ndmother impetuously.

Mother could not speak: she merely wrung her hands.

"Because I had certain information that this accusation was groundless."

"Oho! you young imp!" exclaimed Balnokhazy in proud, haughty tones.

"From beginning to end groundless," I repeated calmly; although every
muscle of mine was trembling from excitement. But you should have seen,
how mother and grandmother rushed into my arms: how they grasped one my
right, the other my left hand, as drowning men clutch at the rescuer's
hands, and how that proud angry man stood before me with flashing eyes.
All sobriety had left the three, together they cried to me in voices of
impetuousity, of anger, of madness, of hope, of joy: "speak! tell us
what you know."

"I will tell you.--When his lordship acquainted me with these two
terrible charges against Lorand, I at once started off to find my
brother. Two honorable poor men came in my way to help me find him: two
poor workmen, who left their work to help me to save a lost life. The
same will be my witness that what I relate is all true and happened just
as I tell you: one is Marton Braun, the baker's man, the other Matthias
Fleck."

"My wife's coachman," interrupted the P. C.

"Yes. He conducted me to where Lorand was temporarily concealed. He
related to me that her ladyship was elsewhere. He had taken her ladyship
across the frontier--without Lorand. My brother started at the same time
on foot, without money, towards the interior of Hungary: Marton and I
accompanied him into the hills, and my pocket money, which he accepted
from me, was the only money he had with him, and Marton's walking stick
was the only travelling companion that accompanied him further."

I noticed that mother kneeled beside me and kissed me.

That kiss I received for Lorand's sake.

"It is not true!" yelled Balnokhazy; "he disappeared with my wife. I
have certain information that this woman passed the frontier with a
young smooth-faced man and arrived with him in Vienna. That was Lorand."

"It was not Lorand, but another."

"Who could it have been?"

"Is it possible that you should not know? Well, I can tell you. That
smoothed-faced man who accompanied her ladyship to Vienna was the German
actor Bleissberg;--and not for the first time."

Ha, ha! I had stabbed him to the heart: right to the middle of the
liver, where pride dwells. I had thrust such a dart into him, as he
would never be able to draw out. I did not care if