ordered the beadle to open the door.
The bolt flew back, the sides of the folding door rattled apart, and
Pista was seen on the threshold with his hideous, still horribly
distorted face, the pitchfork yet in his right hand.

"Forward, march!" Abonyi ordered, and the cartwright stepped
hesitatingly out into the courtyard.

"Put down the pitchfork, vagabond, it belongs to me," the nobleman
again commanded.

Pista cast a flashing glance at him and saw the muzzle of the revolver
turned toward himself. He silently put down the fork and prepared to
go.

"Now the irons," Abonyi turned to his men, at the same time shouting to
the gardener, "You fellow there, can't you come and help?"

The gardener pretended not to hear and continued to be absorbed in his
blossoming plants. But, at Abonyi's last words, Pista swiftly seized
the pitchfork again, shrieking:

"Back, whoever values his life! I'll go voluntarily, I need not be
chained, I'm no sharper or thief."

The coachman and the beadle with the handcuffs hesitated at the sight
of the threatening pitchfork.

"Am I parish-magistrate or not?" raged Abonyi, "do I command here or
not? The vagabond presumes to be refractory, the irons, I say, or----"

Both the servants made a hasty movement toward Pista, the latter
retreated to the door of the coach-house, swinging the pitchfork, the
beadle was just seizing his arm, when a shot was suddenly fired. A
shrill shriek followed, and Pista fell backward into the barn.

"Now he has got it," said Abonyi, in a low tone, but he had grown very
pale. The coachman and the beadle stood beside the door as though
turned to stone, and the gardener came forward slowly and gloomily.

"See what's wrong with him," the nobleman ordered after a pause, during
which a death-like silence reigned in the group.

Janos timidly approached the motionless form lying in the shade of the
barn, bent over it, listened, and touched it. After a short time he
stood up again, and, with a terribly frightened face, said in a voice
barely audible:

"The hole is in the forehead, your honour, he doesn't move, he doesn't
breathe, I fear"--then after a slight hesitation, very gently--"he is
dead."

Abonyi stared at him, and finally said:

"So much the worse, carry him away from there--home--" and went slowly
into the castle.

The servants looked after him a few moments in bewilderment, then laid
the corpse upon two wheels, which they placed on poles, and b