rust into a dark, stifling cell, where handcuffs were put
on. During this proceeding, she made many sneering speeches:

"Give me a handsomely furnished room, too, like the one the nobleman
had! And who will wait on me here?"

"Silence, witch!" cried the heiduck who was chaining her. "The
executioner will wait on you when he makes you a head shorter."

"The executioner? Fool, what nonsense you are talking! No executioner
will touch me. At the utmost I shall get three months imprisonment.
If six months is the sentence given for the murder of an innocent man,
surely one can't get more than three for killing a murderer."

At last Panna was left alone and the iron doors of her cell closed with
an echoing sound. The crime naturally created the utmost excitement in
the county jail; officials and employees talked of nothing else, and
after learning from Janos who the criminal was, the opinion was
generally expressed that she must be crazy. Before the examining
magistrate, who was informed of the bloody deed in the course of the
forenoon, gave Panna an examination, he sent a physician to see her and
give an opinion of her mental condition.

The doctor found the young widow lying on the bench, deadly pale and
utterly exhausted. She had spent all the power of her soul in the
horrible resolve and its execution, and was now as gentle and tearful
as a frightened child. She entreated the physician to have the irons
taken off; she could not bear them, she would be perfectly quiet; and
when he promised this she also besought him to write to her father,
whose address she gave, in her place. She begged the latter's
forgiveness for what she had done; she could not help it, there must be
justice for gentlemen as well as for peasants. If there was no justice
the world could not exist, everything would be topsy-turvy, and people
would kill one another in the public streets just as the wild beasts
did in the woods. She, too, would atone for the sin she had committed
that day, and that would be perfectly just. She also sent a message to
the gardener, thanking him for all the kindness and love which he had
shown her, and hoping that he might have a happier life than Fate had
allotted to her.

The physician talked with her some time longer, and received quiet,
rational, somewhat timid replies. At last he went away shaking his
head, evidently not knowing what to think of this singular woman, but
he succeeded in having the hand