e forest
rangers, or in some underground cellar outside the village, and there
putting into their heads ideas which, interpreted by their ignorant
fanaticism, could only be productive of infinite mischief.

He had in all the villages round about personal acquaintances, whom he
was wont to visit successively in the course of every year, and whose
fantastic aspirations he constantly did his best to keep alive.

And at last the opportunity had presented itself for beginning his great
work.

Being a very well-read man himself, he had been the first to learn from
the newspapers of the approach of that dangerous contagious sickness,
the antidotes against which were still unknown.

Suddenly a mysterious rumour began to spread through the villages that a
powerful foreign nation was about to invade the kingdom for the purpose
of reconquering for the descendants of the Quadi and the Marahanas the
Pannonian provinces that they had held centuries before.

The country folk could see for themselves the soldiery hastening on its
way through the land to the frontiers; every carter, tramp, and
traveller, brought news of the military cordons which were drawn far and
wide, from town to town, and required every person passing to and fro to
show his passport, a very unusual institution in those days.

The wiser and better informed persons quieted the whisperers by
explaining that these measures were not adopted against any foreign foe,
but were simply taken to prevent the spread of the terrible pestilence
which was already raging beyond the limits of the kingdom.

And then a still more terrible rumour began to raise aloft its
dragon-like head.

It was generally said, muttered, whispered, and at last proclaimed
aloud, that it was no pestilence the people had to fear, but that the
gentry themselves who had resolved to exterminate the common-folks!

They had determined to exterminate them in an execrable horrible way--by
poison! They were casting into the barns, the wells, and the vats of the
pot-house a deadly poison of swift operation-_that_ was the way in which
they meant to destroy the people.

The doctors, apothecaries, and innkeepers had all been corrupted;
everyone with short cropped hair; everyone who wore a cloth coat was to
be regarded as an enemy; nobody was to be trusted!

Who spread this terrible rumour?--spread it first of all in secret, in
mysterious whispers from house to house, but presently proclaimed it in
the p