man, sobbing and weeping
he turned to the wall and hid his face.

The old servant stood there dumbfounded. At first he would not believe
his eyes, then at last he clapped his hands together and exclaimed:
"Why, if it is not young Master Imre himself. Good Heaven!" and deeply
agitated he approached the young man and began to soothe him, finally
falling upon his neck and weeping along with him.

"Nobody recognises me," sobbed the youth, whose left hand was bleeding
badly. He had hurt himself somewhat severely when he leaped over the
fence of the headsman's house.

"Oh, why have you come home just at this time?" lamented the old
servant, "if only it had been any other day in the whole year but this;
this house is a sad dwelling-place just now, there are two corpses in
it."

"Who has died then?"

"Mistress Leonora and little Ned. How they are all weeping within
there."

"I shall be the third."

The servant was silent. Perhaps he thought to himself: "Nobody will weep
for you."

"I have deserted from my regiment a third time."

"Oh dear, oh dear! And why have you come home again?"

"I wanted to speak to my father once for all."

"From henceforth your father will speak to nobody but the Lord God."

"I don't ask him to be kind to me. I want to tell him that Death is very
near him, and he must try to avoid it."

"Methinks the poor old man would rather seek out death than fly from it;
but you may be seen and recognised here, young master, and taken
away--and then..."

"They will hang me up, eh? Don't be afraid. The pistol with which I shot
the captain is loaded, one shot will be sufficient to save me from the
gallows-tree--show me where my father is."

"Go, then! Where the mourning is loudest there will you find him."

The youth went in the direction indicated and entered the room.

The room was wholly darkened, the mirrors and pictures were draped in
black; in the midst of it stood two coffins, within which lay two pallid
shapes like wax figures.

It was impossible to recognise them.

On a candelabra beside the coffins burnt four large wax candles, and a
gilded crucifix had been placed on a little table right opposite.

Kneeling at the foot of the dead was a white-haired man. He glanced now
at the one now at the other of the departed, and from time to time would
press his clenched hands to his lips and moan softly like one in a
troubled sleep.

It was a heart-breaking sight--this old white-haired man