"Of course."
"That's all we want. To-night, when they are all asleep, we go to the granary, walk through the door to the steward's loft, and from thence to the chaff-loft. That loft is, as it were, glued to the house; the wood-work consists of thin planks. Peti, the gipsy, knows it to a nicety. We remove a couple of planks, put a ladder through the hole, and Viola gets up by it, and out by the door of the granary. Once in the open air, he's saved. Peti is gone after your worship's Gulyash, who is to send his horse. I tell you, sir, they may whistle for him when Viola has once got a horse between his legs!"
Kalman clapped his hands with joy, and Völgyeshy himself commended the arrangement and its details; but he remarked that there were a thousand chances for or against its execution.
"Never mind," said Janosh; "if you put Viola into that loft, and the key of the granary into my hands, I'll be hanged if we don't do them! There's no window to the loft, consequently no one can look in from without; and when they're once asleep, we have it all to ourselves."
"But what will you do with the sentinels? And besides, there's the steward close by you. He's likely to hear the noise, and to alarm the house."
"I'll pocket the sentinels," said the hussar, contemptuously. "The inspector is a-bed with his wounds; if you make the justice and that fellow Kenihazy drunk, to prevent them from going their rounds,—and nothing is more easy than to make them drunk,—and if you do your duty as a landlord to the sentinels, and make them drunk, too, I do not care for the steward's noise. But I don't think he'll make any. When he's once in bed, it's no small matter will get him out of it. The key is the great thing, and Viola must be put into the chaff-loft."
"If that's all," cried Kalman, "you need not care!" and, accompanied by Völgyeshy, he returned to the dining-room, where they found Vandory, the curate of Tissaret, who had informed the court of his request, and who was just in the act of replying with great warmth to the objections of Zatonyi and Baron Shoskuty. The assessor appealed to the ancient custom of keeping culprits under the sentence of a court-martial in the open air; Baron Shoskuty protested that it was wrong to abuse Lady Kishlaki's hospitality for the benefit of so arrant a knave as Viola undoubtedly was; but the curate's request was so energetically supported by Kalman's father and mother, that the interference of the two young men seemed likely to do more harm than good.
"I do not, indeed, see the necessity of placing the prisoner in a room," remarked Mr. Catspaw, very politely. "The provision in the articles is confined to the winter months, and I dare say that Viola ought, by this time, to be accustomed to the night air."
"Never mind his catching a cold in his throat," cried Mr. Skinner; "to-morrow morning we'll give him a choke."
"None of your jokes, sir," said Mr. Catspaw, who remarked the unfavourable impression which the justice's words made on the company. "This is no laughing matter," continued he, with a deep sigh. "As I said, I do not indeed think it necessary, and I protest it is not even legal to give the prisoner houseroom: but if it can relieve our dear hostess's tender mind, I will not oppose Mr. Vandory's request, provided always that the place be safe, that the windows have bars, and the door bolts and locks, and that sentinels are duly placed before it."