heir fiddles. The lads crowded together, shouting jesting
remarks to the group of girls, who answered them promptly and to the
point. One after another the young men left their companions and took
from the laughing bevy of maidens a partner, who, as village custom
required, at first resisted, but finally yielded to the gentle
force--not without some pleasantly exciting struggling and pulling--and
was soon whirling around with her cavalier amid shouting and stamping,
till the dust rose in clouds.

The beautiful Panna, for reasons already known to us, was not the first
person invited to dance. But at last her turn came also, and she could
jump with a neighbour's son, till she was out of breath, to her heart's
content. After spending more than fifteen minutes in vigourous, rapid
motion, she finally sank, in happy exhaustion, upon a pile of bricks
near a coach-house which was being built, and with flaming cheeks and
panting bosom struggled for breath. Pista, the cartwright, profited by
the moment to approach, and with gay cries and gestures invite her to
dance again. Pista was a handsome fellow, but had the unfortunate
propensity of drinking on Sundays, and this time was evidently
intoxicated. The vinous suitor was not to Panna's taste, besides, she
was already tired, and she did not answer his first speech. But as he
did not desist, but seized her arm to drag her up and away by force,
she tartly answered that she would not dance now. This only made him
still more persistent.

"Why, why, you fierce little darling, do you suppose you can't be
mastered?" he cried, trying with both hands to seize her beautiful
black head to press a smack upon her lips. She thrust him back once,
twice, with a more and more violent shove, but he returned to the
attack, becoming ruder and more vehement. Then she lost her
self-control, and the choleric family blood suddenly seethed in her
veins. Bending down to the heap of bricks on which she had just sat,
she grasped a fragment and, with the speed of lightning, dealt her
persecutor a furious blow. Misfortune guided her hand, and she struck
him full in the face. Pista shrieked and staggered to the neighbouring
wall, against which he leaned half-fainting, while between the fingers
of the hands which he had raised to the wounded spot, the red blood
gushed in a horribly abundant stream.

All this had been the work of a moment, and the young people who filled
the courtyard did not not