"Nonsense! I'll keep them. If you want another comrade, I'll leave you to find other keys."
"I'll give you forty."
"I'll be d—d if I take less than fifty."
After quarrelling for a time they struck the bargain; and the Jew, putting his hand in his pocket, paid the robber ten florins in advance.
"Now let us be off," said the Jew, "for when the leaders get up they won't let you go."
"You are right," rejoined Tzifra. "They take us to the election as they do cattle to the market."
They had scarcely left the room when the dusky face of Peti was seen to emerge from a heap of coats and cloaks. The gipsy had listened to their conversation. He left his hiding-place, stole from the room, and hastened away to St. Vilmosh.
It is now our pleasant duty to turn to a far different scene from that which we were compelled to place before our readers, any of whom, if they have ever loved, can easily guess the sensation with which Akosh mounted his horse on the eve of the election, and, leaving the streets of Dustbury, hastened to Tissaret. Night had set in, and his absence escaped observation. A dense fog covered the plain between Dustbury and Tissaret, and the horseman found it difficult to keep on the path which led through the meadow-lands. But he did not feel the searching coldness of the night air, nor was he inclined to stop by the watch-fires of the shepherds, and to dry his clothes. He hurried on, for Etelka had promised her brother that he should meet Vilma, to whose house he now directed his course.
Strange though it may appear to the less initiated into the mysteries of the human heart, Tengelyi's influence with his family, though paramount in every other respect, was eclipsed by the superior power of their feelings; Vilma and her mother knew of young Rety's visit, and expected him with great eagerness and anxiety. Mrs. Ershebet's time and attention were indeed taken up with the cares and anxieties which fill the heart of a Hungarian housewife who is expecting and preparing for the reception of a favoured guest; but when the evening wore on, when the turkey[13] was on the point of over-roasting, and the pastry drying up,—and when the good woman looked at the clock and saw its hands approaching to eight, she shook her head, and, looking out at the kitchen-door into the drear and misty night, she was fairly overpowered with fear.