ord! your lordship will always be having your little
joke.--Flora, come hither!"

A pretty little maid came out of the inn at these words, and smiled upon
the nobleman with a face toasted red by the kitchen fire.

"Take his lordship's gun and little box and carry them into the
guest-room!"

"Well, my little girl! how are you? not married yet, eh?" said the
baron, pinching her round red cheeks whilst the wench took his box.

"Heh, but 'tis heavy!" she gasped, as if she were quite frightened at
the weight of the box. "Won't the gun go off?"

"Don't turn your fiery eyes upon it, or else it might--eh, grandpapa,
what do you say?"

"Come, Flora, go in, go in! His lordship is always in such capital
spirits. Even when his carriage comes to grief he will have his joke all
the same."

The point of the joke was that Makkabesku was a man not much beyond
forty though there were flecks of grey on the back of his head here and
there. The girl, on the other hand, was scarcely sixteen when the
Roumanian gentleman took her to wife. Leonard therefore always made a
point of aggravating the innkeeper by pretending to believe that his
wife was his daughter and by regularly asking him, as if he were her
grandfather, when he intended to get his granddaughter married.

"You need not send help to my carriage, after all," said Hatszegi, after
due reflection; "for, by and by I'll see to that myself. I am going back
that way. But I should like you to place that little box in some safe
place for the time being. It contains 4,000 ducats and that is no
trifle."

"Huh! my lord!" cried the innkeeper clapping the back of his head with
both hands, as if he feared it was already about to fall off backwards.
"Your lordship dares to carry so much gold about with you and stroll so
carelessly about in these parts!"

"Carelessly!--what do you mean? I cannot wheel them in front of me on a
barrow can I? I want to pay them into my account at Fehervar the day
after to-morrow; I have payments to make. That is why I carry them about
with me."

"I only meant to say that it is dangerous to go about alone with so much
money."

"I am not in the habit of going about with an escort."

"The more's the pity, Domnule. These parts are panic-stricken, since
Anicza betrayed the coiners in the Lucsia Cavern, we have been saddled
with a whole heap of calamities. A lot of poor fools and a heap of
treasure were captured, but the head of the band, Fatia Negra, was