ing the tipsy inspector like a turkey-cock that has been
infuriated by a piece of red cloth. He was a delicate-looking fellow, a
mere stripling compared with the broad-shouldered inspector, but there
was a dangerous gleam in his eyes.

Jokisch had, indeed, gone too far. "_Psia krew!_" cried the priest,
without knowing what he said, whilst the others shouted in the wildest
confusion, "Prove it, prove it!" He was to prove that he had the right
to say such things about Sophia Tiralla. They were all simply burning
with curiosity. What did he know of her, what, what? That anybody knew
such things about her only added to her charm and piquancy in their
eyes.

"Well, fire away," said Schmielke in a jovial voice.

The priest also smiled. He had often before listened to two men
quarrelling, for he knew very well that they would in the end always
bow to his judgment, although the matter was no concern of his.

"I don't know anything," said Jokisch, all at once quite sober. Oh,
what a fool he had been, suddenly flashed through his mind. If he now
said something about her, wouldn't they all believe that he had burnt
his fingers? So far nobody knew that he had tried to kiss her in the
dark stone passage at Starydwor a short time ago, and that she had
given him a sound box on the ears for it. He therefore entrenched
himself behind his wife. "My wife says she's a very bad housekeeper. My
wife says she's very unkind to her husband. She sleeps alone in her own
room."

"Alone? I say, really?" They were all delighted to hear it, and their
eyes again began to sparkle. And no wonder, he was such a horrid old
fellow.

[Pg 64]

"My wife says she would like to poison him, judging from the way she
looks at him." That was his highest trump card, but even that did not
seem to excite any indignation, for every one present was busily
occupied in devising a plan by which he could curry favour with the
fair Sophia.

But the priest smiled. "You're biassed, Mr. Jokisch, biassed. There's
nothing wrong with Mrs. Tiralla."

"She's a good woman, a really good woman," agreed the gendarme. "I came
past the farm the other day on my way from the Przykop, and found the
servant lounging at the gate--Marianna ['S]roka, from Althof, you know,
a buxom lass, but awfully cheeky. 'Panje,' said she in a low voice, and
crept close up to me, 'Panje, there's murder in that house.' She
pointed to the Tirallas' house and made such eyes, she looked quite
mad. Sh