Pretty Michal

In the deep stillness which prevailed, nothing was to be heard but the droning of the heavy wheel.

It was all over with Bajus.

The next in order was the haughty Hafran.

With him the bloody drama took quite another turn.

The vihodar's assistants had sufficed for the first robber. He himself had only given his directions in a low voice. But honor constrained him to cope personally with the second robber.

Hafran was a frantic devil. He howled curses at the vihodar and overwhelmed him with insults. He told him to his face that he was a clumsy bungler.

Then the old vihodar took his biretta from his head, doffed his coat, and set about accomplishing his masterpiece.

The spectators had reason to be satisfied with both performers. The old vihodar exhausted all his skill upon the robber, and the robber never ceased hurling defiance at the vihodar. They cursed and reviled each other like devils. The robber laughed at all the torments, and infuriated the vihodar by asking him derisively when he was going to begin. The vihodar was quite beside himself for rage, and excelled himself in the invention of fresh torments. Every time he produced a fresh instrument of torture, he asked the robber how the entertainment pleased him.

The Franciscan monk who was on the scaffold to afford the delinquents the last consolations of religion, tried to pacify them both, and begged them for Heaven's sake to leave off cursing; but neither paid the slightest attention to him. The robber had the last word. Even when he was so mangled and mutilated that he no longer resembled anything human, even then he howled words of scorn in the face of his tormentor. At last they plunged a hook into his side and hoisted him aloft, and even then he showered down insults upon all the women present at the bloody spectacle, till at last he gave up his unconquerable spirit, which had surely made some mistake in choosing a simple human body for its earthly dwelling-place.

The old vihodar was ashamed. He felt that this heroic resistance had very considerably impaired his prestige in the opinion of the people. This blot upon his escutcheon must be wiped off.

The third robber chieftain, Janko, still remained. He should serve to restore the honor of the vihodar.

The old vihodar proposed to do great things with him. He had the fetters removed from the feet of the delinquent, and would not even allow him to be bound to the stake.

"We will have a dance together!" said he to Janko.

That word was the death of him.

The next moment, such a yell of horror burst forth from the crowd that even Valentine's curiosity was aroused. He looked toward the scaffold, and what he saw there really was astounding.

Janko, the mighty leaper, the instant his chains were taken from his feet, had sprung upon the vihodar, pressed down his chest with his knees, and bit him in the neck exactly on the spot where the great jugular artery is. This he bit clean through, and—as if to justify the fable, that whomsoever Janko bit with his envenomed fangs was a child of death—the old vihodar fell to the ground like a log of wood, and when the apprentices sprang forward to tear the delinquent away from him, the headsman was already dead.

This incident so revolted Valentine that he reeled, and clinging tightly to Simplex, stammered: "I really believe I am going to faint."

"Hold up a little bit longer!" whispered Simplex in his ear.

As soon as the people learnt that Janko had killed the vihodar with a single bite, a fearful tumult arose.

Everyone began to applaud the delinquent and cry: "Vivat Janko," while they pelted the headsman's assistants with stinking eggs and rotten apples.

At last the blare of trumpets and the roll of kettle-drums drowned the voice of the mob, and the sheriff arose on the dais and declared that despite the unhappy accident which had befallen the old vihodar, the execution of the law's sentence must proceed notwithstanding. The young master, the son of the vihodar, was there, and he was to do his duty, and that at once.

The uproar ceased and the crowd in intense expectation looked toward the scaffold for the new performer to appear. It was plain, from the deep silence that now ensued, that the newcomer had something to say.

Valentine kept his eyes closed. He was deeply agitated. Had he not been in the ranks he would have run away.

And now, in the midst of the general silence, he heard the young master addressing the people:

"This evil-doer who has killed my father is not worthy to be put out of the world by a human hand in a human way."

Valentine listened in amazement. That voice was familiar to his ear. It seemed to him as if he had once heard it from the pulpit.

But the other proceeded:

"There is a mode of execution used in distant Abyssinia, where the black skins of evil-doers are insensible to ordinary torture. They are sewn alive in fresh buffalo hides and hung in the sun. So soon as the hide begins to dry and shrink, the evil-doers learn to sing a veritable song of hell. That is the way in which I mean to execute this delinquent."

"What's that?" cried Valentine, "whose voice is that? Who but one that has attended the lectures of the learned Professor David Fröhlich could have heard of this Abyssinian tale? Who is it?"

He looked up and recognized the man in scarlet on the scaffold.

"That is Henry Catsrider, the husband of your Michal!" cried Simplex, looking him full in the face.

To Valentine Kalondai it seemed as if everything was turning round and round. He staggered, and would have fallen if Simplex had not seized him by the arm and led him away. Nobody heeded them. During this horrible scene many others, even among the soldiers, had fallen senseless to the ground.

CHAPTER XXIII.

With that she gave the kopanitschar's wife a ducat to provide supper, and then taught her the diabolical art of tying knots in the entrails of absent foes, so that they may pine away and perish miserably. That very night, all the headsman's apprentices were seized with cramps in the stomach, and if this was not caused by the quantities of sour wine which they had been drinking all day it was certainly due to the malpractices of the two hags.

All this time the young wife was sitting in the upper story of the headsman's house, absolutely alone. Only two of the apprentices were left behind to look after the premises, and they took it in turns to keep watch in the tower and guard the drawbridge.

The lonely house was well protected against every attack. Pointed stakes, planted at the bottom of the moat encircling the walls, made it impossible for anyone to swim over. The narrow windows of the massive walls were guarded by strong iron palings and iron casements, and two gigantic dogs, which would have tackled the most strongly armed intruder, ran loose in the courtyard. Both apprentices were armed with muskets, the barrels of which were so large that one could have fired whole handfuls of lead out of them if necessary.

The young wife was left at home when everyone went to the bloody procedure at Eperies. She, indeed, had not the slightest wish to go with them. Her soul died away within her at the very thought of the frightful things which had such a horrible attraction for other women. But her husband, too, had no wish to take her. He was far too jealous of her, and however kindly the young woman might treat him, he felt that it was deception, every bit of it, and did not trust her. Besides, he feared that Valentine Kalondai might be among the crowds which flocked from every quarter toward Eperies.

Barbara Pirka was charged to remain at home, and on no account quit the house till they all returned. The doorkeepers, too, were to let no one in or out, not even Pirka.

As if it were possible to keep a witch under lock and key! She was at Eperies before the vihodar and his company, although she did not set out till an hour later.

Michal had told Pirka that she should not require her during her husband's absence, and might therefore leave her to herself. She could cook what she wanted; she had learnt to do so at home. In the kitchen was a well from which she could draw water by means of a windlass, an iron chain, and two buckets, so she had no occasion to go down into the courtyard for water. She could therefore lock all the doors behind her (the trellised door leading to the staircase as well as the door closing the corridor), and when at night she had also barred and bolted the heavy oaken door of the kitchen, she felt herself quite secure against all human violence.

All the more defenseless was she against those things which cannot be kept out by bolts and bars.

When the ordinary sounds of day had died away in the house, when the heavy tread of jack-boots, the rough voices, the filthy jests, the hoarse curses of the drunken roysterers, had grown dumb, then the intervening silence brought with it those invisible beings who announce their presence in whispers, sighs, and groans. In every corner she fancied she saw a victim whose blood had grown dry on the hands of the inhabitants of that house. She fancied they came forth to demand back from her their dissevered lives, to claim for their freezing limbs the clothes which the hangman had inherited from them. Every shadow appeared to beckon to her. Lifeless objects became animated and spoke to her. Behind her back she heard a perpetual whimpering and sobbing, and when she stirred the fire the moist logs spat and spluttered. There was a buzzing all around her like the whirring of cockchafers. When the wind arose, there was a howling and groaning all through the house as if whole hosts of spirits were haunting it, and they entered visibly into the dreams of the poor agonized lady, and drove her toward dizzy abysses with their grotesquely hideous faces and mutilated figures.

When, however, she had scared away these imaginary specters, the cold and dreary horror of reality swept before her mind in a still more terrible shape.

What sort of a life was she leading? She was chained to a man whom she loved not when she first married him, but whose very presence filled her now with fear and loathing. She had been deceived, most cruelly deceived. She had been shut out of the world forever, and chained alive to the open gate of hell, where all who entered in mocked and gibbered at her with their decapitated heads. She was without hope, without the prospect of ever escaping from her prison, of ever seeing her fate take a favorable turn, of ever having her woes alleviated. She was tortured by the thought that her father had forgotten her; but what agonized her still more was the reflection that her lover was thinking of her even now, knowing nothing of her misery, fancying her happy, and cursing and adoring her at the same time.

Then there came to her those evil thoughts which are far more terrible than all the pale specters of the tomb and the scaffold—doubt in a heavenly Providence, rebellion against human morality and human justice. The custom which gave a father a right to dispose of the destiny of his child revolted her. She cursed the altar before which a man and a woman are bound together with inseparable chains. She hated human society, which stifles the longings of the heart in the name of respectability. She grew dimly conscious that despair might make her wicked, very wicked.

She began to be afraid of herself.

At night she dared not, and indeed had no desire to sleep in her bedroom. She loathed the marriage bed, and made for herself a sort of couch in the kitchen. The kitchen was her most secure asylum. All night long she kept a roaring fire (she could not bear to remain in the dark) and on the fire she placed pots of water which she kept continually boiling. She had no weapons, and even if she had had them what use would they have been in her weak hands? But she thought herself quite capable of drenching with boiling water any man who dared to approach her.

She had now been shut up alone for five days, and the frightful solitude had made her very nervous. Solitary confinement is the worst of all torments, it is worse than hunger. She would have felt much more comfortable if Pirka had been with her. Even the witch's words, with all their devilish insinuations, were better than the eternal, ghostly gibbering of the crackling logs, this piping and squeaking through doors and window crevices, and this howling in the chimney when the wind blew.

On the fifth morning, as she was turning the windlass in order to draw water from the kitchen well, the words escaped her:

"Oh, that the devil would bring Pirka hither!"

Scarcely had she said it, when she perceived that the windlass began to turn round of its own accord, and from out of the ascending bucket rose the bristly, angular form of Barbara Pirka.

Michal cried:

"Jesus, Maria!" and shrieked aloud for terror.

But Pirka laughed, and said to her:

"Ha, ha! my pretty little lady! You can't lock out a witch you see. A witch can find her way in through any loophole."

Michal really believed that Pirka had come straight out of the water, although her clothes and boots were quite dry.

"Eh, what great supper are we getting ready yonder!" cried Pirka, catching sight of the army of pots on the hearth. Then she looked into them all, one after the other. "Water, water, nothing but boiling water. Well, well! let us put something into one of them that we may have a little good broth."

With that she took out of her knapsack a handful of scraps of paper, and threw them into the boiling water.

"These are names clipped out of the perpetual almanac," whispered she to Michal, with a grin. "The first that comes to the surface will be the name of our beloved."

Then she took a ladle, and fished out the first piece of paper which appeared on the surface of the boiling water. Michal, she said, was to see what was written on it.

Michal took the scrap, and read aloud the name:

"Valentine!"

In her terror she threw it back into the flames.

But the flames, so far from consuming the wet scrap of paper, tossed it up into the air, and the name of the beloved one flew up the chimney with the smoke.

"It won't burn, ladykin!" laughed Pirka. "Hocus-pocus! there it is again!"

And now she had another scrap of paper in her hand, on which was also written the word, Valentine!

"Well, and how has my little lady been amusing herself all this time?" asked Pirka, stroking pretty Michal's hands. "Has she not been wishing that her Pirka was with her again?"

Michal could not deny that she had.

"But those who believe in what the cards say," pursued Pirka, somewhat irrelevantly, "must pay for it, and those who do not believe must also pay, ay, and much more dearly too."

"Let us see!"

Michal crouched down beside Pirka on the mat, where the witch had spread the cards.

"Oh, oh! Great things are in store for us," began Pirka, pointing to the cards. "This here is the old vihodar, and that yonder is his son. Look, there's a coffin. Death threatens the old vihodar. The robbers will kill him."

"What nonsense," interrupted Michal.

"I don't say it. The cards say it. Victory and might await the young master. He kills the robber, and will be promoted to his father's place."

Michal laughed.

"That is certainly not true. Henry would quit the headsman's trade if his father died. He would go to Germany where nobody knows him, and try to get a professorship. He has promised me it a hundred times."

"Well, well, I know nothing. I only say what the cards say. Look now! There is the heart lady! Oh, what a joy awaits her. Her beloved is close at hand. That rose means burning love. That dog is fidelity. This dove-cot is felicity. This very day she will meet him."

"Go along with you, Pirka! It is all nonsense."

"Well, well, my little lady, we shall see. The cards never lie. This very night she will see him."

"He is far away; who knows how far?" sighed Michal.

"Yes, but I've a little buck-goat, and when I send him away and say to him, 'Go, bring me the pretty youth hither whom my lady dotes upon; so true as I came out of that well, my little buck-goat will bring the young man hither though he were even on the Turkish borders."

Michal began to grow frightened.

"Hither he shall not bring him," cried she.

"No, not into this hideous hole, perhaps, not into the house of the vihodar, but into a quiet little cot where the doves bill and coo on the gables."

"But how am I to get there? I should not care about sitting on the buck-goat."

"Nor need you. Barbara Pirka can take her pretty little lady wherever she can go herself, and will lead her through beautiful flowery meadows to the house of bliss by a path on which not even the feet of a butterfly could get wet with dew. The fair lady will then disguise herself as a peasant girl, so that none who meet her on the road may recognize her; but she will also take nice clothes with her, so as to meet her beloved in gorgeous apparel. She must dress herself in his presence three times running, the first time in scarlet, the second time in corn-flower blue, and the third time in purple; she must also put on gold earrings and a goodly chain, and on her head she must wear a coif of pearls. She must pack up all these splendid things. The headsman has bought them for his wife, and she has not worn them once yet. Eh! how beautiful we shall look!"

"Tempt me not, Satan!"

"The cards have said it and Pirka will do it. The pretty lady may like or lump it, that is her lookout. In any case she will pay the price for it."

Michal believed and disbelieved at the same time.

She put together the three dresses—the delicate rose-colored dress, the corn-flower blue, and the purple one; then she hung them all up before her one after the other, examined them all, and considered which would suit her best. Then she let Pirka disguise her as a peasant girl, and put on her a short frock and high red shoes. (In the vihodar's house there was a whole collection of costumes, Heaven only knows whence he got them.) She turned herself round and round, and was quite glad that she looked so pretty, but when Pirka said to her:

"Come, now let us go!" she shrank back, and answered that to do so would be to sin against God.

At that moment a flourish of trumpets was heard before the gates. It was the signal by which Henry usually announced his arrival. The drawbridge now rattled down, and the friendly barking of the watch dogs showed that the newcomer was an old friend.

The blood flew to Michal's face.

"My husband has come. Now you see how the cards have lied!"

She had barely time to roll up the three beautiful dresses into a bundle and pitch them into a dark corner. The peasant costume she was obliged to keep on. However, she could tell her husband that it was her kitchen dress.

The keys of the corridor and the trapdoor Michal handed to Pirka, that she might admit the knocker below.

And now, as she pretended to be busy about the hearth, she awaited the appearance of that face which always made her sick at heart, but which had nevertheless on this occasion, so she thought, come between her and a great temptation, a grievous sin. Yet it was not her husband after all, but a still more detestable shape. It was the second apprentice, who used to lend the vihodar a helping hand in all his great achievements. The first apprentice already worked on his own account.

The intruder did not bestow upon her so much as the shadow of a salutation, but slouched down upon the kitchen bench, threw his heavy hat on the hearth, and blandly said to the lady:

"Give me to drink, my pretty mistress! I'm perishing with thirst."

Then he emptied a bumper of beer to the very dregs, and after that set about delivering his message.

"I bring you good news, my pretty young mistress! The devil has carried off the old vihodar. The accursed Janko has bitten him in the neck with his poisonous teeth and the old 'un croaked straight off."

Michal thought, with a shudder, that the cards had said as much.

"Now your husband will be master in his own house. All the treasures belong to him. And the honor, too. The Count of Zips and the Lord Lieutenant of Saros have already, under their hand and seal, appointed him public executioner in his father's stead, with jurisdiction over the whole hill country, and he has just been accomplishing his masterpiece on Janko, who is still roaring for pain and will roar two days and two nights longer, so that all Eperies will hear him. The woman who does not faint, the child who does not get the falling sickness, and the dog who does not go mad through hearing this howling, will be fit to join the witches' sabbath on the Peak of Lomnitz."

Michal shivered as if in an ague. So Henry had voluntarily taken over his father's office; nay! at once accomplished his hellish masterpiece? He had not thought of flying, though no one could have compelled him to remain. He actually takes delight in cruelty! What! the ex-clergyman, the meek curer of souls, could within so short a time become a bloody headsman, and thus close against Michal every way of escaping from this hell! And all this had been prophesied by the cards of the wise woman!

And as if to raise her horror, disgust, and loathing to the highest pitch, the fellow stepped up to her and said, with a hideous leer:

"My pretty young mistress! you must give the bearer of so many good tidings a couple of busses."

The fellow may have been drunk (he had looked in at every tavern on his way home) but his demand was certainly based on a very ancient custom.

"It is a law with us," said he to the terrified, recoiling woman, "that whoever first brings the news to the headsman's wife that her husband has been installed as master shall receive a couple of good, smacking busses from the young mistress."

And with that he stroked out his stubbly mustaches with both hands and stretched out his arms to clasp pretty Michal round the waist.

This shameless impudence put the tender lady into such a violent rage that she now did what she had all along been meditating; she snatched from the hearth a pot full of boiling water, and soused the importunate loafer from head to foot, scalding him so severely that for one moment he was quite dazed. And during that one moment, Michal rushed upon him, hurled him back with all her might, Pirka assisting her, and their united efforts succeeded in pitching the big strong man headlong out of the kitchen. Then they quickly slammed to the heavy oaken door.

But the parboiled wretch, speedily recovering himself and now madder than ever, fell to cursing and swearing, threatened to do Michal a mischief, and called loudly to his fellow-apprentices to help him; whereupon they hastened up with iron clubs (which also played a part at executions in those days), and began hammering at the oaken door with all their might.

Michal gave herself up for lost. She would rather have sprung down the well than have stopped till the murderers had battered in the door.

"Don't be alarmed, my pretty ladykin," said the witch, taking her by the hand. "The cards have twice spoken the truth, haven't they? And depend upon it they will speak the truth the third time also. Will you trust me now?"

"Take me, body and soul!" cried the unhappy woman, throwing herself into the witch's arms.

"Well! let the pretty lady first take this burning fagot in her hand and step into the bucket. I'll turn the wheel and let her down, not into the water, but only as far as the middle of the shaft. There she will find a narrow platform by an opening, where she must wait till I have let myself down, too."

Michal, in the extremity of her bitterness and despair, was capable of anything, so she allowed Pirka to let her down into the well. By the light of the burning fagots, she found the described opening and stepped into it. The bucket again ascended, and in a short time Pirka also came down, holding fast in her hands the other end of the chain and gradually letting the bucket down ring by ring. On arriving opposite to the opening, she, too, sprang out of the bucket and unloosed it from the chain, whereupon the other bucket loosing its equilibrium, fell down into the water, and the chain ran rattling up to the wheel.

"Well, my pretty little lady! I think we may now go on a little further," said Pirka, who carried on her back the bundle in which were all Michal's fine clothes.

At the end of the narrow passage was an open iron door, which led into a low vaulted cellar, full of large barrels containing pitch, tar, sulphur, and tow, in fact all the raw materials of the headsman's trade, besides sundry tanned hides, the exuviæ of his triumphs. This cellar terminated in a long corridor, and at the end of the corridor was another iron door.

Pirka had a key which opened this door, so she was able to go in and out of the house unseen whenever she liked.

The object of this subterraneous way was to enable the headsman to escape, in case robber bands besieged his house and drove him to extremities. The little iron door led into a wood.

In the cellar was a flight of wooden steps leading up to a trapdoor.

Before quitting this corridor, Pirka wove out of the tow a huge skein, which reached from one end of the corridor to the other, and as she opened the door for Michal to go out, she hurled the burning fagot into the tow.

"Why do you throw the fagot into the tow?" asked Michal.

"Because it would only betray us outside here; nor do we want it, for the moon is still high."

"But the cellar might catch fire?"

"All the better for us, for then they will not be able to pursue us that way if they find out how we have escaped."

"But if the cellar burn, the house may burn too."

"And what then? Is there anything burning there which my pretty mistress or myself would greatly miss?"

CHAPTER XXIV.

"If ever you dare to repeat that word again," said she, "I'll leave you in the midst of this dark wood, and then you may either fly or seek Him whom you fear so much; I'll wash my hands of you."

Then Michal said not another word, but followed the witch, who led her so surely through the sylvan labyrinth that she actually stopped at a place in the midst of the thickest thicket, drew a knife from out of the trunk of a tree, and showed it to Michal.

"Look! This knife I stuck into that tree in the broad daylight, as I passed by this way, and now I have found it again in darkest night."

Not an hour had passed, and the moon still stood in the sky, when they arrived at the kopanitscha of Görgö.

"Here we stop," cried Pirka. "This is the house where the doves bill one another on the gables."

Just then, however, all the doves were asleep; but in the courtyard a woman was wandering about, who raised her hands toward the moon, and made all sorts of frantic gestures.

Pirka greeted her with strangely sounding words, not one of which Michal understood, and the kopanitschar's wife answered in the same fashion.

"Have you offered up a witch's prayer, and if so, for what have you prayed?"

"I have prayed that the devil may take the old vihodar."

"He has got him already. Janko bit him in the neck, and immediately he was a dead man."

"Beelzebub be praised!" cried the kopanitschar's wife, and she frisked about for joy.

"Cook us some supper, sisterkin," said Pirka to Annie.

"What sort of a guest have you brought me?" asked the latter.

"You know well enough without being told."

Then Annie recognized Michal, and laughed with all her might. Witches always rejoice when they see an innocent soul rushing to perdition.

With that the pair of them led her into the kitchen, and made a great fire, on which they put sundry pots. But Pirka filled a smaller pan with water, and after performing all sorts of mystic hocus-pocus over it, put it also on the fire, first of all throwing into it a scrap of paper, on which the word Valentine was written.

"What does that pot do on the fire?" asked Annie.

"As soon as all the water in it has boiled away, so that nothing remains in it but the scrap of paper, my buck-goat will bring this pretty little lady her stately lover. Make ready the supper, I say, there will be five of us."

"I don't like odd numbers," said Annie; but she forthwith fell to killing and plucking fowls, and baking little cakes.

Michal sat at the window and shivered.

During the cooking, Annie sang obscene flower songs, and Pirka kept on drawing her pan away from the fire and putting it on again.

Annie asked her why she did that.

"When the water boils fiercely, my buck with the stately lover is running so fast that the poor young man can hardly draw his breath; but when I remove the pan from the fire, he goes along more quietly, and the poor fellow can take breath again."

In ordinary circumstances Michal would have laughed aloud at such superstition. But to-day she had gone through so many dreadful things, and she was so staggered by the actual fulfillment of two of the events predicted by Pirka's cards, that she dared not deny the possibility of a third. Half of the witch's prophecy had already come to pass. She had escaped from her husband's house, and was now awaiting her lover in a strange place. Everything was possible after that.

"He is coming now. He is quite near!" cried Pirka, looking into the pan. "I already hear the galloping of my buck-goat, I already hear his four feet on the roofs of the houses. Now he is springing over the Krivan, now he is running along the Polish Saddle.[3] Hi! Hi! How he is galloping! Quick, my little buck, quick! quick!"

Michal's common sense was quite dazed by all these insane proceedings. She was no longer mistress of herself.

"And now it's time to dress," continued Pirka, and with that she took off Michal's peasant garb, and arrayed her in a rosy colored robe. She laced tightly her bodice to show off her waist, and combed out and plaited her long tresses to make them crisp and wavy. Her sweetheart was coming, so she must look nice to please him. The young lady was quite bewildered. She let them do what they liked with her.

Outside the moon had gone down. It had grown quite dark. A silent, starless night, dank with heavy falling dew.

"Now he'll be here almost directly," cried the witch, as the water bubbled away at the bottom of the pan.

And now the blare of a farogato began to resound through the silent night. Nearer and nearer came the music. Michal's heart beat quickly. She recognized her favorite song. She scarcely knew whether she was awake or dreaming, whether she was in the world or out of it. There was a buzzing in her ears. The air around her was full of dancing specters. Her body seemed too narrow for her soul. Nearer and nearer came the song. At the bottom of the pan, the last drop of water had long since evaporated.

"My buck-goat has arrived," cried the witch, in triumph.

At that moment, Valentine Kalondai entered and advanced toward Michal.

It was no longer joy, it was frenzy which took possession of the young woman. Up she sprang with a shriek, and then threw herself on her beloved's breast, wound her arms round his neck, pressed her lips to his mouth as if she would have inhaled his very soul, and wetted his cheeks with her tears.

How long did they hold each other thus embraced? An eternity perhaps, like that which Mirza Shah experienced when, at the Persian Magian's command, he crept under a tub, and dreamed away a whole lifetime in a single moment. At least, Michal fancied that it must have been a very long time, for on coming to herself again she said, with a sigh: "What a pity that the morning is breaking! Look! there is the dawn already?"

A great light had suddenly sprung up in the sky.

"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed Barbara Pirka, "that certainly would be a crazy sun which rose in the west! What you see there is the morning sheen of hell. The house of the headsman is burning. A pretty dawn that certainly!"

The fire threw a frightful blood-red glare over mountain and forest, and gilded the white rocks in the distance as if they too were flaming. The stars twinkled faintly through the ruddy glow.

"Now you may sleep in peace, my children," said Barbara Pirka. "By the time the young vihodar returns, he will find only the ruins of his house, and will fancy that his wife has been burnt likewise. He will seek her no more on this earth."

"And even if he should seek her," cried Valentine defiantly, "I would not give her up to him though heaven and earth commanded it. I would rather get together a band of robbers and wage war against all humanity, than allow my beloved to be ever torn from me again. Whoever would take my Michal away from me must tear her from my arms on the very scaffold."

And he smote the butt-end of his musket so violently on the ground, that both the witches leaped up to the very ceiling for joy.

But Michal fell upon Valentine's neck and stammered:

"With thee by my side, I'll go forth into the wild forest and face cold and tempest. With thee I'll brave death, yea, damnation itself. I crave no other death than the death by which thou diest. I desire no other eternity, be it bliss or woe, than the eternity which unites our soul in one, my angel, my king, my sun!"

And Simplex thrust his trumpet through the window and sounded a wedding march, which awoke the echoes in the neighboring hills.

CHAPTER XXV.

Meanwhile the lovers were left to themselves. They had quite enough to tell each other. First, Valentine made Michal tell him of all the horrors she had gone through, and what desperate suffering she had endured, and then he related to her the many contrarieties which had befallen himself. Of course, too, they did not forget to richly indemnify each other for their past woes by a liberal exchange of caresses. In particular, when Valentine recounted the history of Jigerdilla, Michal did not grudge him an ample compensation for the kisses which, for her sake, he had refused the Turkish lady. At the same time Valentine treated his beloved as his bride indeed, but not as his affianced wife.

At the first cockcrow the witches ceased to dance. Simplex they sent into the loft to sleep of his fatigue. The kopanitschar's wife set about preparing breakfast; but Pirka went into the room of the lovers to ask them what they had been dreaming about. Then she sent Valentine out, but whispered in his ear as she passed, that he might peep through the window if he liked, and then she helped Michal on with the cornflower-blue dress. After that she called the young man in again.

Valentine was enchanted at the sight of the beautiful lady, and protested that if she had looked in the first dress like a bride, she looked in the second one like a saint on an altar screen. Pirka thereupon pulled a very wry face, for she did not like to hear tell of saints and altars. So she drove Valentine out again, and bade him go wake his friend who had been dozing all night, and yet was as heavy as ever. While Valentine was wrangling in the loft with Simplex, who swore by hook and by crook that he had been trumpeting all night long for the benefit of the witches, and had scarcely had more than forty winks, Pirka took off Michal's blue dress which made her look like a saint, and arrayed her in the purple one. When Valentine saw her in this he declared that she now looked just like a queen.

But the witches tried to persuade Simplex that he had only dreamt that he had been playing all night, and that it was not from overmuch blowing of trumpets but from excessive mastication at supper the night before, that his jaws were so sore.

The lovers, too, protested that they had heard nothing of the whole entertainment. They had been so much occupied with each other that they had been unconscious of all else. They had not only not heard the trumpet of Simplex, they had not even heard the clarion of the Archangel Uriel who (according to the ancient formula: "Michal on my right, Gabriel on my left, Raphael behind me, Israel before me, Uriel above my head") flies above the head of each one of us, and blows his clarion whenever we are about to plunge into some dreadful danger. Well for us if we heed the warning!

But the lovers had heard nothing.

When Annie served the breakfast (goat's milk, cheese, and brandy mixed with honey and sugar), Valentine's spirits rose so high that he vowed over again what he had already vowed the night before, viz.: that if anyone tore away his Michal from him, he would turn highwayman and gather a robber band around him.

But women have, generally speaking, more common sense in the broad light of day than they have at dead of night; so Michal now said that it need not come to that. Valentine must take her back to her father's house. There she would bring a divorce suit against her husband on the plea that he had married her in a wrong name and under false pretenses, and that his marriage with her was consequently invalid. As soon then as the marriage was dissolved, Valentine must come forward and woo her, when she certainly would not send him away with a flea in his ear.

At this Barbara Pirka burst into a peal of laughter.

"Trust to parsons, and you'll soon see what a pretty dance they'll lead you! The parsons have many creases in their surplices, and they shake a fresh ordinance out of every crease. Do what you say, by all means! Bring your action against Henry Vihodar, formerly clerk in holy orders, and now headsman, and you'll find that justice is on the side of the longest purse. It is true that the vihodar's house is merrily burning, but his treasures in the basement of the tower cannot be burnt, and he will be a very rich man. He'll confront you with a dozen witnesses who will testify that the Keszmár professor knew very well what his son-in-law's trade was. He will manufacture forged letters with false seals, and what will be the end of it all? Why, Squire Valentine will be found guilty of abduction and put out of the way. No, no! don't go to law. You'll get no good by it. Besides, I've a much better plan."

"Let's hear it then. But mind! I mean to be my Valentine's wife, not his mistress," said Michal.

"Yes, the pretty lady shall become her Valentine's wife, but she must listen to me. She knows now that my cards always speak the truth. So hearken to me, my children! You go out, Annie! We don't want you prying here. You, Simplex, can stay where you are, for you know how to hold your tongue."

So Annie went away, and as soon as she was out of hearing, Pirka, in a low whisper, began to expound her crafty scheme.

"Listen now! Not far from here is a town called Bártfa. Every town, as you know, has its peculiar laws and customs. At Kassa, for instance, clandestine lovers caught together are beheaded. At Bártfa they are much more cruel. There, if a lass accosts a lad in the streets after vespers, or if a lad is caught talking with a lassie in a gateway, the watchman lays hands on the pair and claps them into jail. Next morning, without any of the usual preliminary fiddle-faddle, without even asking for their baptismal certificate or requiring the consent of their parents, or obtaining a special license or dispensation, the magistrates send for a parson and splice them straight off. Only as man and wife are they permitted to pass through the city gates. Hence the proverb: