CHAPTER IV.
THE EARRING.
From the inn opposite Schramek's house lively sounds proceeded. I beg pardon, I ought to call it "hotel," at least, that is the name the inhabitants of Bábaszék delighted in giving it, and the more aristocratic of them always patronized it in preference to the other inns. The gypsies from Pelsöc were there, and the sound of their lively music could be heard far and wide through the open windows. Handsome Slovak brides in their picturesque dresses, with their pretty white headgear, and younger girls with red ribbons plaited into their hair, all run in to join the dance, and if the room is too full, late-comers take up their position in the street and dance there.
But curiosity is even stronger than their love of dancing, and all at once the general hopping and skipping ceases, as János Fiala, the town-servant and crier, appears on the scene, his drum hung round his neck and his pipe in his mouth. He stops in front of the "hotel," and begins to beat his drum with might and main. What can have happened? Perhaps the mayor's geese have strayed? Ten or twelve bystanders begin to ply him with questions, but Fiala would not for the world take his beloved pipe out of his mouth, nor would he divulge state secrets before the right moment came. So he first of all beat his drum the required number of times, and then with stentorian voice, shouted the following:
"Be it known to all whom it may interest, that a gold earring, with a green stone in it (how was he to know it was called an emerald?), has been lost, somewhere between the brickfield and the church. Whoever will bring the same to the Town Hall will be handsomely rewarded."
Gyuri paused a moment at the sound of the drum, listened to the crier's words, and then smiled at the look of excitement on the peasant girls' faces.
"I wouldn't give it back if I found it," said one.
"I'd have a hairpin made of it," said another.
"Heaven grant me luck!" said a third, turning her eyes piously heavenward.
"Don't look at the sky, you stupid," said another; "if you want to find it look at the ground."
But as chance would have it, some one found it who would rather not have done so, and that some one was Gyuri Wibra. He had only walked a few steps, when a green eye seemed to smile up at him from the dust under his feet. He stooped and picked it up; it was the lost earring with the emerald in it. How tiresome, when he was in such a hurry! Why could not one of those hundreds of people at the fair have found it? But the green eye looked so reproachfully at him, that he felt he could not give way to his first impulse and throw it back into the dust, to be trampled on by the cattle from the fair. Who wore such fine jewelry here? Well, whoever it belonged to, he must take it to the Town Hall; it was only a few steps from there after all.