ntil the latter part of May did
she begin to grow restless and excited, then she repeatedly entreated
her father and the gardener, though it evidently cost her a great
effort to control herself, to ask at the castle whether the day of the
master's release was known. Her father flatly refused to comply with
her crazy wishes, and very earnestly exhorted her to trouble herself no
farther about the castle and its owner. As for the gardener, he had
cautiously intimated repeatedly that it would be unnatural for so
young, robust, and beautiful a woman to remain a widow long, especially
when there was some one who would consider himself only too happy to
put an end to her widowhood, and he now added his entreaties to the old
man's that she would at last banish from her mind the memory of the
evil past.

Accident rendered Panna the service she had vainly asked of the two
men. One evening, when she was returning from the fields, she passed
the housekeeper at the castle who, with her back to the road, stood
leaning against the low half-door of a peasant's hut, and called to her
friend who was working in the yard: "Well, the master wrote to-day; he
wants Janos to bring the carriage at six o'clock to-morrow morning to
take him from the prison."

At this moment the peasant woman saw Panna passing, and made the
housekeeper a sign which silenced her at once. But Panna had heard
enough. She quickened her pace to reach home quickly, put down her
hoe, and ascertained that her father was already in the house. Her
voice betrayed no trace of excitement as she asked if he was going out
again, which he answered in the negative. Then she went to her room,
put on a warm woollen shawl, slipped the few florins she still
possessed into her pocket, and went away, telling her father to go to
sleep, she would be back again.

Hastening to a peasant who lived at the other end of the village, she
begged him to drive her to the city at once; she would pay whatever he
asked. The man replied that his horses were tired out, he had driven
them to the pasture, and could not bring them home now, etc. Panna
went to the second house beyond and repeated her request. This peasant
was more curious than his neighbour and asked what she wanted in the
city in such a hurry.

"My father has suddenly been taken very ill, and I must get a doctor."

"Why don't you go to the village surgeon if the case is so urgent?"

"I have been there," was the quick, glib