signed their names to the
deeds.

On the day they received the key of the house from the guardian, they
both went there, shut themselves in, and began to pull down the inner
wall with the pickaxes they had brought with them under their cloaks. Of
course they found the caldron, but what was in it has not become clear
to this day, though that was the chief point to be settled in the
Gregorics lawsuit, which took up the attention of the Besztercebanya law
courts for ten years.

It began in this way. A few months after the purchase of "Lebanon,"
Prepelicza appeared on the scene, and demanded his share of the treasure
discovered in the wall, otherwise he would make known the whole affair
to Mrs. Panyoki. The brothers got mad with rage at the sight of him.

"You miserable thief!" they cried. "You were a party to the fraud
practised upon us by that good-for-nothing brother of ours, who wanted
to rob us in order to benefit that boy. You helped him to fill the
caldron with rusty nails and bits of old iron. Now you are here, you
may as well have your share."

With that they each seized hold of a stick, and began to beat Prepelicza
till he was black and blue. Off he went to a doctor for a certificate as
to his wounds, and then to the barber, who had to write a long letter to
the king in his name, complaining of the behavior of the two brothers
Gregorics toward one of his honest (?) subjects.

"If the king is not ashamed of them as subjects, I am not ashamed of
owning how I have been beaten; they were two to one!"

Then he hired a cart (for it was impossible for him to walk in his
present state), and drove to Varecska, where Mrs. Panyoki spent the
summer, and told her the whole tale from beginning to end.

The result was the lawsuit Panyoki _versus_ Gregorics, which furnished
the neighborhood with gossip for ten years. A whole legion of witnesses
had to be examined, and the deeds and papers increased to such an extent
that at the end they weighed seventy-three pounds. Mrs. Panyoki could
only prove the existence of the caldron, its having been walled in, and
its appropriation later on by the two brothers, who, on their part,
tried to prove that it contained nothing of value, only a number of
rusty nails and odd bits of iron. As the dead man had no lawyer to
defend him, _he_ lost the lawsuit, for it was certain he had played the
trick on his relations, and thus brought about the lawsuit, which only
ended when it was all the