with the harvesters, who cut and threshed on shares, and who
had claimed more grain for their portion than seemed just to the owner
of the estate. It did not improve his mood to find that his favourite
saddle-horse had its right hind fetlock badly swollen and could not be
used for a week. So he entered the coach-house, half of which,
separated by a board-partition, served for a hay-loft.

The first thing on which his eye fell here was a man lying stretched
comfortably on the straw, snoring. He recognized in the sluggard
"hideous Pista," who had been summoned to the castle that morning to
put new spokes into some broken carriage-wheels. The work he had
commenced, a chaos of naves, spokes, fellies, tires, and a variety of
tools, lay in a heap beside him, but he was sleeping the sleep of the
just.

It needed nothing more to fan Abonyi's secret rage into a blaze of
fury, and he shouted fiercely:

"Devil take you, you idler, will you get off of my hay?"

Pista, evidently not fully roused by the call, merely grunted a little
in his dream and turned over to continue his nap. But the other could
now control himself no longer, and dealt the recumbent figure a violent
kick, roaring:

"Up, I say, up, you gallows-bird, you're paid for working, not for
snoring!"

Pista, with a sudden spring, stood on his feet, and was instantly wide
awake. Looking angrily at the brutal intruder with his one eye, he
said in a voice quivering with suppressed anger: "I'm not working for
you by the day, but by the job, and if I sleep, I do it at my own loss,
not yours. Besides, I don't remember that I ever drank the pledge of
brotherhood with you."

Abonyi threw up his head, his face growing crimson as if he had
received a blow on the cheek.

"What," he shrieked, "does the rascal dare to insult me under my own
roof? I'll teach you at once who I am, and who you are." And he
raised the riding-whip which he usually carried, to deal Pista a blow.

The latter's kindly, free peasant blood began to boil. Taking a step
backward, he grasped a pitchfork lying within reach of his hand, and
hissed through the gaps in his teeth, as he brandished the weapon of
defence:

"Woe betide you if you touch me! I'll run the fork into you, as true
as God lives!"

Abonyi uttered a fierce imprecation and hastily retreated three paces
to the door, where he called back to the cartwright, who still
maintained his threatening attitude: "This will cost you d