"We cannot possibly get through the case to-day," observed Mr. Kishlaki.
"And why not, domine spectabilis? Why not?" asked the assessor. "Please to consider that the court-martial must sit till the execution is over; and to-morrow I must be at home, for there's the ploughing and the potato harvest."
"Of course!" cried Shoskuty. "We are commissioners of courts-martial, and a court-martial we are bound to make of it. The culprit is in attendance, we are five commissioners; my young friend Völgyeshy has come to assist us. It will take him just ten minutes to write the verdict. God forbid," continued he, with a low bow to the lady of the house, "God forbid that we should trouble your ladyship longer than we can help!"
"No trouble, indeed; no trouble whatever!" cried Lady Kishlaki, with a burst of genuine good-natured hospitality; "but I trust you do not mean to hang the poor fellow?"
"Of course we do!" laughed the assessor. "I've sat in fifteen courts-martial in the course of my life, and we never rose without hanging the culprit. Courts-martial are for that sort of thing, you know."
Lady Kishlaki had been solicited by Viola's wife to interfere in her husband's behalf. The good old lady did all she could for the poor woman. She assigned a room to her and the children, and, moved by Susi's entreaties, she promised to save Viola's life, if a woman's tongue could save it. But the determined tone in which the assessor delivered his last sentence, showed her how little hope there was. She replied, nevertheless, that Viola was perhaps less guilty than people fancied.
"I most humbly beg your ladyship's pardon," replied Baron Shoskuty, with his proverbial politeness; "whether his guilt be greater or lesser, it's all the same to us. The only question to ask is, 'Is the prisoner a robber or not?' We do not care whether he killed a hundred people, or whether he never took human life, whether he stole a million or a fourpenny piece; all we ask is; is he a robber? and how was he taken? If taken in arms, and in the fact of actual resistance, we hang him, so please your ladyship."
"But it does not please my ladyship. You cannot possibly hang the poor fellow for a few pence!"
"Nothing more simple," said the assessor, with great unction, "if the case come within the jurisdiction of a court-martial. I have seen cases in which the man whom we hanged would have been let off with a fortnight's confinement by the ordinary courts; but as he fell into our hands, we tied him up."
"I am a weak and ignorant woman," retorted Lady Kishlaki, with increasing vehemence; "but if I'd been there, I'll warrant you, you would not have done it!"