een stone in it (how was he to know it was called an emerald?), has
been lost, somewhere between the brickfield and the church. Whoever will
bring the same to the Town Hall will be handsomely rewarded."

Gyuri paused a moment at the sound of the drum, listened to the crier's
words, and then smiled at the look of excitement on the peasant girls'
faces.

"I wouldn't give it back if I found it," said one.

"I'd have a hairpin made of it," said another.

"Heaven grant me luck!" said a third, turning her eyes piously
heavenward.

"Don't look at the sky, you stupid," said another; "if you want to find
it look at the ground."

But as chance would have it, some one found it who would rather not have
done so, and that some one was Gyuri Wibra. He had only walked a few
steps, when a green eye seemed to smile up at him from the dust under
his feet. He stooped and picked it up; it was the lost earring with the
emerald in it. How tiresome, when he was in such a hurry! Why could not
one of those hundreds of people at the fair have found it? But the green
eye looked so reproachfully at him, that he felt he could not give way
to his first impulse and throw it back into the dust, to be trampled on
by the cattle from the fair. Who wore such fine jewelry here? Well,
whoever it belonged to, he must take it to the Town Hall; it was only a
few steps from there after all.

He turned in at the entrance to the Town Hall, where some watering-cans
hung from the walls, and a few old rusty implements of torture were
exhibited (_sic transit gloria mundi!_), went up the staircase, and
entered a room where the Senators were all assembled round a green
baize-covered table, discussing a serious and difficult question.

A most unpleasant thing had happened. One of the watchmen in the
Liskovina wood (the property of the town) had arrived there breathlessly
not long before, with the news that a well-dressed man had been found
hanging on a tree in the wood; what was to be done with the body?

This was what was troubling the worthy Senators, and causing them to
frown and pucker their foreheads. Senator Konopka declared that the
correct thing to do was to bring the body to the mortuary chapel, and at
the same time give notice of the fact to the magistrate, Mr. Mihaly
Gery, so that he could tell the district doctor to dissect the body.

Galba shook his head. He was nothing if not a diplomat, as he showed in
the present instance. He said he considere