Tears were rolling down Móricz's pock-marked face, his heart was quite softened at the remembrance of all these incidents.
"After that we looked for a long time for traces of him, but only heard of him again in Lehota. One stormy summer night he knocked at the door of the watchman's house, the last in the village, but when they saw he was a Jew, they drove him away. They told me he had neither a hat nor an umbrella then, only the heavy, rough stick he used to beat us with when we were children."
"Now I begin to understand the drift of your remarks. You want to show that the umbrella was lost between Kobolnyik and Lehota."
"Yes."
"But that proves nothing, for your father may have lost it in the wood, or among the rocks, and if any one found it, they would probably make use of it to put in the arms of a scarecrow."
"No, that is not it, I know what happened. I heard it by chance, for I was not looking for the umbrella; what did I care for that! I wanted to find my father. Well, among the Kvet mountains I met a tinker walking beside his cart, a very chatty man he seemed to be. I asked him, as I did every one we met, if he had not seen an old Jew about there lately. 'Yes,' he answered, 'I saw him a few weeks ago in Glogova during a downpour of rain; he was spreading an umbrella over a child on the veranda of a small house, and when he had done so he moved on.'"
The lawyer sprang up hastily.
"Go on," he cried.
"There is nothing more to tell, sir. But from the description the tinker gave me, I am sure it was my father, and, besides, Glogova lies just between Lehota and Kobolnyik."
"Well, you have given me valuable information," exclaimed the lawyer, and, taking a fifty-florin note out of his pocketbook, he added: "Accept this as a slight return for your kindness. Good-by."