the fields, and
thence again into the courtyards. He would pick up something here and
something there, something he might, perhaps, have heard at the church
porch or up in the belfry; or something would catch his ear as he was
dawdling among the waggons on a market-day, and he would immediately run
and repeat it at the miller's. By the time he had reached the pot-house
he would hear his own invention, already well amplified and nicely
embellished, circulating from mouth to mouth as an absolute fact.
Whereupon he would dash off with this enlarged edition of it to the
castle, stopping, however, to tell it to every living soul he met on the
way with all the variations which struck him as most appropriate on the
spur of the moment, so that he really well-earned the epithet of
"Leather-bell," inasmuch as he was performing all the functions of a
bell, and, nevertheless was covered with a coat of skin or leather.[17]

[Footnote 17: The Hungarian word "boer" means both skin and leather.]

On this particular momentous evening, the Leather-bell, all
hurry-scurry, rushed into the porch of the castle, where the old lord of
the manor was nursing his invalided limbs in an ample easy chair, having
so disposed himself as to be able to command a view of the western sky,
still lit up by the faint hues of sunset.

Once upon a time the Leather-bell must have been a tall man, but
excessive salutations had so bent his back, and an incessant to-ing and
fro-ing had given his head such a forward inclination, that whoever
beheld him now for the first time must needs have suspected him of an
intention to run straight under the table incontinently. He was the very
image of obsequiousness, and he presented his back to the world as
though he would say: "Smite away at it whoever has a mind to."

Old Hetfalusy liked to see the man. He had leave to come and go whenever
he chose. He was free to relate serious matters with a smiling face, and
amusing incidents in a whining voice, especially as the points of all
the jokes generally turned against himself.

"I kiss your honour's hand," said the Leather-bell, depositing his hat
and stick in the doorway. "I kiss your hand (and kiss it he did there
and then). How frightfully hot it is outside, and oh! what a lot of
dust. Those boors are always routing it up with their ox-waggons. They
_make_ all the dust, I do believe. My throat is full of it, and it lies
heavy on my chest. Oh no! I humbly thank your hon