me, 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 h