en with appetite. Henrietta said
that this peasant roast suited her taste.

"And now, Dame Kardos, will you put the ladies up for the night?" said
Hatszegi to the woman of the _csarda_.

"Certainly," returned the worthy woman, "I have feather mattresses
enough and bedsteads enough for as many guests of quality as your
lordship likes. This bed will be my lord baron's and this my lady's, and
this the lady attendant's!"

"Not so quick, not so quick! I shall not lie here."

"Not lie here?" cried this child of the _puszta_. "Why, pray?"

"Oh! I'll find some place or other in the tap-room outside."

"It's a way great folks have, I suppose," murmured Dame Kardos,
shrugging her shoulders, "but I never saw or heard the likes of it
before."

"But, my lord," lisped Clementina, greatly agitated, "won't those wild
vagabonds outside disturb you?"

"Me?" exclaimed Hatszegi, "how the devil can they disturb _me_?"

"They are such wicked men, surely?"

"I don't care what sort of men they are." And with that he went out with
the utmost _sang froid_; nay, as Clementina herself noticed, he drew
forth his pocket pistols and left them behind him on the table.

"His lordship has no need to fear such men," the landlady reassured the
ladies, "for he can talk to them in their own lingo."

Henrietta did not understand. Did robbers then speak a dialect peculiar
to themselves? She became quite curious to hear how Hatszegi would speak
to the robbers in their own language.

But the landlady knew exactly what to do. She filled a _kulacs_[11] for
the baron and placed it on the table before him. Hatszegi took a good
pull at it, dried the mouth of the _kulacs_ and passed it on to the old
pockmarked vagabond who, after raising his cap, took a little drop
himself and then passed it on to the others.

[Footnote 11: A wooden field-flask.]

"Well, old fellow, is the wine good?"

"Wine is always good."

"Have you had enough?"

"One can never have enough."

"Then God grant you plenty!--By the way, does the wind still blow
through the crevices of the prison door at Arad?"

"It blows for him who lists to it. Let him who likes it not close his
ears to it."

"Have many children been born to the governor of the jail lately?"[12]

[Footnote 12: Whenever a new convict arrives at the jail, the governor
is said to have another son born to him.--_Jokai_.]

"Yes, lots have been born there--and christened too."[13]

[Footnote 13: _i.e._, with