Michal laughed.

"That is certainly not true. Henry would quit the headsman's trade if his father died. He would go to Germany where n.o.body 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 b.u.t.terfly 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 G.o.d.

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 b.u.mper 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 h.e.l.lish 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 b.l.o.o.d.y headsman, and thus close against Michal every way of escaping from this h.e.l.l! 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 a.s.sisting 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 f.a.got 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 f.a.gots, 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 pa.s.sage 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 exuviae 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 f.a.got into the tow.

"Why do you throw the f.a.got into the tow?" asked Michal.