Part 19 (2/2)
”Well, my dear old man, that fine lady was only a gypsy girl after all.”
”Surely, my dear fellow.”
”Then why did you not tell me?”
”Because you did not ask me.”
”That is why you lay on your stomach and laughed, is it?”
”Naturally.”
The magistrate heaved a deep sigh.
”At least, I implore you, don't tell my wife that the gypsy girl kissed me!”
CHAPTER V
THE WILD CREATURE'S HAUNT
In those days the Tisza regulations did not exist--that plain around Lankadomb where now turnips are hoed with four-bladed machines was at that time still covered by an impenetrable marsh, that came right up to Topandy's garden, from which it was separated by a broad ditch. This ditch wound in a meandering, narrow course to the great waste of rushes, and in dry summer gave the appearance of a rivulet conveying the water of the marsh down to the Tisza. When the heavy rains came, naturally the stream flowed back along the same route.
The whole marsh covered some ten or twelve square miles. Here after a heavy frost, they used to cut reeds, and on the occasion of great hunting matches[39] they would drive up ma.s.ses of foxes and wolves; and all the huntsmen of the neighborhood might lie in wait in its expanse for fowl from morn till eve, and if they pleased, might roam at will in a canoe and destroy the swarms of winged inhabitants of the fen: no one would interrupt them.
[Footnote 39: A hunting match in which the va.s.sals of the landlord form a ring of great extent and advancing and narrowing the circle by degrees, drive the animals together towards a place where they can be conveniently shot. (Walter Scott.)]
Some ancestor of Topandy had given the peasantry permission to cut peat in the bog, but the present proprietor had discontinued this industry, because it completely defiled the place: the ditches caused by the old diggings became swampy mora.s.ses, so that neither man nor beast could pa.s.s among them without danger.
Anyone with good eyes could still descry from the castle tower that enormous hay-rick which they had filled up ten or twelve years before in the middle of the marsh; it was just in the height of summer and they had mown the hillocks in the marsh; then followed a mild winter, and neither man nor sleigh could reach it. The hay was lost, it was not worth the trouble of getting; so they had left it there, and it was already brown, its top moss-covered and overgrown with weeds.
Topandy would often say to his hunting comrades, who, looking through a telescope, remarked the hay-rick in the marsh:
”Someone must be living in that rick; often of an evening have I seen smoke coming from it. It might be an excellent place for a dwelling.
Rain cannot penetrate it, in winter it keeps out the cold, in summer the heat. I would live in it myself.”
They often tried to reach it while out hunting; but every attempt was a failure; the ground about the rick was so clogged with turfy peat that to approach it by boat was impossible, and one who trusted himself on foot came so near being engulfed that his companions could scarcely haul him out of the bog with a rope. Finally they acquiesced in the idea that here within distinct view of the castle, some wild creature, born of man, had made his dwelling among the wolves and other wild beasts; a creature whom it would be a pity to disturb, as he never interfered with anybody.
The most enterprising hunter, therefore, even in broad daylight avoided the neighborhood of the suspicious hay-rick; who then would be so audacious as to dare to seek it out by night when the circled moon foretelling rain, was flooding the marsh-land with a silvery, misty radiance, adding a new terror to the face of the landscape; when the exhalations of the marsh were sluggishly spreading a vaporous heaviness over the lowland; while the eerie habitants of the bog (whose time of sleep is by day, their active life at night) the millions of frogs and other creatures were reechoing their cries, announcing the whereabouts of the slimy pools, where foul gases are lord and master; when the he-wolf was howling to his comrades; and when, all at once, some mysterious-faced cloud drew out before the moon, and whispered to her something that made all nature tremble, so that for one moment all was silent, a death-like silence, more terrible than all the night voices speaking at once;--at such a time whose steps were those that sounded in the depths of the mora.s.s?
A horseman was making his way by the moonlight, in solitude.
His steed struggled along up to the hocks in the swamp which showed no paths at all; the tracks were immediately sucked up by the mud:--nothing lay before to show the way, save the broken reed. No sign remained that anyone had ever pa.s.sed there before.
The sagacious mare carefully noted the marks from time to time, instinctively scenting the route, that tracks trodden by wild beasts should not lead her astray; cleverly she picked out with her sharp eyes the places where the ground was still firm; at times she would leap from one clod of peat to another. The s.p.a.ce between these spots might be overgrown by green gra.s.s, with yellow flowers dotted here and there, but the sagacious animal knew, felt, perhaps had even experienced, that the depth there was deceptive; it was one of those peat-diggings, filled in by mud and overgrown by the green of water-moss; he who stepped thereon would be swallowed up in an instant. Then she trotted on picking her way among the dangerous places.
And the rider?
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