And with that the stranger dismounted from the sledge, and, taking his axe in his hand, directed his way through the snowy field to the spot where the pines stood out darkly against the snow-white plain.
What was beneath those pines?
The family vault of the Kárpáthys, and he who came to visit it at that hour was Alexander Boltay.
The young artisan had heard from Teresa on her return home that Fanny was dead. The great lady had been lowered into her tomb for the worms just
as the wife of the poorest artisan might have been, and her tomb was perhaps still more neglected than the tomb of the artisan's wife would have been.
Then Alexander opened his heart to the old people. He meant, he said, to make a pilgrimage to the tomb of the dead dear one whom he worshipped both in life and in death, and to whom, now that she was under the ground, he might confess his love, he had as much right now to her death-cold heart as anybody else in the world. The two old people did not attempt to dissuade him; let him go, they thought; let him take his sorrow there and bury it; perchance he will be lighter of heart when he has wept himself out there.
In the ice-bound season the young man set out, and from the description which Teresa gave him, he recognized the funereal pine-grove which John Kárpáthy had had planted round the family vault, in order that there it might be green when everything else was white and dead.
He quitted the sledge, and cut across the plain, while the driver returned to the wayside csárda.
Meanwhile a pair of horsemen might have been seen slowly approaching from the opposite direction. One of them was a little in the rear of the other, and led four hardy hounds in a long leash.
"I see the trail of a fox, Martin," said the foremost horseman, calling the attention of the one behind to the trail. "We can easily track him through the fresh snow if we look sharp, and can catch him up before we reach Kárpátfalva."