re on the church steps
with a bundle of healing herbs in her lap, and her crutch under her
armpits, and with her chin resting on her knee. She kept counting all
who came out of the church: "One! two! three!" Every time she came to
three she began all over again--every third person was superfluous.

And now all had gone, only she remained behind, she and shaggy Hanak,
the bellringer.

After the departure of the people a little white dog came running along,
and, as often happens, peeped into the church.

"Clear out of that!" cried the sexton, flinging the large church door
key after him.

The aged sybil lifted a skinny finger and shook it menacingly at the
sexton.

"Hanak! shaggy Hanak! Why dost thou drive away the dog? I tell thee, and
I tell thee the truth, that it were better for thee, aye! and for others
also, if they could be as such dogs instead of the two-legged beasts
they really are, for ere long we shall be in a world where not the voice
of thy bell, but the howling of dogs will accompany the dead to their
last resting-place. Therefore trouble not thyself about the dogs, Hanak,
shaggy Hanak."

The bellringer durst not reply. He closed the church door softly, got
out of the woman's way, and while he hastened off, it seemed to him as
if his head was dizzy from some cause or other, and his feet were
tottering beneath him.

When he handed the church door key over to the priest, his reverence
gave him to understand that by order of the authorities the church bells
were not to be tolled for the dead during the outbreak of the plague to
avoid alarming the people.

As he went home that evening shaggy Hanak's head waggled from side to
side, as if every hair upon it was a heavy debt. As he went along he
heard all the dogs howling. Well, henceforth _they_ would have to follow
the dead to their graves.

After that Hanak had not the heart to go home, but sought comfort in the
pot-house, where the village sages were already sitting in council
together and discussing the problems of the Future.

CHAPTER X.

A LEADER OF THE PEOPLE.

The other rector, Mr. Thomas Bodza, had read a lot of things in the
course of his life.

He had read the history of Themistocles who, with a handful of Greeks,
converted millions of Persians into rubbish heaps; he had read of the
exploits of the valiant Marahas, who, when one of their warriors flung
his sandal into the air and uttered thrice the word: "Marha, Marha,
Marha!