he eve of the feast of Sts.
Peter and Paul, she had seen the skies open, and Heaven was before her;
she had heard the angels sing, as they passed in procession before God,
sitting on a throne of precious stones. And among them she had seen her
grandson, Janos Plachta, in a pretty red waistcoat which she herself had
made him shortly before his death. And she had seen many of the
inhabitants of Glogova who had died within the last few years, and they
were all dressed in the clothes they had been buried in.

You can imagine that after that, when the news of her vision was spread
abroad, she was looked upon as a very holy person indeed. All the
villagers came to ask if she had seen their dead relations in the
procession; this one's daughter, that one's father, and the other one's
"poor husband!" They quite understood that such a miracle was more
likely to happen to her than to any one else, for a miracle had been
worked on her poor dead father Andras, even though he had been looked
upon in life as something of a thief. For when the high road had had to
be made broader eight years before, they were obliged to take a bit of
the cemetery in order to do it, and when they had opened Andras's grave,
so as to bury him again, they saw with astonishment that he had a long
beard, though five witnesses swore to the fact that at the time of his
death he was clean-shaven.

So they were all quite sure that old Andras was in Heaven, and having
been an old cheat all his life he would, of course, manage even up above
to leave the door open a bit now and then, so that his dear Agnes could
have a peep at what was going on.

But Pal Kvapka, the bell-ringer, had another tale to tell. He said that
when he had gone up the belfry to ring the clouds away, and had turned
round for a minute, he saw the form of an old Jew crossing the fields
beyond the village, and he had in his hands that immense red thing like
a plate, which his reverence had found spread over the basket. Kvapka
had thought nothing of it at the time, for he was sleepy, and the wind
blew the dust in his eyes, but he could take an oath that what he had
told them had really taken place. (And Pal Kvapka was a man who always
spoke the truth.) Others had also seen the Jew. He was old, tall,
gray-haired, his back was bent, and he had a crook in his hand, and when
the wind carried his hat away, they saw that he had a large bald place
at the back of his head.

"He was just like the pictu