y discernible masses of men were moving up
and down all round the house.

Instinctively she felt for the pistols in her saddle bow--there they
were in their proper place.

In a few moments she was close up to the house and perceived clearly at
last, with a tremor of horror, the spectacle that had long been engaging
her attention.

Some hundreds of peasants, the dregs of the agricultural population,
were swarming in and out of the _csarda_ door, savagely singing and
shouting. Two large casks had been planted in front of the house, their
bottoms had been stoved in, and those of the mob who had got near enough
were ladling out the brandy they contained in their hats. Some of these
gentlemen could only keep their legs at all by leaning upon the object
nearest to them. A white-bearded Jew had been tied to the leg of a chair
placed between the two casks. The drunken mob was bestowing most of its
attention upon him, and pulling out his beard hair by hair as they
cross-examined him. The tortured victim was howling horribly, but would
give his tormentors no answer, only from time to time he implored them
to spare his innocent daughter. A childish shape, evidently a woman's,
was lying across the threshold, and everyone going in and out of the
door gave it a kick as he passed through. Fortunately she felt nothing
more now.

Maria, full of indignation, spurred her horse right into the midst of
the mob that was tormenting the old innkeeper, and exclaimed in a voice
of virile assurance:

"What are you all doing here?"

The mob only first perceived the horse when it was right amongst them.

A young lout with a stumpy nose, which had evidently been broken some
time or other, a bare breast, and a shock of ragged hair covering his
face, answered the question.

"We are paying off a poisoner, young sir, if you must know."

"What poisoner do you mean?" inquired Maria, who had not the remotest
idea what the fellow was driving at.

"What!" cried the stripling defiantly, "do you mean to say you don't
know? Why, haven't the gentry got the Jews to put poison in the brandy!
Why, everyone knows that."

Maria was so dumfounded that she had not a word to say in reply.

"Look! how he pretends to know nothing about it. But we are up to them.
They may weave their plans as artfully as they like, we've got eyes in
our heads all the same. All is betrayed. Come, thou Jew! confess that
there is poison in that cask!"

And yet they all went o