would bargain over Pista's life
for beggerly alms? I should be ashamed ever to pass the churchyard
where the poor fellow lies."

"You are obstinate, Panna. I see very plainly where you are aiming.
You always say you want justice, but it seems to me that what you want
is vengeance."

Panna had never made this distinction, because she was not in the habit
of analyzing her feelings. But when her father uttered the word, she
reflected a moment, and then said: "Perhaps so."

Yet she felt that it really was not vengeance which she desired, and
she instantly added:

"No, Father, you are not exactly right, it is not revenge. I should no
longer be enraged against Herr von Abonyi if I could believe that the
law, which punished what he has done with six months' imprisonment,
would for instance have punished you also with six months, if you had
committed the same crime. But it cannot be the law, or they would not
have shot Marczi for his little offence, you would not have been
imprisoned three months for a few innocent blows. It is easy to tell
me that the case is different. Or is there perhaps a different law for
peasants and for gentlemen? If that is so, then the law is wicked and
unjust, and the peasants must make their own."

The old man did not notice the errors and lack of logic in Panna's
words, but he was probably startled by her gloomy energy.

"Child, child," he said, "put these thoughts out of your head. I have
done so too. If I could have laid hands on the murderer at first--may
God forgive me--I believe that Pista would not have been buried alone.
But now that is over, and we must submit. After all, six months'
imprisonment is not so small a matter as you suppose. You need only
ask me, I know something about it. Oh, it is hard to spend a winter in
a fireless cell, busy all day in dirty, disagreeable work, shivering at
night on the thin straw bed till your heart seems to turn to ice in
your body, and your teeth chatter so that you can't even swear, to say
nothing of the horrible vermin, the loathsome food, the tyrannical
jailers--a grave in summer is almost better than the prison in winter."

Panna made no reply, and the conversation stopped; but her father's
last words had not failed to make a deep impression upon her
imagination. She clung to the pictures he had conjured before her
mind; she found pleasure in them, painted them in still more vivid
hues, experienced a degree of consolation in the