hristian, who believes in God, and in those who are
saints: tell me, is there any torture of hell that could be punishment
enough for so ruining a youth?"

Sarvoelgyi tremblingly strove to raise himself on his quivering hand. He
thought his last hour had come.

"There is none!" answered Desiderius to himself. "This fellow kept his
hatred till the last day, and when the final anniversary came, he
actually sought out his victim to remind him of his awful obligation.
Oh, sir, perhaps you do not know what a terrible fatality there is in
this respect in our family? So died grandfather, so it was that our
dearly loved father left us; so good, so noble-hearted, but who in a
bitter moment, amidst the happiness of his family turned his hand
against his own life. At night we stealthily took him out to burial.
Without prayer, without blessing, we put him down into the crypt, where
he filled the seventh place; and that night my grandmother, raving,
cursed him who should occupy the eighth place in the row of
blood-victims."

Sarvoelgyi's face became convulsed like that of a galvanized corpse.
Desiderius thought deep sympathy had so affected the righteous man and
continued all the more passionately:

"That fellow, who knew it well, and who was acquainted with our family's
unfortunate ill-luck, in cold blood led his friend to the eighth coffin,
to the cursed coffin--with the words 'Lie down there in it!'"

Sarvoelgyi's lips trembled as if he would cry "pity: say nothing more!"

"He went with him down to the gate of death, opened the dark door before
him, and asked him banteringly 'is the pistol loaded?' and when Lorand
took his place amid the revellers: bade him fulfil his obligation--the
perjured hound called him to his obligation!"

Sarvoelgyi, all pale, rose at this awful scene:--for all the world as if
Loerincz Aronffy himself had come to relate the history of his own death
to his murderer.

"Then I seized Lorand's arm with my one hand, and with the other held
before the wretch's eyes the evidence of his cursed falseness. His evil
conscience bade him fly. I reached him, seized his throat...."

Sarvoelgyi in abject terror sank back in his chair, while Madame
Balnokhazy, rushing from the window, passionately cried "and killed
him?"

Desiderius, gazing haughtily at her, answered calmly: "No, I merely cast
him out from the society of honorable men."

To Lorand it was a savage pleasure to look at those three faces, as
Des