given her a drink of cold water, she would immediately have been freed from the torments of life, but nobody durst approach to give her to drink. On that same day the lightning thrice struck the village, and such a deluge of rain descended that the water flooded the roads and invaded the houses.

The next day there was nothing at all the matter with the old woman, but she went about bowed down, shaking and leaning heavily on her crutch as at other times.

When the spring of 1831 was passing away, all sorts of terrible premonitory signs warned the people of the frightful visitation which was about to befall humanity. Nature herself made the people anxious and uncomfortable. There were showers of falling stars, it rained blood in various places, death-headed moths flew about in the evenings, wolves, tame and fawning like dogs, appeared in the village and let themselves be beaten to death before the thresholds of the houses.

What was going to happen?—nobody could tell.

Everyone augured, feared, felt that mourning and woe were close at hand; yes, everyone.

The trees made haste to put forth their blossoms, they made even greater haste to produce their ripened fruit. All nature knew not what to do, man least of all.

In those days when a single good word spoken in season, a single lucid idea might have meant the saving of many lives, the sole prophet in the whole country-side was this crazy old woman, who, in the dolorous exaltation of her deranged mind, sometimes blindly blurted out things on which the future was to impress the seal of truth. But, for the most part, her multitudinous, ambiguous utterances might be interpreted this way or that, according to the liking of her hearers, and obscured rather than revealed the future.

When the summer came, with its terribly hot days, the woman's madness seemed to culminate in downright frenzy, for whole nights together she went shrieking through the village. The dogs crept forth from under the gates to meet her, and she sat down beside them, put her arms round their heads, and they would howl together in hideous unison. Then she would go into the houses weeping and moaning, and would ask for a glass of water, and would moisten her hands and her eyes therewith. In some of the houses she would simply say: "Why don't you smoke the room out, there's a vile odour of death in it;" in other places she would ask for a Prayer Book, and would fold down the page at the Office of Prayers for the Dead. Or she would send messages to the other world through people who were on their legs hale and hearty, and would tell them not to forget these messages.

"Get a cross made for you!" was her most usual greeting. And woe betide the family into whose windows she cried: "Get two crosses made! Get three made! One for yourself, one for your wife, one for each of your sons and each of your daughters!"

The people lived in desperate expectation; they would have run away had they known whither to run.

And what then were the wise and learned doing all this time, they who knew right well that a mortal danger was approaching; for they had read of its ravages, they had looked upon the very face of it in pictures, they knew the pace at which it was travelling day by day—what did they do to soothe the anguish of the people, and inspire them with confidence in the tender mercies of God?

All they did was to have a cemetery ready dug for those who were to die in heaps in the course of the year.

CHAPTER II.

THE HEADSMAN'S FAMILY.

The house of the headsman is surrounded by a stone wall, its door is studded with huge nails, acacia trees rustle in front of it. Its windows are hidden by a high fence. On its roof from time to time something flap-flaps like a black flag; it is a raven which has chosen the roof of that house as a refuge. No other animal likes the hangman. The dogs bay at him, the oxen run bellowing out of his way, only the ravens acknowledge him as their host. They are his own birds.

It is late in the evening, the sun has long since set, it may be about nine or ten o'clock, and yet the sky is unusually bright. Everywhere a strange reflected glare torments the eye of man. Not a cloud is visible; there is not a star in the heavens, yet a persistent, murky yellowness embraces the whole sky like a shining mist, as if the night, instead of putting on her usual cinder-grey garment, had clothed herself in flame-coloured weeds. Any sounds that may be audible seem as if they come from an immeasurable distance, and are hollow and awe-inspiring.

Close to the horizon the pointed steeples of Hétfalu are visible, their black outlines stand out in sharp contrast against the burning sky.

The whole district is empty and deserted. At other times, in the summer evenings, one would have seen tired yet boisterous groups of peasants returning home from working in the fields and hastening back to their respective villages. The voice of the vesper bell would everywhere have been resounding, the sweetly-sad songs of the good-humoured peasant girls would have soothed the ear, mingled with the jingle of the bells of the homeing kine, and the joyous barking of the dogs bounding on in front of their masters. Now everything is dumb. The fields for the most part lie fallow and overgrown by weeds and thistles, never seen before. In other places the green wheat crop, choked by tares, has already been mown down. Means of communication have everywhere been interrupted by the sanitary cordons. The high road is covered with broad patches of grass on both sides. Men hold handkerchiefs to their mouths and noses, and do not trust themselves to breathe. The tongues of the bells have everywhere been removed. At the end of every village stands a good-sized four-cornered piece of ground surrounded by a ditch, and within it, here and there, graves have been dug well beforehand.

Throughout this lonely wilderness the furious barking of a watch-dog suddenly resounds, to which all the dogs in the distant village instantly begin to respond. Two men are fumbling at the latch of the headsman's door, and the chained dog within the courtyard, scenting a stranger, gives him a hostile greeting.

"Who is there?" inquires from within an unpleasant, hoarsely screeching voice, the owner whereof at the same time soothing the big dog which, snarling fiercely, thrusts his nose between the door and the lintel, and snaps from time to time through the opening.

"Open the door, Mekipiros, and don't bawl!" answers one of the new arrivals, impatiently beating with his fists upon the door. "There's no necessity for closing the door either, for who is likely to come? Even if you left it wide open, nobody would stray in, I'll be bound, save your pal, Old Nick, and here he is."

At this well-known voice the wolf-hound ceased to bark, and when the door was opened leaped joyously upon the neck of the new-comer, whining and sniffing.

"Send this filthy sea-bear to the deuce, Mekipiros, can't you? It's licking my very nose off."

The person so addressed was a curious sport of nature. It was a square-set creature dressed completely in women's clothes. Its features were those of a semi-bestial type. It had an immense round head covered with short, tangled, unkempt hair, a large broad mouth, a stumpy, wide-spreading nose, a projecting forehead furrowed with deep wrinkles, thick bushy eyebrows, and one half of the horny-skinned face was covered by immature