle cherub, who is as much like her as an angel is to a devil?"

"Woman!" hissed someone from within, though whether it was the old man or the young it was impossible to say.

Dame Zudar drew nearer, she now went right up to the window.

"You would like me to speak in a lower key, no doubt? Well, I may do that. You see how close I am standing to you, you could touch my body with the barrel of your musket. But you won't touch me, I know, for now it is I who am the destroyer."

And with that she laid her large, broad, muscular palm on the little girl's tender shoulder.

"This child is now eight years old. When she was born her father cursed her, her mother kicked her out, and her nurse confided her to a she-wolf that she might either kill it or bring it up along with her own whelps—which is much about the same thing. It is the foolish old story, the old grey wolf carried off the brat and brought it up; the old headsman nourished the innocent little girl, and defended her against all the wild beasts of the forest. Do I make the fable quite clear to you?"

A stifled moan was the sole reply.

"And then Heaven's lightning descended upon your house, misfortune was a constant visitor upon you, you soon had a pair of corpses under your roof, and there was no end to your affliction. Now I should say that that looked very much like a curse upon you.

"Yes, a curse pursued your family. When you had securely fastened the door behind you, you used to weep and wail like any beggar; yes, and no beggar at your door would have thanked you for the chance of exchanging his lot with yours."

To this there was no reply from behind the window.

The defiant features of the virago were illuminated by the candle which the child now held again in her hand. She seemed to cast a dark shadow upon the very night around her—the darkest of dark shadows.

And now she went right up to the window so that she could actually whisper through it.

"Come, throw down your weapons, ye great and haughty gentlemen, for they are no longer a defence to you. Something very evil is going to happen to-night, for I have not come to you for nothing, I can tell you."

And with that she drew from beneath the kerchief covering her breast the knife sharpened to a keen point, whose edge she had tested so carefully a short time before.

"Do you see my key?" cried she. "This is the key to your hearts, this is the key to the doors of your palaces. This knife will pare down your pride and humble you to the dust beneath my feet. You could shoot me dead as I stand here I know, though that would be no very great master-stroke. But the same instant in which I fell, my mother, the old witch, would stand behind my back and would shout to the infuriated mob with all the force of her lungs, and tell them whose this child is, and then do you know in whose heart this knife would be plunged first of all?"

A sort of painful wail came from below the dark window, like the sounds that are heard in a deserted, dilapidated old fortress where the whole building is ever sighing and moaning, and none can tell whence the noise comes.

During the virago's muttered discourse the bolder spirits among the mob had gradually flitted back again into the courtyard. They perceived that the headsman's wife was not afraid, and this of itself gave them courage. Some of them even drew near to the threshold of the house, where they pricked up their ears and did their best to catch something of what the woman was talking about so mysteriously. It might be worth their while to hear.

Dame Zudar began sharpening the knife against the stone ledge of the castle window.

"I give you three minutes to think it over," she now exclaimed aloud. "If you then say: let there be bloodshed! bloodshed there shall be."

And with that she turned back to the child.

There she stood in front of the castle threshold, with the heavenly resignation of a martyr on her pale, innocent face. She appeared to be quite undisturbed by the dreadful scene before her. The thought that she was now about to die absorbed all her faculties.

"Kneel down!" cried the virago coldly.

The child took her at her word, and knelt down on the lowest of the flight of steps.

"Pray, if you have a mind that way."

The child devoutly raised her eyes to Heaven, and holding the lighted candle in front of her in her tiny hands, began to sing this verse of a hymn:

"The Lord my God, I praise and bless, For He hath heard my soul's distress, And hath inclined His ear to me Who love Him through eternity."

To many it seemed, while the child's quavering voice was intoning the sad melody, as if, either from the midst of the crowd, or from some corner close at hand, a man's voice was accompanying the tone in a subdued voice, dwelling upon the final notes, as they do in church.

Who could it be?

None could say whence the accompanying voice proceeded.

A cold shudder ran down Dame Zudar's back. It was the voice of the headsman!

But what a mad idea! Men no longer come forth unhurt from the midst of the fire, as did the three holy children in the days of Nebuchadnezzar.

So she strengthened her heart, marched up to the door, and began thundering upon it with her fists.

"The three minutes for consideration is now up. My old enemy and my young enemy, you must now open the door and come forth."

The crowd waited in hushed suspense for what would come next.

Why did not the people inside fire beneath the sure protection of their stronghold? What spell had this woman cast over them? Had she really the power, then, to break through bolts and bars with a mere word, a mere look?

"One, two, three!"

Still not a sound.

Then the virago, with a haughty look, turned towards the people, and addressed them with a penetrating voice:

"If they won't speak I will. Friends and comrades, these bigwigs here have sworn our ruin. They want to root out the whole lot of us, why, then, should we have mercy on them? Now, however, it is not we who are in their power, but they who are in ours. Their own sins have delivered them into my hands. You know, and the whole world knows, that that stuck-up gentleman yonder, Szephalmi, Esq., once upon a time exposed his firstborn child. He cast it forth in the wilderness, cast it forth among the wild beasts, because he feared the shame of it forsooth!—ha, ha, ha! Has a poor man ever done the like of that? Aye, and it was a poor man who found the child, it was a poor man who had compassion on the little outcast thrown in his way, it was a poor man who brought it up as if it were his own child. And now, if you please, these high and noble gentlemen cast poison into the wells of the poor man that they may destroy him, root and branch."

The mob listened to these murderous words with ever increasing eagerness.

At the same time it did not escape Dame Zudar's attention that a key had been put into the iron door of the castle from the inside, and that it was being turned softly.

So now she fell a-shouting more noisily than ever.

"Before you kneels the foster-daughter of the headsman's wife. Who was that child's mother? who gave her to the headsman's wife? Her mother, I tell you, was a great lady, none other than Benjamin Hetfalusy's daughter, whom the wrath of God smote down together with that little murderer, her infant son. I nourished and brought up that child, and what thanks did I get for it? Only this: that these bigwigs have determined to kill us all by poisoning our meat and drink, that they may thereby bury their shameful secret. But I declare their design aloud, so that every man may know it. This girl is Hetfalusy's grand-daughter. This girl is in our power, and if these fine gentlemen so much as crumple a single hair of any of your heads, I will plunge this knife into the child's heart."

A confused, savage murmur ran through the mob at these grim words, which seemed to intoxicate the hearts of all who heard them with a fiendish cruelty.

And Dame Zudar, listening attentively, heard the key turn in the door a second time.

She was well prepared for what would follow.

She now stepped behind the child, wound its beautiful blonde tresses round her left hand, and with her right grasped the handle of the knife convulsively.

"Oh, God, my God!" cried Elise's bell-like voice.

At that same instant the iron door opened wide, and between its receding wings stood a spectre—a spectre was the only name for it, as it had no resemblance to anything human.

A pale face, like the face of one arisen from the tomb, white dishevelled hair clinging round his temples and hanging over his bloodshot eyes. He had wrapped a long mantle over his white night-dress which fluttered about him like the wings of a bat.

It was old Hetfalusy.

In each hand he held a loaded pistol, and as the opening door groaned on its hinges he cried in a hoarse voice:

"Here I am, but whoever dares to lay a hand upon the girl, him will I shoot first and the girl afterwards."

But it was a threat which excited little terror, his hands trembled so and his eyes were scarce able to see what was before them.

Nobody followed him. He passed through the door alone.

The Leather-bell, however, was so terrified lest he should carry out his threat that he threw himself at the old man's feet, and embracing his knees, piteously besought him:

"Master, master, oh, my dear master! don't fire, for God's sake! Lay down your pistols. I assure you that nobody here will hurt you."

"Will ye swear, then, that you will do the child no harm?" gasped old Hetfalusy.

"Put down your weapons!" cried the rioters.

"Swear that you will not harm her in any way, and then I will put them down."

"Very well, we swear!" cried some in the rear of the crowd.

"Let that woman swear too," said Hetfalusy, pointing at Dame Zudar with a shaking hand. None of them did he hold in such horror as her.

The virago smiled and twiddled the knife between her fingers. Craftily lowering her eyes, and casting a side-long glance at the old man, she replied:

"And by whom, then, am I to swear?"

"By the name of God, the living God."

"But what shall I swear?"

"Swear that neither you yourself, nor any of your companions, will do this child any harm, whosoever child she is, and whether what you allege concerning her be true or not."

"Nothing else?"

"Nothing."

"Would you not save your own grey hairs from being crumpled then?"

"May the Almighty dispose of me as it seemeth Him good."

"Then I will take the oath," cried the virago, and, raising her muscular right arm heavenwards, she cried:

"No harm shall come to the child, so help me, God!"

Then Hetfalusy calmly surrendered his pistols to the Leather-bell, who politely kissed his hand for so doing, and straightway fired the pistols off in the air, so that they might do no harm to anyone.

The same instant the blaspheming mob fell upon the defenceless squire, tore at his grey locks and impotent limbs, and hurled him to the ground.

"Smash him, kill him, the poison-mixer!" resounded from every side, and the bloodthirsty cowards rushed furiously from their hiding-places with cudgels and flails, to the spot where the defenceless old squire was lying.

The worthy Leather-bell had not another word to say, but he cast himself at full length upon the prostrate gentleman, and, tightly embracing his frail figure, defended him with his own body from the first onset of the raging mob.

In vain they pummelled, in vain they kicked him, his self-sacrificing back endured everything, and patiently received the beating intended for his master.

The poor fellow, after all, would really have been a very good man if only he had not been so very simple.

"Clear out, will you!" cried Dame Zudar and Thomas Bodza simultaneously, "we must not kill him. We want to get something out of him, so he must live. Let no one hurt him, then, till he has received his sentence."

At last the two ringleaders succeeded in clearing away the furious mob from the mauled and trampled body of the squire. Then they raised him from the ground, tied his hands together, and fastened him tightly by one lean arm to the trellised gate of the castle. Blood oozed from the old man's limbs beneath the pressure of the rough cord, yet, with not so much as a groan did Benjamin Hetfalusy betray the torture he was suffering.

* * * * *

And thou, oh, man, in thy fiery pit, art thou still singing thy hymns below there, art thou still testing the edge of thy sword with the tips of thy fingers, just as if it were the string of some sad and delicate musical instrument, which can give forth but one voice, and that the voice of a sad, sad song?

The heat of the collapsed dwelling was now penetrating to the cellar below, and the straitened prisoner began to bethink him of some other place of refuge.

Instead of the fierce crackle of the flames which had met his ear hitherto, he now could only hear a monotonous flickering as of expiring embers, and this lasted for a long time, when suddenly a fresh noise attracted his attention.

Not far from his hiding-place something began to sound like the voice of a wind-clapper. At first it went clap! clap! clap! very rapidly, but gradually the strokes grew slower and slower, tapering down at last to single beats at long intervals.

Whoever has attentively watched the doors of a metal furnace, will know at once how that sound arises. When the heat of the fire which has expanded the metal begins to decrease, the expanded fibres of the metal suddenly begin to contract and give forth a snapping sound as of metal strings violently torn asunder.

The iron door of the cellar was, in fact, loudly calling the attention of the master of the house to the fact that the fire had reduced all the brushwood piled round the house into red-hot embers, and it was therefore high time for him to seek another asylum.

Peter Zudar seized a large measure of beer, approached the door, and flung the malt liquid all over it.

Ha! how loudly the glowing metal hissed and spluttered at the contact of the cold fluid, as if laughing with joy at the artful scheme which it and the master together had devised for the latter's deliverance.

The iron door was far too burning hot to be opened with the naked hand, but the blood-red glare visible behind it made it pretty certain that the lead-soldering had long ago melted away, and it therefore only needed a vigorous kick to wrench it off its hinges.

Peter Zudar listened attentively. Not a soul was stirring. There was indeed no reason why anyone should linger any longer in that wretched place.

Impatience spurred him on to action. He began to lift the door from its hinges with the help of a heavy crowbar. It gave way sooner than he had anticipated, and fell at full length on the smoking embers in front of it, bridging over the fiery stream from one bank to the other.

With a single bound Peter Zudar leaped over the door, and sped away from the burning house like a madman.

It was dark, nobody saw him. In his way stood huge thistles, prickly-headed vegetable monsters, and Peter Zudar mowed them all down with his headsman's sword just as if they had been so many condemned malefactors, or as if he were a frolicsome lad waging fierce war with a wooden sword against the whole evil host of weeds. Anybody who had seen him would have taken him for a lunatic.

He only came to himself when the barking of a dog struck upon his ear; he knew then that he was on the borders of the village, and close to the nearest houses.

Then he began slowly to compose himself, the cool night air was soothing his troubled brain. He now commenced to recollect what had happened to him during the last few hours. The riot, the seizure of the child, the house burnt over his head, the agony he had endured in the cellar—all these things flashed like vivid pictures before his mind again.

But what had become of the child? What did they want to do with her? To kill her perhaps?—these were his first thoughts. Then he began to consider how he might discover her whereabouts and rescue her. Vengeance was the last thing he thought of.

He had no suspicion as to whom the raging mob had risen against. He fancied that the child was the pivot of the whole ghastly affair. He was persuaded all along that they had sought her death, and would murder her, and the idea of such a thing was all the more terrible to him because he did not know the reason why. So much, however, he did know, that his own wife was the person most to be feared.

He was fully sensible that there was no time to lodge a complaint with the magistrate, the priest, or the local court, and await a heavy sentence. This was a peculiar case in which the headsman himself must investigate, condemn, and execute the sentence—and was not the sword of Justice already in his hands?

And as he stood there, leaning against a fence, in a brown study, it seemed to him as if he heard from the midst of the village the very hymn which he had sung so often with his darling before their evening repose:

"The Lord, my God, I praise and bless."

He listened attentively. It was no delusion. They were really the words of the hymn, the child's voice was really singing them.

At first he fancied that his darling was in some other world, and was speaking to him from the Kingdom of Heaven, and he lifted up his voice likewise, and sang back again, his deep sonorous voice sounding like a magnified echo of the bell-like childish voice.

Subsequently, however, it occurred to him that perhaps the child was locked up somewhere, and wanted to let him know where she was by singing the hymn.

Suddenly there arose a hideous shout from the courtyard of the castle, the inarticulate roar of hundreds and hundreds of savage men, whose very throats seemed to thirst for blood.

At that same instant Hetfalusy had surrendered his arms to his assailants.

Peter Zudar lost not another instant in reflection, but turned up his shirt-sleeves, smoothed away his hair from his eyes, and rushed towards the castle.

A long lane separated him from the residential part of the mansion, but not choosing to follow it along its whole length, he waited till he saw the pinnacles of the castle, and then took a short cut over hedge and ditch, dashing along straight before him heedless of everything.

* * * * *

The infuriated mob which, after being cowed by the mere show of resistance, became all the more brutal at the first symptom of surrender, after Hetfalusy had laid down his arms, was able to glut its brutal rage, at will, on the old gentleman who had thus become its victim.

But it was lost labour.

What satisfaction can there be in the torturing of a withered stump which is dumb to all outrage?—it is as fruitless a business as flogging a corpse!

The old squire did not demean himself by a single outcry of pain.

When they wanted him to confess that the gentry had banded together to extirpate the peasantry, he coldly replied:

"That is not true."

Every denial on his part was followed by inhuman tortures. But they were but tormenting a frigid skeleton insensible to pain, who only replied, again and again:

"That is not true!"

The invading mob, after breaking everything in the castle it could lay its hands upon, began searching for young Szephalmi and the doctor.

They must have hidden well, for nowhere could they be found. The mob turned all the rooms upside down, and yet it could not find them.

The old man must certainly know where they were stowed away.

But Hetfalusy would not betray his son-in-law or the doctor.

Amongst his executioners shaggy Hanak particularly distinguished himself by his fiendish ingenuity, but the squire only remarked to him in a gentle voice:

"Do you recollect, Hanak, how last year, you were bedridden, and I supported your whole family? And when your biggest lad was taken by the recruiting sergeant, did I not buy him out? And when the hail destroyed your crops, did I not give you the corn on which you and your whole family lived comfortably during the winter?"

But at this mild reproach, stubbly Hanak only wiped his bloody mouth, and bellowed with bestial pride:

"There's no Hanak here! I'm Hanak no longer. I'm a rebel patriot, that's what I am!"

The poor Leather-bell was quite unable to help his master. He could only implore the rioters to torture him if they liked rather than Hetfalusy. He knew he was the cause of it all because he had talked about the poison. He wished now that he had eaten of the poison and died.

Dame Zudar, meanwhile, had been regarding the sufferings of her mortal foe with devilish enjoyment.

There she stood, her arms folded across her breast, facing her enemy, whose warm blood frequently spurted over her face.

"'Tis no good hurting him that way," she murmured to herself. "A boor howls if you nip him, this sort only holds his tongue just as if he had a soul different from the others...."

"This was the very spot where you made my father bleed," she cried. "Do you recollect Dudoky, eh? There he lay, where you lie now, and you stood beside him, as I now stand beside you, and revelled in it. But my father wept and howled beneath his torments while you only keep silent. I could not bear to look on, I ran away and hid myself in my room, but there also I kept on hearing his shrieks. I heard them through two thick walls. Twenty years have passed since then, and through those twenty years I still hear him. I want to hear you weep too, and not mock your executioners by putting on a stone-cold face like that. Yes, you shall weep, you shall entreat. I will not be happy till I see your eyes full of tears."

Hetfalusy regarded the fury contemptuously, and knitted his lips.

And then he called her a name, a low, degrading name, the worst of all names that a man can call a woman.

With a hiss of rage the virago rushed upon him with the frantic idea of plunging her knife in his heart.

But nay, not so.

Her face was white with fury, her whole frame trembled.

"I became that all through you!" she gasped with husky rage. "But you will not mock me for it much longer. Do you see your grandchild here in my power?"

"You swore you would not hurt her."

"I swore I would not kill her, but I will make her what I was. By Heaven and Earth and all the torments of Hell, I swear I will do it."

"Woman!" stammered Hetfalusy, and his face lost at last its expression of stony endurance.

"Ha-ha!" cried the virago, with a laugh like the howl of a wild beast. "The last scion of the house of Hetfalusy will do credit to a house of ill-fame. Look how lovely she is! Look at her face, her figure, her eyes! As innocent as an angel too! Ah! you are weeping now, are you? But you will have to weep tears of blood, you accursed old wretch, for what I say I mean to do!"

"Woman, if you believe in God——" began the old man, writhing to free himself from his bonds.

"I don't!" the woman yelled back defiantly. "There is no God!"

At that same instant her head leaped so suddenly into the air that her body remained standing upright, three long jets of blood at the same time shooting up from between her vacant shoulders. Her two hands still fumbled about in the air as if they would have drawn back the uttered blasphemy and defended her against this terrible judgment, and then the whole figure collapsed in the direction of the fallen head, which lay with its face turned heavenwards, and its mouth gaping open, as if longing to speak, whilst the tongue still moved, perchance, asking mercy or pardon from Heaven. Too late, too late! There was no longer any power of utterance there. Once or twice there was a twitching of the eyelids over the stiffening staring eyes, till at last they closed painfully in the dream of death.

And above the condemned sinner towered the form of the avenger of sin—the headsman.



CHAPTER XVII.

THE VOICE OF THE LORD.

During the blasphemous speech of the frantic virago nobody had observed that Peter Zudar had reached the courtyard of the castle. In the darkness and prevailing confusion he had been able to creep up to the wretched woman unobserved.

He had heard to the end her furious outburst, her horrible menace. He had seen the convulsions of the stony-hearted squire in the midst of his fetters, he had seen the tender child collapse beneath the touch of the horrible virago, and he had fulfilled his mission.

The people, who in that awful moment had seen his bright sword flash forth like Heaven's lightning, who had seen the monstrously mutilated body of the woman totter in their midst, and spurt blood on all the bystanders, who had seen the awe-inspiring figure of the headsman close to them all, him whom they had fancied dead and buried, him whom their own eyes had seen burnt to ashes—all these people stood for a moment as if turned to stone, as if their souls had left their bodies.

This brief interval of petrified astonishment was sufficient for Peter Zudar to snatch up the sorrowing child with one hand, while with the other he whirled his bloody sword above his head, and opened a way for himself to the gate.

Then, when the rioters saw him escaping, they came to themselves again.

"After him!" cried Hanak, catching hold of his scythe.

"After him!" roared the Leather-bell, grasping a torch, and bounding on in front, and so skilfully did he scatter the sparks in the eyes of the pursuers, that their dazzled eyes could see absolutely nothing. When, at last, he came to a narrow bridge over a stream which they had to cross, he stumbled so suddenly that those coming immediately behind tumbled over him, and the torch was extinguished in the water. Zudar, meanwhile, had had time to conceal himself and the girl in the bushes on the banks of the stream. Nobody had observed him except the Leather-bell, and as soon as that worthy could gain his legs again he fell a-bellowing with all his might:

"On, on! there he goes! catch him, seize him!"

And off he went at full tilt, as if a high price had been set upon the head of the pursued, and he was determined to win it, whilst Zudar, snug in his hiding-place, listened to the hundreds and hundreds of pattering feet that made the bridge creak over his head, and to the hundreds and hundreds of hoarse voices clamouring for his blood. Presently he heard them all come panting back again, cursing and swearing and consoling one another with the assurance that although they had not caught him now, he would not be able to escape them for long.

"Yes," he thought to himself, "a time is coming when you will find me without having sought me."

And now the pursuing band, full of fresh fury, stormed back to the castle. The Leather-bell cursed them for not following up the trail when they were already hot upon it. He had had, he maintained, the tail of the fugitive's coat in his very hand, but had been obliged to leave go because they had not helped him to hold on, and so the headsman had fled away among the maize-fields.

The sky was now growing grey, the dawn was not far off; but the folks had forgotten to ring in the morning, for the bell-ringers had something better to do.

At Thomas Bodza's command they carried the corpses aside out of the courtyard, the corpses of Ivan, Dame Zudar, and poor Mekipiros. They conveyed them to a large ditch at the back of the house, so that none might see their remains.

The surviving ringleader felt a secret satisfaction when his colleagues had thus perished by his side. He alone remained upon the field, and he flattered himself that Fate was on his side, and by thus putting the leading threads of the whole movement into his hands, meant to emphasize the fact that mind was the true motive-power—his own mind naturally—and therefore it was for him, and him alone, to hold sway.

The mob must be impressed, of course, by some great never-to-be-forgotten scene, which would give a touch of sublimity to its hitherto low and common rioting.

So Thomas Bodza ascended to the highest step of the castle staircase, from whence he declared to the mob that as the champions of justice they had prevailed.

"And now," continued he, "we will pronounce judgment on the poison-mixers according to the good old Greek custom. Let the people take potsherds in their hands. In front of the hall stand two urns. In one is life, in the other death. Let each one of you cast his vote into which urn he pleases. This, my friends, is the ostracism of classical times. You are the archons who shall give judgment, and the whole world will thus see that we exercise according to law and order the authority which we have won with our arms. Sit around me, therefore, oh, citizens, and let the accused be brought forth!"

The gaping mob was delighted with this new diversion.

Hitherto the only occasion on which they had had an opportunity of seeing a court of justice was when they had been led in chains, for some crime or other, before the green table of the district court, where great gentlemen pronounced sentences upon them out of big thick books. And now one of these very great gentlemen was, in his turn, to stand before a tribunal, and the tribunal consisted of nothing but peasants, whose hair had never been clipped, who had never worn linen, who could neither read nor write, and yet who now had the power of passing upon him whatever sentence they chose. So they all applauded Bodza's proposition loudly, whilst he himself, with an air of ineffable importance, sat down on the topmost step of the staircase, and beckoned to his subordinates to lead forth the old squire.

He gave very little trouble, it was not even necessary to fetter him, for the moment he was untied from the doorpost he simply collapsed and remained lying where he had fallen.

Then they put him on an ambulance car, and thus conveyed him before the Areopagus.

One worthy peasant had compassion on the old man lying there in his shirt exposed to the cold morning air, and covered him with his guba[20] yet this very man voted for his death a few moments later.

[Footnote 20: A shaggy woollen mantle worn by the Hungarian peasants.]

Meanwhile, stubbly Hanak had placed behind the old man's back a gipsy brickmaker to keep an eye on him, and touch him up with a whip if he refused to confess.

Thomas Bodza now produced the box of bismuth that had been found in the castle, and, cautiously opening it, placed it in front of the old squire.

"You old sinner," said he, "answer my questions truly. Why did they send you so much poison?"

The old gentleman remained silent.

The gipsy savagely belaboured his dove-white head with the heavy whip.

At the sound of the blows, an angry voice suddenly resounded from behind the master's back.

"Hold hard, hold hard! you blockheads, you brutes, you stupid numbskulls!"

Bodza, in his terror, sprang from his seat, and the astonished multitude beheld Dr. Sarkantyus running hastily towards them along the hall.

The worthy man had been well concealed with young Szephalmi in a blind niche, in the chimney corner, whence he had listened to the whole horrible tragedy; but when it came to accusing someone of poisoning people with his drugs, he could stand it no longer, but kicked open the tapestried door, and rushed out among the rioters.

Young Szephalmi swooned with terror when his hiding-place was discovered, so that they had to drag him out by the feet.

The unexpected joy of laying hands upon a couple of fresh victims whom they had long sought in vain, whetted the appetite of the mob for more blood. They kept pummelling Szephalmi till he came to again, and tied the physician back to back with Hetfalusy.

Throughout the whole tussle Dr. Sarkantyus never ceased blackguarding the rioters for their imbecile suspicion of medical science, and tried to explain to Thomas Bodza how very much in error he was as to the contents of the box.

Only Szephalmi displayed an utter want of dignity. He wept, he implored, he fell on his knees, and promised to confess everything if only they would not hurt him, if only they would not kill him. He was not guilty, he said, and he cursed the doctor for bringing all this mischief on the house with his abominable drugs and betraying their hiding-place so madly.

"Mr. Szephalmi," retorted Dr. Sarkantyus, "all my life long I have taken you for a poor creature, and in that belief I shall for ever remain. If you could remain quietly in your hiding-place when they were talking of your only daughter, if you could hold your breath and your ears and tremble in every limb when they were torturing your father-in-law—well, that's your look out. As for me, if only I can unmask a downright lie, I am quite content to look death itself between the eyes immediately after. Ever since you fainted at the prick of a leech, and were not ashamed to burst into tears when I cut out one of your warts, I knew you to be a coward. Yes, a coward you are, and a very poor creature to boot; but whatever else I am, I am not that. Twice have I broken the bone of my own leg because it was improperly set, and I am ready to have my neck broken into the bargain if only I may bear witness to the truth. Those, sir, are my sentiments. And now is there anybody here with whom a man can talk common-sense?"

Bound and helpless as he was, the doctor still seemed to have made some impression on the mob. Thomas Bodza, therefore, hastened to cut him short.

"Then you maintain," he began, "that the gentry have not poisoned the peasants?"

"A man must be mad to even ask such a question."

"Then why are so many people now dying all over the kingdom?"

"Because of their sins. They are dying of a terrible plague which is in the air, in the earth, in the very meat and drink which God has given us, in the heat of the day, and in the chill of night—a plague which is no respecter of persons, but slays lord and serf, rich and poor alike; which will visit you, too, if not to-day then to-morrow, which will destroy a tenth part of your households, which will search you out wherever you are, in the forest, in the fields, within your cottages, though you were to slay instantly every gentleman in the county. You will, therefore, do well to untie my hands, and let me distribute amongst you the blessed antidote, by means of which, with God's assistance, we may be able to prevent this terrible calamity."

Thomas Bodza felt something of the paralysis of extreme terror when he saw the impression made by these words upon the mob, which evidently already began to waver. So he hastily threw himself into the attitude of a Roman statue, and exclaimed with a loud voice:

"Doctor! I tell you you are lying. Let nobody touch that white powder, for there is death in it. If you maintain that this powder is not poison, take some yourself!"

This proposal met with universal approbation.

"Yes, yes! let him swallow some of the stuff he has brought if it is not poison."

The doctor did not at all relish the idea of taking his own drugs, but he was careful not to betray his dislike, for he was in a decidedly ticklish position.

"Death comes from above," he calmly observed to the master. "Medicaments are no food for a healthy man, but, all the same, I will willingly take some of that bismuth powder to convince you all of the truth of my statement."

Then Thomas Bodza proceeded to pour a paper full of the stuff down the throat of the pinioned doctor.

The bystanders thronged around and gaped curiously at him, expecting every moment to see him drop down dead.

"Look how green his face is!" said Bodza, working with evil intent on the excited imagination of the mob. "Look how his eyes are staring, and how ghastly pale he is!"

"It is not my eyes that are staring, my worthy master, but your own," replied the doctor calmly. "Your face is pale, you are trembling. I tell you death comes from above and not from my powders."

Thomas Bodza felt so dizzy that he had to clutch hold of the arm of shaggy Hanak, who was standing by his side. Quite early that very morning he had felt a sort of numbing paralysis in all his limbs, a sort of griping cramp convulsing his inner parts, and an unspeakable fear had arisen within his soul, but the feeling had passed over, and he had put the thought of it away from him.

And now, again, that panic fear, which has no name, but beneath whose influence the bravest of men become pale, shaking spectres, overcame him, and he felt like one who is sensible of the approach of that one enemy against whom there is no defence.

The physician was the first to detect in the face of his tormentor that terrible phenomenon, facies Hypocratica, and when he said to him: "Your face is deathly pale," he as irrecoverably plunged him into the grave that was gaping open for him, as if he had plunged a knife into his heart.

The horror-stricken rioters gazed at their master who, for some moments, stood gaping at them with a terribly distorted face. There were two coloured rings round his glassy eyes, his cheeks had fallen in, his lips were turning yellow, the whole man seemed to be a hideous personification of mortal dread. Then, suddenly with a loud yell, he rolled down the steps, and collapsing with hideous convulsions at the doctor's feet, yelled in the midst of his racking torments:

"God of mercy, have compassion upon me! ... Doctor, help me! I am dying!"



CHAPTER XVIII.

THE READY-DUG GRAVES.

Imre Hetfalusy, hastening with all his might, reached at last the officer in command of the cordon, and delivered the General's command. The officer at once placed four-and-twenty soldiers at the disposal of the General's adjutant. More he could not spare, as his assistance might be wanted elsewhere.

Imre lost no more time in going to the next cordon-commander, but marched straight off to Hetfalu with his four-and-twenty warriors.

Only three of them were mounted, the General's adjutant, Kamienszka, and himself, all the rest were on foot. Even with the utmost exertion it would take at least four hours to reach Hetfalu.

During the long journey Maria told Imre everything she knew about his family. Nobody disturbed their conversation, the road was empty and noiseless.

When they reached the first csarda that also was silent. The doors and windows had been torn from their places, the road was strewn with the debris of casks, bottles, and flasks. Here and there, amidst the ruins, were little pools of blood in which somebody had stood, leaving a bloody trail behind them....

The little band went further on their way in silence.

Two hours later they perceived in the wayside woods, concealed among the bushes, three figures which rose to their feet on perceiving the soldiers, and one of them came rapidly towards them, and was so out of breath when he reached them that he could not speak a word, and would have fallen if Imre had not supported him against his saddle.

Then Imre recognised the worthy Leather-bell.

"What's the matter, old man?" he inquired compassionately.

"Alas, alas! my young master, a terrible thing has happened. I cannot describe it in words. I'm only glad that we have saved this innocent creature."

"What innocent creature?"

"This child, the squire's grandchild, whom Zudar brought up in secret, and the headsman's wife betrayed. But she has paid for it dearly now. They had condemned the child to death. I hid them here beneath the bridge, and gave them peasant's clothes to put on, and helped them to scurry through the woods."

At these words Kamienszka leaped from her horse, and ran to the child who was quite worn out. Her little feet were all wounded and bloody, it was only by leaning on the arm of Zudar that she was able to walk at all.

The headsman recognised at once the youth who had brought a blessing on his house, although he had now quite another figure. Now he had come to fight. Zudar stooped down and kissed his hand. He said, too, that his own hands were now pure, for he had washed them in blood, the shedding whereof was pleasing to God.

The officer in command had a rough litter made from the branches of trees, on which they placed the exhausted little girl. Four soldiers were then told off to carry it, and then the little band resumed its march. Elise could not have been in a place of greater safety.

Meanwhile, the Leather-bell was giving a full account of the horrors that had taken place around the castle from the evening to the morning. He had left the place just as Szephalmi and the doctor had fallen into the hands of the mob.

Imre was beside himself with horror.

"I must hasten to save my father or die with him," he murmured bitterly.

The officer wanted him to wait so that they might all reach the castle together, but he would not listen. He was quite ready to face the danger single-handed. But indeed he was not alone. He had beside him his valiant comrade, in love a true woman, in trouble a true man, and she would not be parted from him.

"Courage and hope!" she cried, pressing his hand, and with that the heroic couple spurred their horses along the grass-grown road.

* * * * *

With the fall of Numa Pompilius the last vestige of discipline disappeared from the ranks of the rioters. The loss of their leader, so far from bringing them to reason, only made them desperate. Bodza had died at their very feet after half an hour of the most excruciating torments, and, meanwhile, there mingled with the crowd numbers of wailing women, each of whom already had their dead at home, and spread sorrow and confusion wherever they went. Then everybody lost his head, and was frightened into bestial ferocity. The dying lay about in the road with none to care for them. Fathers no longer owned their sons, brother had no compassion for brother. And the gentry had to pay for all this panic terror.

The people had been brought up in such a way that its first thought on breaking out of its cage was to tear its masters in pieces.

It listened no longer to any word of command, only the latest whim obtained a hearing.

Stubbly Hanak hit upon a hideous idea.

"What are those three bigwigs lounging about here for, eh?" he cried. "Let them go and dig graves, let them dig their own graves!"

And with that he untied their bonds, placed spades and shovels in their hands, and pointed out to them the exact spots in the courtyard of the castle where they were to dig their own graves, and nice, picturesque spots they were too, beneath the shade of wide-spreading chestnut trees.

Old Hetfalusy had no longer the physical strength for such work, and Dr. Sarkantyus declared categorically that anybody who was fool enough to kill him might do so if he chose, but that he was not such a fool as to dig his own grave, and nobody should make him do it either.

Only Szephalmi took them at their word. On his knees he implored them not to torture him, and he would willingly dig not only his own grave, but the graves of his comrades also.

The rioters thrust a spade into his hand, and, grinning with delight, instructed him how to throw aside the earth out of the furrow, and then they made him lie down in it in order to take his proper measure.

And how boisterously they laughed at the fun of it.

Suddenly there was a sound of pattering hoofs, and two horsemen, with drawn swords in their right hands, galloped into the courtyard.

They came so unexpectedly that only the shrieks of the women wailing at the gate told the frantic mob of their arrival.

"My son!" cried the old squire, painfully raising himself from the ground with a supreme effort.

"My father, my father!" wailed the youth, and with that he cut his way through the thickest of the crowd, distributing vigorous blows, right and left, till he had forced his way up to his father's tortured body, and forgetting everything at that moment, he flung himself from his saddle, fell upon his father's neck, and embraced and sobbed over him.

The brutal mob instantly rushed upon him with a savage yell, when, suddenly, a couple of shots resounded, and two of the assailants fell dead close beside the father and son. It was Maria who had fired these shots, and now, leaping from her steed, she shook Imre violently.

"You must fight for your life now, and leave weeping for another time, my boy!" cried she.

The youth quickly recovered himself and drew his sword, and then the pair of them turned upon the cowardly mob, and, by sheer dint of hard fighting, began driving them out of the doorway of the castle.

In no very long time there were three of them, for the doctor had had his weather-eye open, and, when the general attention was distracted, he snatched up the spade assigned to him, and therewith dealt a lanky lout beside him such a blow at the back of the neck that he immediately fell down and never spoke again.

"Come along with us, Mr. Szephalmi, come along!" cried the doctor, as he joined the combatants, but Szephalmi paid no heed. He fell down on the edge of the freshly-dug grave at the feet of his jailors, and declared, sobbing and moaning, that he would hurt nobody if nobody hurt him. The only answer they gave him was a smashing blow on the head with a large hammer, and he fell back into the grave and expired on the spot.

A vigorous slash with which Imre severed the arm of the most powerful of the peasants, clean off at the elbow, somewhat damped the fighting ardour of the crowd, which drew back to curse and swear at a distance. The respite thus gained was sufficient to enable the little group of gentlemen to reach the door of the castle, and bolt and bar it behind them, after having first of all rescued old Hetfalusy from the hands of his murderers.

Fortunately not one of the rioters remained in the castle, indeed there was nothing else for them to do there. Everything had been eviscerated, torn to atoms, reduced to powder. A large portion of the mob was down in the cellars dead drunk.

Imre Hetfalusy who, all this time, had held his father closely embraced, now deposited him on a torn and ragged hair mattress, and then they both embraced each other again, and neither could speak a word. It was both joy and anguish, it was something which words could not describe.

And now for the defence!

The three of them could not, of course, defend the whole castle against the furious mob whenever it should return. For return it certainly would, and if it could not get through the door, it was at least able to climb through the windows. The best plan, therefore, was to confine the defence to a single room, and the most convenient stronghold was the family library, the door of which was strengthened by iron fastenings.

The sole object of the besieged was to keep the mob at bay till the arrival of the soldiery.

In a few moments the roar of the rioters advancing to the attack was again audible. Stones flew through the windows, and angry fists thundered at the door. Curses and savage threats resounded in the passages. The mob, swarming in the courtyard, were carrying about on their shoulders the dead bodies of the two peasants that had been shot, two or three men with bloody faces were exhibiting their wounds, the widow of one of the fallen held up her weeping children in her arms, and hounded the mob on to vengeance with her frantic bitterness.

The room to be defended had a window looking out upon the courtyard, and a door opening upon the passage. Maria was to be the defender of the window, Imre the defender of the door. The doctor, meanwhile, with the nonchalance becoming his profession, was binding up old Hetfalusy's wounds, tearing off portions of his own shirt to serve as bandages.

The rioters had now occupied the hall, they had crept into the castle through the rearward windows, the walls and arches rang with their triumphant shouting.

"Imre!" said the old squire to his son, "come nearer to me!"

The youth approached his suffering father and knelt down before him.

"It may be God's will," murmured the aged man, "that within an hour both of us may stand before His Judgment Seat. Promise me that you will never accuse me of being a hard father, that you will never say that I hunted you to death. Promise me that, my son!"

"I have always loved you, and I will love you still," sobbed the youth, kissing the shaking hand.

"Let us not part from each other in tears," continued the old man, "let us rejoice as they rejoice who have found again those whom they fancied they had lost, and now let me bless you as a father may bless his son when he is about to undertake a long journey."

And then he placed his trembling hands on his son's head, while his eyes looked up to Heaven, and his dumb lips murmured an inaudible prayer to the Lord of life and death.

"And now, my son, brace yourself up for your long journey!"

But Maria came rushing towards them.

"To work, my friend! bear a hand! The evil game has begun. Let us but gain half an hour and all our lives will be saved."

"Who is that apparition," whispered old Hetfalusy to his son, "who has twice descended from Heaven to save us?"

Imre looked with some hesitation at Maria, the girl gazed back at him encouragingly.

"Yes, tell him! Why not? I am your wife, the famous Maria Kamienszka, and this is not the first time I have been in the midst of a scrimmage. Courage, my father, your son is now in your embrace, and in half an hour your grand-daughter will be there also. Trust in God and be not faint-hearted!"

"Ah, yes!" whispered the old man, with a transfigured countenance and a voice full of enthusiasm, "this cannot be the hour of my death, no, my God! it cannot, cannot be!"

The youth and the valiant young woman then warmly pressed each other's hands, and hastened back to their posts. It was indeed high time.

The besiegers, after swarming all over the castle, had come at last upon the barred and bolted door, and with the bloodthirsty howl of ravening beasts, had rushed upon it with their iron bars, while another band began wrenching out the iron fastenings of the windows with their sharp csakanyas.[21]

[Footnote 21: Hooked axes.]

The besieged had to economize their shots, for they had only four charges left. Their means of defence had to be reserved till the very last instant, they could not afford to simply destroy the first stupid bumpkin who might happen to come in their way.

The fear of death no longer terrified the besiegers. Several times Maria held the barrel of her pistol close to the temples of the peasant who was busy with the iron fastenings of the window, and he did not so much as move his head. Many of the howling mob were so drunk that they no longer knew what fear was. They thrust their hands through the glass to open the window sashes, and Maria sliced away with her sword at the intruding hands, and a few minutes afterwards the same bloody hands would re-appear with stunted fingers. Wounds no longer hurt them.

The time had come when the besieged could count the minutes which they had still to live, the blows given and received were like so much money paid for life, whosoever stock failed first would be utterly ruined.

Maria was able to defend the window longer than Imre could defend the door, one of whose panels was suddenly burst in with a loud crash, opening a breach to the besiegers outside, whose sudden rush to the gap made it impossible for the youth, despite the most frantic efforts, to defend the crazy door much longer.

Maria heard Imre's cry of despair, and, forgetting the same instant her own danger, quitted the window, and sped to the help of her beloved.

For a few moments the besiegers made a frantic effort to force their way through the door, but at length the two swords, swift as lightning flashes, beat down the brutal preponderance of the mob. The two defenders held their places, held them, at any rate, till the besiegers should stream through the window or shoot them down from behind.

Either of these eventualities might be expected at any moment.

"Keep your shots to the very last," whispered Maria to Imre. "Reserve one of them for the enemy, and the other for me. I must not fall into their hands alive."

Nevertheless, there was an unaccountable tardiness among the besiegers of the window, and the assailants of the door also began thinning down, and everyone noticed with surprise that the deafening din had abated, and a momentary suspension of hostilities had taken place.

"Our rescuers are at hand!" cried Maria, and the same instant they could hear the sound of rolling drums drawing nearer and nearer to the castle.

The rebels had quitted the besieged window and were scampering towards the gate.

The last beat of the drum indicated that the soldiers had arrived in front of the castle.

There were only five-and-twenty, most of them young fellows, mere lads, and opposed to them stood a savage multitude, armed with all sorts of hastily appropriated weapons, and with bloodthirstiness enough for a whole army.

The young officer in command stood at the head of his little company, and when he saw the headless, savage mob surging all around him, he exhorted them, in a bold, manly voice, to return to their homes, respect the laws, and give up their captives and their ringleaders.

Shaggy Hanak took it upon himself to respond to this invitation:

"We will not return to our homes," he shouted, "so long as a single castle in the kingdom is still standing. We will make whatever laws we like. We will give up the captive gentry when they are stone dead, and as for our ringleader you may have him if you can catch him."

To still further emphasize his words, shaggy Hanak whirled his knobby bludgeon above his head, and shied it frantically at the officer, who warded off the blow with his sword, and the same instant a young private transfixed the braggart so vigorously that the end of his bayonet stuck in the ground behind.

This unexpected scene served as a signal for the little band of soldiers, and they there and then fired into the thickest of the crowd.

And with that the whole horrible tragedy came to an end.

A single volley dispersed the whole ragged host. The corpses remained on the ground naturally, but all the rest fled without another word, fled incontinently over pillar and post, rushed straight home, hid themselves away, put on their simplest air, washed the blood from their hands, and held their tongues.

The rescued welcomed their deliverers with open arms. But another quarter of an hour and very sorry remnants of them would have been found at Hetfalu.

Meanwhile, out came Dr. Sarkantyus, and a very great pother he made, insisting that the whole company should instantly hasten back to town, as if they remained there the pale death would speedily overtake them, and it would therefore boot them little to have escaped from the red death. And indeed the plague was raging fearfully in that district, and dying wretches were writhing convulsively in the streets outside. He himself must remain on the spot. He was bound by his official duties to visit the very houses of these persons who, half an hour ago, had combined to torture him, and whose families were now themselves suffering torments in the grip of this unknown disease. Nevertheless, he required the escort of two armed men, for, as he jocosely observed, "The Deuce is in it when patients would compel the doctor to drink his own drugs."

* * * * *

Hetfalusy had the felicity of embracing his long-lost grandchild before he died. The child accepted him as her grandpapa, but begged that she might have as her dear papa besides, good old Zudar, who had loved her so much.

Hetfalusy nodded his consent, and pressed the coarse palm of the headsman with his own gentlemanly hand. Nobody told the child that she had a perfect right to call Zudar her father, inasmuch as her real father, who had cast her from him, now lay frightfully disfigured in a grave he had dug with his own hand.

Hetfalusy indeed never mentioned the name of his son-in-law again.

Then they laid him in the carriage already prepared for him, and little Elise sat beside him and nursed his head in her lap. Oh, by this time, she was very well used to nursing old people.

Maria and Imre accompanied the carriage on foot all the way to town. Yet, once again, they were forced to fight their way through armed bands of rebels, but after that they reached the town peaceably enough.

The General had given orders that Hetfalusy should be conducted straight to his house as soon as the old man arrived.

Boundless was the joy of the worthy General to welcome in his home as a guest the man who, once upon a time, had been his mortal foe.

Now indeed they could pardon each other everything.

Hetfalusy knew, at last, why the General had abandoned his girl so suddenly, and how could the iron man help forgiving him who had sinned greatly against him it is true, but, at the same time, had suffered so terribly for it.

It was only mental excitement which still kept the life in the old man's shattered body. He survived for another six months. His bodily wounds healed but slowly, and still more slowly the wounds of the spirit. He saw his only son happy in the love of the noblest, the rarest of women; he saw his little grandchild growing up full of beauty, wisdom, and amiability; and it did him good to rejoice in the domestic happiness of his former enemy, and oftentimes he would call Cornelia his darling daughter. And she was worthy of the name.

A beneficent stroke of apoplexy called him home to his dead in the family vault at Hetfalu.

Imre remained no longer in those parts. He settled down on his wife's property with little Elise, and left for ever the place which had such melancholy associations for him.

And Peter Zudar went with them. He pursued no more his grim profession. After that last master-stroke of his, he never grasped the headsman's sword again. He had wielded it for the last time at God's command, he was not going to play the part of death's scytheman any more at the bidding of man.

Close to the Kamienszki estates he rented a little plot of land where he grew flowers and melons, sported with white doves and little rabbits, and sang in the church choir every day. It never occurred to anyone that he had once been——but no matter.

And the three houses at Hetfalu were abandoned to desolation.

The gutted dwelling-house was never re-built. The castle was never re-inhabited, people avoided it as a spectre-stricken dwelling. Its windows were bricked up, its garden became a wilderness of weeds, its steps and staircases fell to pieces. Ruin wrought her work upon it.

The hut, with the moss-covered roof, endured the longest. The old night-owl, who now could scarce use her limbs, would, nevertheless, totter of an evening to the place where stood the vast family vault of the Hetfalusies, sit down there, opposite to the iron gate, and talk all sorts of nonsense to some imaginary interlocutor.

"Eh! eh! old Hetfalusy! who was right after all? Didn't I say you would be the first to go? What a little room satisfies you now! what a quiet, peaceable man you are now! You have got earth enough at last, yet you were always hungering after more while you were yet alive! You would be at rest now if I would let you alone, eh? Or are you sorry that we cannot go on with our wrangling? Well, well, if I should discover the door by which you made your exit, we will begin it all over again...."

For hours at a stretch she would pour forth these vain mad words, unanswered, unheeded. What had once been dust now lay at rest, what had once been a human spirit now abode in Heaven, there was none to answer her.

The mossy roof grew more and more ruinous, and at last one day the old night-owl had quitted her nest and was gone. Nobody mourned for her. Who takes any count of the birds of the field or the beasts of the forest!

THE END.