where he had once been an honored guest. So altogether he was in a very miserable, lean condition when the new priest arrived. The sacristan had shown him his new home, with its four bare walls, its garden overgrown with weeds, its empty stable and fowl-house. The poor young man smiled.

"And is that all mine?" he asked.

"All of it, everything you see here," was the answer, "and this dog too."

"Whose dog is it?"

"It belonged to the poor dead priest, God rest his soul. We wanted to kill the poor beast, but no one dares to, for they say that the spirit of his old master would come back and haunt us."

The dog was looking at the young priest in a melancholy, almost tearful way; perhaps the sight of the cassock awoke sad memories in him.

"I will keep him," said the priest, and stooping down he patted the dog's lean back. "At all events there will be some living thing near me."

"That will be quite right," said the sacristan. "One must make a beginning, though one generally gets something worth watching first, and then looks out for a watch-dog. But it doesn't matter if it is the other way about."

János Bélyi smiled (he had a very winning smile, like a girl's), for he saw that old Vistula would not have much to do, in fact would be quite like a private gentleman in comparison to his companions.

All this time people had been arriving in the yard to have a look at the new priest; the women kept at a distance, and said: "Dear me! so young and already in holy orders!"

The men went up and shook hands with him, saying, "God bless you! May you be happy with us!"

An old woman called out, "May you be with us till your death!"

The older women admired his looks, and remarked how proud his mother must be of him.

In fact the new priest seemed to have taken every one's fancy, and he spoke a few words with them all, and then said he was tired, and went across to the schoolmaster's, for he was to live there for a time till he could get his own place a bit straight, and until he saw some signs of an income.

Only a few of the more important villagers accompanied him to talk over the state of affairs: Péter Szlávik, the sacristan; Mihály Gongoly, the nabob of Glogova; and the miller, György Klincsok. He began to question them, and took out his note-book, in order to make notes as to what his income was likely to be.

"How many inhabitants are there in the village?"

"Rather less than five hundred."

"And how much do they pay the priest?"

They began to reckon out how much wood they had to give, how much corn, and how much wine. The young priest looked more and more serious as they went on.

"That is very little," he said sadly. "And what are the fees?"

"Oh, they are large enough," answered Klincsok; "at a funeral it depends on the dead person, at a wedding it depends on the people to be married; but they are pretty generous on that occasion as a rule; and at a christening one florin is paid. I'm sure that's enough, isn't it?"

"And how many weddings are there in a year?"

"Oh, that depends on the potato harvest. Plenty of potatoes, plenty of weddings. The harvest decides it; but as a rule there are at least four or five."

"That is not many. And how many deaths occur?"

"That depends on the quality of the potato harvest. If the potatoes are bad, there are many deaths, if they are good, there are less deaths, for we are not such fools as to die then. Of course now and then a falling tree in the woods strikes one or the other dead; or an accident happens to a cart, and the driver is killed. You may reckon a year with eight deaths a good one as far as you are concerned."

"But they don't all belong to the priest," said the nabob of Glogova, smoothing back his hair.

"Why, how is that?" asked the priest.

"Many of the inhabitants of Glogova are never buried in the cemetery at all. The wolves eat them without ever announcing it in the parish."

"And some die in other parts of the country," went on György Klincsok, "so that only very few of them are buried here."

"It is a bad lookout," said the priest. "But the parish fields, what about them?"

Now they all wanted to speak at once, but Klincsok pulled the sacristan aside, and stood up in front of the priest.

"Fields?" he said. "Why you can have as much ground as you like. If you want one hundred acres ..."

"One hundred acres!" shouted Szlávik, "five hundred if you like; we shall not refuse our priest any amount of ground he likes to ask for."

The priest's countenance began to clear, but honest Szlávik did not long leave him in doubt.

"The fact is," he began, "the boundaries of the pasture-lands of Glogova are not well defined to this day. There are no proper title-deeds; there was some arrangement made with regard to them, but in 1823 there was a great fire here, and all our documents were burnt. So every one takes as much of the land as he and his family can till. Each man ploughs his own field, and when it is about used up he looks out a fresh bit of land. So half the ground is always unused, of course the worst part, into which it is not worth while putting any work."

"I see," sighed the priest, "and that half belongs to the church."

It was not a very grand lookout, but by degrees he got used to the idea of it, and if unpleasant thoughts would come cropping up, he dispersed them by a prayer. When praying, he was on his own ground, a field which always brought forth fruit; he could reap there at any minute all he was in need of—patience, hope, comfort, content. He set to work to get his house in order, so that he could at least be alone. Luckily he had found in the next village an old school friend, Tamás Urszinyi, a big, broad-shouldered man, plain-spoken, but kind-hearted.

"Glogova is a wretched hole," he said, "but not every place can be the Bishopric of Neutra. However, you will have to put up with it as it is. Daniel was worse off in the lions' den, and after all these are only sheep."

"Which have no wool," remarked his reverence, smiling.

"They have wool, but you have not the shears."

In a few days he had furnished his house with the money he had borrowed of his friend, and one fine autumn afternoon he was able to take possession of his own house. Oh, how delightful it was to arrange things as he liked! What pleasant dreams he would have lying in his own bed, on pillows made by his own mother! He thought over it all when he lay down to sleep, and before going to sleep he counted the corners of the room so as to be sure and remember his dreams. (The Hungarian peasants say, that when you sleep in a room for the first time you must count the corners, then you will remember your dream, which is sure to come true.) He remembered his dream the next morning, and it was a very pleasant one. He was chasing butterflies in the fields outside his native village, looking for birds' nests, playing games with the boys and girls, having a quarrel with Pali Szabó, and they were just coming to blows when some one tapped at the window outside.

The priest awoke and rubbed his eyes. It was morning, the sun was shining into the room.

"Who is it?" he called out.

"Open the door, Jankó!"

Jankó! Who was calling him Jankó? It seemed to him as though it were one of his old schoolfellows, from whom he had just parted in his dream.

He jumped out of bed and ran to the window.

"Who is it?" he repeated.

"It is I," was the answer, "Máté Billeghi from your old home. Come out, Jankó, no, I mean of