st gentleman."

"Die by all means," said the poet. "Don't be afraid. I'll think of an
epitaph for you."

And while the gipsy flung himself on the ground and closed his eyes,
Gyarfas recited this epitaph over him--

"Here liest thou, gipsy-lad, never to laugh any longer,
Another shall shoulder the fiddle, and death shall himself
fiddle o'er thee."

And, in fact, the gipsy never moved a limb. There he lay, prone, stiff,
and breathless. In vain they tickled his nose and his heels; he did not
stir. Then they placed him on the table with a circle of burning candles
round him like one laid out for burial, and the heydukes had to sing
dirges over him, as over a corpse, while the poet was obliged to stand
upon a chair and pronounce his funeral oration.

And the Nabob laughed till he got blue in the face.

* * * * *

While these things were going on in one of the rooms of the
"Break-'em-tear-'em" _csarda_, fresh guests were approaching that
inhospitable hostelry. These were the companions of the carriage that
had come to grief by sticking fast in the mud of the cross-roads, for,
after the men and beasts belonging to it had striven uselessly for three
long hours to move it from the reef on which it had foundered, the
gentleman sitting alone inside it had hit upon the peculiar idea of
being carried to the _csarda_ on man-back instead of on horseback. He
mounted, therefore, on to the shoulders of his huntsman, a broadly
built, sturdy fellow, and leaving his lackey in the carriage to look
after whatever might be there, and making the postillion march in front
with the carriage lamp, he trotted in this humorous fashion to the
_csarda_, where the muscular huntsman safely deposited him in the
porch.

It will be worth while to make the acquaintance of the new-comer, as far
as we can at least, as soon as possible.

From his outward appearance it was plain that he did not belong to the
gentry of the _Alfoeld_.

As he divested himself of his large mantle with its short Quiroga
collar, he revealed a costume so peculiar that if any one showed himself
in it in the streets in our days, not only the street urchins but we
ourselves should run after it. In those days this fashion was called the
mode _a la calicot_.

On his head was a little short cap, somewhat like a tin saucepan in
shape, with such a narrow rim that it would drive a man to despair to
imagine how he could ever catch