ad 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