the side of the barrel, and took a monstrously long pull at his
pitcher. After that he moistened well his head and face, and then he
replenished his pitcher and took another long draught.

Above his head there the roof now fell in with a loud roar and a crash,
and the whole tribe of flames laughed and roared in their joy at having
done their work so well.

"We have roasted his goose for him, anyhow!" cried Dame Zudar outside,
and her band of rogues and scoundrels laughed and bounded for joy.

But down in his underground asylum the old headsman sang from the depths
of a fervent heart:

"To thee, O Lord! on Sion's Hill,
All praise and glory be."

And he drew his fingers along the double edge of the sword--right well
had it been sharpened, nowhere was there the trace of a notch, nowhere.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE LEATHER-BELL.

We Magyars are very liberal in the distribution of nicknames, in this
respect, indeed, our fancy outruns that of the Princes of the Orient,
and the titles we bestow are even more appropriate than theirs.

In Hetfalu "Leather-bell" was the nickname of a peculiar man, whose real
name had quite slipped out of everybody's memory. This derisive epithet
was given to him by the housewives to whom he used to convey all the
local gossip, to wit: who it was who died to-day, where he was going to
be buried, whose turn it was to work for the castle this day or that,
who was doing the rector's cooking for him, &c, &c, &c. This was the
name he went by throughout the parish when he went about telling
everybody in which house there was going to be a birth, a marriage, or a
funeral; who was in need of the last sacraments, or how much wine the
squire gave for the use of the Lord's Table. This was the title by which
he was greeted at the castle, where he religiously presented himself to
inform the good folks there where serviceable domestics could be got, or
where anything was to be sold, or what were the current prices of corn
and poultry. He himself was half the servant of the gentry, and half the
servant of the community; nay, he belonged somewhat to the village
priest also, and indeed to any good fellow who had a glass of beer to
offer him. He was perpetually scurrying from house to house, from the
local magistrate's residence to the market-place, from the market-place
to the castle, from the castle to the parsonage, from the parsonage to
the miller's, the pot-house, and the tavern, thence into