f women;
he saw his little grandchild growing up full of beauty, wisdom, and
amiability; and it did him good to rejoice in the domestic happiness of
his former enemy, and oftentimes he would call Cornelia his darling
daughter. And she was worthy of the name.

A beneficent stroke of apoplexy called him home to his dead in the
family vault at Hetfalu.

Imre remained no longer in those parts. He settled down on his wife's
property with little Elise, and left for ever the place which had such
melancholy associations for him.

And Peter Zudar went with them. He pursued no more his grim profession.
After that last master-stroke of his, he never grasped the headsman's
sword again. He had wielded it for the last time at God's command, he
was not going to play the part of death's scytheman any more at the
bidding of man.

Close to the Kamienszki estates he rented a little plot of land where he
grew flowers and melons, sported with white doves and little rabbits,
and sang in the church choir every day. It never occurred to anyone that
he had once been----but no matter.

And the three houses at Hetfalu were abandoned to desolation.

The gutted dwelling-house was never re-built. The castle was never
re-inhabited, people avoided it as a spectre-stricken dwelling. Its
windows were bricked up, its garden became a wilderness of weeds, its
steps and staircases fell to pieces. Ruin wrought her work upon it.

The hut, with the moss-covered roof, endured the longest. The old
night-owl, who now could scarce use her limbs, would, nevertheless,
totter of an evening to the place where stood the vast family vault of
the Hetfalusies, sit down there, opposite to the iron gate, and talk all
sorts of nonsense to some imaginary interlocutor.

"Eh! eh! old Hetfalusy! who was right after all? Didn't I say you would
be the first to go? What a little room satisfies you now! what a quiet,
peaceable man you are now! You have got earth enough at last, yet you
were always hungering after more while you were yet alive! You would be
at rest now if I would let you alone, eh? Or are you sorry that we
cannot go on with our wrangling? Well, well, if I should discover the
door by which you made your exit, we will begin it all over again...."

For hours at a stretch she would pour forth these vain mad words,
unanswered, unheeded. What had once been dust now lay at rest, what had
once been a human spirit now abode in Heaven, there was none to answer
her.