RÁby had said nothing to Fruzsinka of what had happened at the commission. But when the guest had gone, he brought out his travelling bag and began to pack up as if for a journey.

"Is it possible you are going on a journey?" asked Fruzsinka reproachfully, "without telling me? Don't you know that the wife packs for her husband?"

RÁby did not want his wife to guess whither he was bound. So he made her believe he was only going as far as Tyrnau to take the official depositions regarding the Szent-Endre affair; though since the commission had reduced the whole business to such a farce, how to produce his proofs and, as prosecutor, lay the matter before them at head-quarters, he hardly knew himself. So he told her he could not take her with him, because he would have to travel by diligence or in a peasant's cart, and such a jaunt would be too trying in winter for a delicate woman.

"Now if I were you, I would not go to Tyrnau; I would rather go straight to Vienna, and tell the Emperor himself what roguery is going forward here."RÁby was astounded. This was precisely what he had intended to do, and the journey to Tyrnau had only been a pretext.

"I would lay the whole plot before him," went on Fruzsinka, "and would say, 'Sire, send a man in my place who may bring these conspirators to book, and make an end to their intrigues.'"

RÁby began to understand. Then he said aloud: "But I don't know of any man who would take on such an unthankful business."

"Is it possible that you mean then to go on with the struggle?" asked Fruzsinka plaintively. "Dearest, I beseech you, think of our position. We are living among enemies. Those who were not ashamed to set fire to the wood, to wipe out the proof of their guilt, will not shrink from burning our own house over our heads. I tremble each time you go out, and have no peace till I see you again. Every night I dream they have murdered you. O RÁby, the very thought of living among these people makes me shudder, there are surely no other such vindictive folk on the face of the earth. Come away from this place. Let us go to Vienna! There your career is made. Leave this thankless, malevolent people to their fate!"

Mathias RÁby's heart grew suddenly heavy, and a dark misgiving gripped him in its clutches.

"You would be the first to despise me," he exclaimed, "were I to be weakened by your words, and quit my post to fly to another country."

"Do you mean then to continue the struggle?""It is no question of struggle, but rather of right and wrong and just punishment," he answered gloomily.

"Ah, well! I suppose it is only womanly weakness that gets the best of me. Yet I, too, have thought out the whole affair. You mean that the embezzlements which you have brought to light shall be avenged?"

"Yes, that is what I do mean!"

"Now, has it ever occurred to you that if anyone investigates this affair, at least a part of the odium which it incurs, may fall on your wife?"

"How can that be, Fruzsinka?"

"You remember that absurd housekeeping account, don't you?"

"Yes, indeed, the one we all laughed at so heartily. But how would your name be mentioned in connection with such a business? The items were set down by the head cook, and the prefect settled the account."

"But everyone knows that it was to my advantage. Now suppose I was confronted with the prefect and the cook, in the case of a formal inquiry? Would not it be a disgrace for you?"

"And pray would it not be a disgrace," returned RÁby, "if your husband had to make this confession to the Emperor who sent him: 'Sire, I am no better than all the others you have sent to right your subjects' wrongs, and here I have come back to tell you that everywhere in this world roguery reigns triumphant.' And if he answered me never a word but just looked at me with those keen eyes of his, what shame should I not feel? You shrink at being confronted with the prefect, because the least morsel of the pitch which sticks to him may perchance darken the tip of your little finger, but you do not blush that I may stand before the Emperor and say: 'Sire, here is my wife, with whose paint I have daubed the prefect white.'"

Frau Fruzsinka at this changed her point of attack.

"Remember," she urged, "that if we fly in the face of my uncle, we risk losing a considerable property."

Now it was RÁby's turn.

"You fear the prospect of losing the property, but I tremble at the chance of your possessing it."

"I do not understand," faltered his wife.

"I quite believe you," returned RÁby bitterly.

Fruzsinka dared not pursue this tack further, it was time to try another. She threw herself on her husband's neck, and gazed with those wonderful eyes of hers straight into his.

"RÁby, did we swear that we would make the people, or ourselves happy, which was it, dear?"

At those words, and that glance, RÁby's heart softened.

What can one advance to those most unanswerable of arguments?

Who will blame Mathias RÁby if he weakly gave way then, as many a strong man had done before him, and threw his half-packed bag into a corner.

And as the temptress had gone so far, now she proceeded still further:"Now I'll unpack for you," she cried merrily.

Thereupon, she took the hunting-pouch from the wall and carefully filled it with savoury spiced meat and flaky white bread; then she deftly replenished the flask with wine, and cried: "Now go and enjoy yourself! Don't stay mewed up in the house. You are bothered; well, go and get some sport, and let the fresh air blow the cobwebs away."

And so saying, she helped him on with his shooting coat, and handed him his gun, and so it fell out that RÁby hung up his sword and knapsack, and went neither to Tyrnau nor to Vienna, but just into the copse to try and shoot hares. He heard behind him, as he left the house, the merry song his wife was warbling to herself.

As he sauntered along the street, it occurred to him that up till now he had not met one of his former acquaintances in the town, nor seen a single one of his old schoolmates.

But just then, he ran on to a townsman, whose wasted bent frame and dejected air did not prevent RÁby from recognising him as one of his old contemporaries. The man wore a leathern apron, and carried carpenters' tools. He returned RÁby's greeting politely and was about to shuffle past him. But the latter stopped him.

"DacsÓ Marczi! Is it possible? Are you really Marczi? And won't you just wait that we may have a word together; it is so long since we have met."And he seized the limp hand of the stranger and held it fast.

"Oh, I am indeed glad to see your worship again," returned his new-found friend.

"Never mind 'my worship,' you can leave him out of it," said RÁby. "Didn't we sit beside each other at school, and you would pass me without a word? Tell me how things are going with you?"

The man looked round to left and right, and in his eyes there lurked a nameless fear.

"Well, as far as that goes," he began, "but don't let us talk here, it is not wise to discuss these things in the street."

RÁby dropped his hand. "Ah, you are afraid suspicion may rest on you if you are seen talking to me!"

"It is not that. But I fear, on the contrary, that it might be unpleasant for you, if you were seen talking to a mere carpenter. I am just going to look after my mates in the lower town who are putting new joists to the burned houses. May Heaven bless your efforts to help the poor people!" added the man in a lower voice.

"Good, I'll go with you," said RÁby, "it's all the same to me which way I take."

"But don't let yourself be drawn into talk with them. They are always ready to complain, and there are always people ready to repeat all that is said."

So they walked together down the street—the dapper sportsman, and the working-man in his leather apron.RÁby well remembered the houses they passed, and their owners, and asked after the latter.

"Yes, they all live there still, but the houses no longer belong to them. The magistrate has bought one, the notary another, and Peter Paprika a third. The original owners are only there as tenants, and now they have put an execution in the houses."

"And wherefore?"

"For what was owing for tithes."

"And is old SajtÓs still there, who used to be so good to us boys when we came home from school?"

"Yes, indeed, you may see her any Sunday at the church door begging."

"SajtÓs begging? Why she was quite a well-to-do woman. What has happened to her?"

"Oh, the old story, 'bad times.' There are many more who have come to beggary in the same way. Just go any Sunday morning past the door of the Catholic church, where the beggars congregate, and you will see plenty of your old acquaintances," said Marczi sorrowfully.

"But what has brought them to it?"

And Marczi told him many a sad record of oppression and misery that wrung RÁby's heart as he listened.

But now they had arrived at the lower town, where the ruins of the forty houses burned out in the great fire still stood. The streets hereabouts were nearly a morass and all but impassable.

The men who were commencing to put the roofs on, greeted RÁby timidly, as if half afraid, and they quickly drove indoors the women who stood furtively about in the surrounding courts. RÁby's questions they only answered with the greatest caution, fencing with his enquiries as to why the work of restoration had been so long delayed. Marczi drew him away.

"They will never tell you where the shoe pinches," he said, "whatever bait you offer; they know too well what the end for them would be. You would listen to their grievance and then retail it to the Emperor. He would send to the town council to know why his subjects' wrongs were not redressed? Thereupon the complainants would be arrested, get twenty strokes with the lash, and the Kaiser would be told the grievances of his subjects were amended. Oh, our people know better than to complain! At no price would they confess why their houses are yet unfinished, or how much of the compensation is still owing."

"Surely their wrongs cry aloud to Heaven," said RÁby indignantly. "I only wish I could get documentary evidence of it!"

"Well, they won't give it to you, but if you really wish it, I could get you many such testimonies by to-morrow, and bring them to your house."

"And are you not afraid of the authorities being angry with you?"

"I? What does their anger matter to me, I don't need them, but they can't do without me. I've got them too much in my power. Listen, for you are an honest man, to no other would I venture to say it. One day they summoned me to bring my masons' tools to the Town Hall. No sooner had I arrived, than they bid me go to the secret passage with the notary, which only he and I know of; the aperture was made during the Turkish rule, and except the notary and the Rascian 'pope,' no one knows the whereabouts. I had to wall up the opening."

"So you know the entrance to the room which contains the secret treasure?"

"Yes, indeed, I know it; I have so managed it that no one save the notary shall ever be able to find it again."

"And would you be willing to take me to it?" RÁby ventured to ask.

"No, for they have bound me by a terrible oath never, except at the bidding of the notary, to break open the walled-up passage. What I have sworn, I hold sacred, but this much will I say, that you can still manage to get there."

"Through the 'pope' who knows the other entrance, eh?"

"Mark well, not through the first. It is as much as his life is worth to betray that secret. But there is another way yet. If you can gain the ear of the Emperor, persuade him to order the election of new representatives in the council, then there would be neither the judge, nor the notary, nor any at present in office to reckon with. If we get a new notary, I could show him the secret passage without any difficulty, since my oath compels me only to 'open it at the notary's bidding.'""That is a good idea, Marczi, I will try and follow it out."

"You too care for the rights of our poor oppressed folk. May the good God reward you! But I will tell you where our greatest danger lies; it is in the surveying of the land that the Emperor has ordered. The whole work the surveyor performs is a sham. The best fields under his survey become ownerless, and the municipality takes possession of them. The common folk have to be satisfied with sterile, marshy waste land, and the peasants have to sell their last cow, because they have no pasture for it. Come with me a little way, and I will show you."

So RÁby sauntered the livelong day with his old school-fellow through the fields, and saw much. If the new surveying measures were taken, four-fifths of the peasants' property was ruined, the remaining fifth was devoured by their oppressors, and the owner became houseless and a serf.

Towards evening, RÁby turned homewards with an empty game-bag and a heavy heart.

His mood surely had not escaped Fruzsinka, for she welcomed him with more than ordinary tenderness. She had prepared for his supper some of his favourite dumplings, but somehow even these delicacies failed to satisfy him, and he only wanted to go to bed.

The next morning, Marczi was there quite early. He brought what he had promised, a whole hoard of documents. RÁby took them into his study, and was the whole day long deciphering them.

Marczi, meantime, went about his own business.

As he came out towards the market-place, at the end of the long street, he heard the tones of a bagpipe, and the strains of a violin fell on his ear. But when he came up with the music, he saw what was going forward. The recruiting officers were coming down the street.

So the Emperor wanted soldiers, that was evident enough.

And a right merry affair it was, this recruiting!

They chose out from among the hussars the finest looking fellow, and he was sent from town to town with a dozen comrades to enlist recruits.

They played and sang some such song as this as they went:

They each carried a bottle of good wine in their hands, and every citizen they met was promptly treated to a cup, till he noticed that they wore the hussar uniform. But no human power, once he had tasted the wine, could then free him, and he belonged thenceforth to the recruiting sergeants.

The recruiters reaped the best harvest in the market-place, where they led a riotous dance. It was a regular Magyar measure, a wild, capricious "Csardas," with a dash in it of defiant pride, every movement and gesture suggesting reckless abandon. The clapping of hands, the clinking of spurs, the stamping of feet, all helped towards it, and when the last movement came, foot and heel vied with each other, as the tall figures swayed hither and thither, with the sabre swinging jauntily at their sides, and the "csÁkÓ" on their heads. No wonder that with a dozen such warriors dancing in a row, the women's eyes sparkled as they watched, and they beckoned to the tallest men in the crowd to come and join in.

The recruiters had finished their dance, and were coming along the street where Marczi was walking.

In front was the recruiting-sergeant, and he seemed in a right merry mood. Behind him came the piper, taking wild leaps and bounds as he played an accompaniment to the dancers on his bagpipes; then followed the rest, strutting along like peacocks, offering the bottle to all they met.

Marczi did not look at them; he was in too much of a hurry. But the recruiting-sergeant stopped him.

"Halloa, comrade, won't you stop for a word? Anyone would think you had stolen something by the way you run."

"I am in a hurry. I have a job I want to finish. You have done your work, I see?"

"Don't be a fool, man, we can only live once. Have a drink!"

"The deuce take your drink. Don't you see that to-day I've carpentering business on hand. It won't do for me to get giddy when I'm on the ladder.""Well, a gulp of wine wouldn't do you any harm. You don't go any further till you've had a swallow from my bottle, I tell you."

"Oh, very well," and Marczi took the proffered drink.

"Here's to our true friendship, comrade!" said the other as he followed suit.

Marczi was turning away, having thus gratified his interlocutor, when the latter called him back.

"Marczi, Marczi!" he called, "here's something for you. Here, hold out your hand!"

And the recruiting-sergeant pulled out a thaler from his coat-pocket, and forced it into Marczi's hand, shaking it as he did so.

This time the carpenter would have gone off in earnest, but the other called him back in quite a peremptory tone.

"DacsÓ Marczi," he shouted, "you must stay, you can't go now. You have drunk of the soldier's wine, and accepted the press-money, now there is no drawing back, so off you march with the rest!"

The carpenter stood dumbfoundered whilst they pressed an hussar's "csÁkÓ" on his head. He felt for the handle of his saw in the belt of his apron. For one instant he had a wild impulse to fall upon the sergeant; but then he reflected, it was all his own fault. So he resigned himself to his fate. What had he to regret, indeed, in leaving this town? There was no one there who would weep for him. So he quietly took off his apron.

"If I am to be a soldier, let us see where the wine bottle is. Piper, play my favourite song, 'A soldier's life for me!'"

"Now, Mr. Corporal, are you ready? Off we go, and walk and talk till morning."

And the newly-made soldier drank with the recruiters to his new profession.

On the morrow, the recruiting-sergeant went with the ex-carpenter to his old home, so that he might arrange his affairs there before leaving. He had an old aunt to whom he could safely entrust his belongings. Besides, ten years after all, are not an eternity. They pass before one can look round.

The good old soul was busy tying up her nephew's bundle, when a messenger appeared with an official air, and the order:

"DacsÓ Marczi, it is settled at head-quarters that the recruiters are to stay a week here; during that time you are to stop here and not attempt to go anywhere else; but you are to put your three horses to, and drive to-day with relays to Pesth."

Marczi was inclined to rebel, but it availed nothing.

The sergeant only laughed.

"It's no jest, Marczi. They reckon on you for the relays. A gulden for every horse and each station, besides money for the driver, and for drinks."

"But why should I go with relays, when there are plenty of carriage owners who have nothing better to do than to chatter with jackanapes?"

"My dear fellow, this is why, so you shall not think we are getting the best of you. You know that the surveyor has finished his work and is to leave the town to-day. You know, too, how angry the mob are with him. They will pelt him with stones. But if they see that you, whom they all like, are the coachman, they won't do it for fear of hitting you."

In half an hour from that time, a light carriage, drawn by three good horses, stood at the gate of the prefect's residence, where the surveyor was staying. On the box sat DacsÓ Marczi himself. The orderlies carried out the surveyor's documents, done up in large bundles, to lay them under the leather covering of the back seat. The surveyor himself was well guarded against the cold, having on a seasonable fur coat and warm overshoes, while the lappets of his fur cap were fastened well under his chin.

"Now, Marczi, if you drive well, we'll drink to-day to any amount," he cried.

"Ay, that we will," agreed the driver as they dashed off.

Mathias RÁby was again pressed by his wife to go and get some shooting. Perhaps he might be more lucky to-day, and bring home a hare.

His spouse was all affection and anxiety. So he went.

But the things RÁby had heard lately he could not get out of his head.Therefore he did not go far into the country, but turned back in the direction of Pesth. There, he saw a mob of men, women, and children, who all seemed to be waiting for someone.

He would not ask for whom, for he knew they would not tell him.

But hardly had RÁby gone a few hundred paces past them, than he noted a carriage drawn by three horses, coming from the prefecture at a quick gallop, whereupon the whole crowd of people, till now silent, burst forth with loud cries, and placed themselves on either side of the road.

The passenger inside the carriage he did not recognise; neither could he make out what it was the mob were shouting to him. But their tone was sufficiently menacing. As the equipage dashed between the rows of people, the yells became still louder, whilst fists were raised and sticks were brandished threateningly. The carriage did not stop, but cleared the mob till it had left it far behind.

When the carriage reached RÁby, he saw the surveyor cowering on the back seat. Now he gathered what the people's cries had meant. But he did not understand what it was till the carriage pulled up close to him, and he recognised in the driver, DacsÓ Marczi.

"Your very humble servant," exclaimed the surveyor to RÁby. "Did you hear the infernal row they made? That's the way they receive me everywhere. If Marczi had not been my coachman, I should have had stones thrown at my head."

"Your worship," cried Marczi, in a voice already thick with wine; "is there still some brandy in the flask?"

"Yes, Marczi, here you are, drink!"

The coachman took the bottle and emptied it.

"Marczi, you will do yourself harm!" objected RÁby.

"Not a bit of it," stammered the driver, whilst he set down the flask, and with that he whipped up the horses, and off they flew, so that the wheels scattered the mud on all sides.

At one spot where the high road nears the Danube, a side-path winds in the direction of the river towards the ferry. When Marczi's carriage had reached this point, the coachman turned the horses and urged them with the whip along the path. Then all at once the carriage dashed from the steep bank into the river below.

"Help, help!" yelled the driver, waving his hat; but horses and carriage were already struggling against the strong tide of the river, now swollen by its spring flood.

But no help was forthcoming, and RÁby only saw a man muffled up in a fur coat, struggling desperately to free himself from the sinking carriage, but the heavy garment dragged him helplessly down. Soon the vehicle with its passenger began to sink, and at last the horses' heads disappeared in the stream. Coachman, surveyor, and documents all had gone to the bottom of the Danube. Nor was any trace of them ever found.

Mathias RÁby stood horror-stricken on the highway, while around him the wintry wind swept over the stubble fields, and carried it with the sound as of a howling of many voices that echoed afar off like the laughter of despair.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.