looked her in the face.

Panna shrunk from the touch of his fat fingers, brushed them off, and
said:

"Tell him it is all very well and we will see."

"Nothing else?"

"Nothing else."

The priest departed with an unctuous farewell, and left Panna alone.
She remained motionless in the same position, with bent head, her hands
resting nervelessly in her lap, her eyes staring into vacancy. So her
father found her when, half an hour after, he returned from the parish
tavern. When she saw him, she started from her stupor, rushed to him,
and exclaimed amid a violent flood of tears:

"Father, it was all in vain, there is no justice on earth."

In reply to the astonished old man's anxious questions, she told him,
for the first time, the story she had hitherto kept secret of her
petition to the king, and the pitiful result of this final step.

Her father listened, shaking his head, and said:

"You see if, instead of acting on your own account, you had first asked
my advice, you would have saved yourself this fresh sorrow. I could
have told you that you would have accomplished nothing with the king."

Now, for the first time in many weeks, the old man again began to speak
of the matter which had never ceased to occupy Panna's whole mind. He
was choleric, and capable of a hasty deed of violence when excited, but
he was not resentful; he was not the man to cherish anger long, and had
already gained sufficient calmness to view Abonyi's crime more quietly
and soberly. He represented to his daughter that it would be folly to
demand the nobleman's life from the king in exchange for Pista's.

Panna answered sullenly that she did not perceive the folly; did her
father think that a peasant's life was less valuable than a gentleman's?

"That isn't the point now. You must consider that the master did not
kill your Pista intentionally."

"Stop, Father, don't tell me that. He _did_ kill him intentionally. I
don't care whether the purpose existed days or minutes before, but it
was there; else he would not have sent for the revolver, he would not
have aimed the weapon, touched the trigger, or discharged it."

"Even admitting that you are right, he has been punished for it."

Panna laughed bitterly. "Six months! Is that a punishment?"

"For a gentlemen like him, it's a heavy one. And he will provide for
you."

"Do you, too, talk as the priest does, father? You ought to know me
better. Do you really believe that I