"Yes, and he ran away!" said Akosh. "They told me all about it. It strikes me second wives don't do in the Rety family. But what connection is there between all this and Vandory's papers?"
"I understand that that poor fellow, your uncle, went to Germany, probably to some university; for he was seventeen when he ran away, and a good scholar, they say. Now I am told that Vandory knew your uncle, and that he still knows of his whereabouts; and, in short, that the papers refer to your lost uncle Rety."
"This is indeed strange!" said Akosh.
"You know how people will talk. Your father's friendship for Vandory, and the curate's power over him, which is even greater than his wife's influence, and a thousand other things, have made people believe that he must have some means of acting upon your father; yes, that he knows of something which it would not be convenient to tell to everybody; and since the attempted robbery, there is not a blockhead in the county but swears that there is something wrong somewhere."
"All I can say is, that this is a strange thing. Here we have two robberies in less than two months, evidently for the purpose of obtaining the papers; but then——"
Here the conversation was interrupted by Janosh, who entered with the surgeon of St. Vilmosh.
"There, sir! there's some ice to put on your arm, and here's the sawbones. Hell put things to right in no time."
The little man who was thus unceremoniously introduced as a "sawbones," cast an angry look at the hussar, walked up to his patient, examined the wound, and expressed his satisfaction with its appearance and condition; while Janosh, who always lost his temper when he saw anybody but himself administering to his master's comforts, gnashed his teeth, grumbling and discontented. He was wrong; for Mr. Sherer, a Magyar of German extraction, who had successively exercised and failed in the various callings of shoemaker and barber, and who had become a surgeon by dint of great boldness, and by the grace of a rich widow, who had lent him money to pay for his diploma, was deserving of any thing but indignation. On the contrary, he was a very amiable man, who, during the sixteen years he had lived at St. Vilmosh, had never given occasion for the slightest complaint to those who, like Janosh, had never been ill.
"A nice wound! very nice! Yes, on my honour, pretty indeed!" said Sherer. "On my word of honour, I never saw a prettier wound in my life."
"I wish you'd been in the wars," murmured Janosh, "you'd have seen something like wounds, I tell you!"