he caterpillar-host has fallen upon the remnant; nobody looks after
them, and they are left to perish one by one, consumed by yellow mould.

The third house is a little shanty at the far end of the village, shoved
away behind a large ugly granary, with its little yard full of reeds, in
the midst of which is a crooked, dilapidated pump. The panes of glass in
the lead-encased frames have been frosted over, the marl of the thatched
chimney is crumbling away, and the whole of the roof is of a beautiful
green, like velvet, due to the luxuriantly spreading moss.

It is thirty years since these three houses were inhabited.

In the little hut, on the reed-thatched roof of which the screech-owl
now lays its eggs, dwelt thirty years ago, a crazy old woman, they
called her Magdolna. She must have been for a long time out of her wits;
some said she had been born so, others maintained that the roof had
fallen right upon her head and injured her brain; others again affirmed
that the marriage of her only daughter with the hangman was the cause of
her mental aberration. There were some who even remembered the time when
this woman was rich and respected, and then suddenly she had become a
beggar, and subsequently a crazy beggar. Be that as it may, in those
days this old woman exercised a peculiar influence over the
superstitious peasantry.

A sort of awe-inspiring exaltation seemed to take possession of this
creature whenever she stood at the threshold of her hut, within the
walls of which she usually remained in a brown study insensible to her
surroundings for days together.

When, at such times of exaltation, she stepped forth into the street,
all the dogs in the village would fall a howling as they are wont to do
when the headsman goes his rounds. All who met her timidly shrunk aside,
for, not infrequently, she would foretell the hours of their death, and
cases were known in which her prophesies had come true. She could tell
at a single glance which of the young unmarried women did honour to
their _partas_[1] and which did not. She could read in the faces of the
children the names of their parents, and she often gave them names very
different from the names they bore. The maids and young married women of
the village therefore, not unnaturally, trembled before her.

[Footnote 1: _Parta_--head-dress of the young peasant maids.]

She recognised the stolen horse in front of the cart, and shouted to the
farmer who drove it: "You sto