For a long time no sound, far or near.
Sárvölgyi looked and listened in restless impatience. He wished to pierce the night with his eyes, he wished to hear voices through this numbing stillness. He put his ear to the opening in the iron shutter.
Some one knocked at the shutter from without.
Startled, he looked out.
The old gypsy woman was there: creeping along beside the wall she had come this far unnoticed.
"Sárvölgyi," said the woman in a loud whisper: "Sárvölgyi, do you hear? They have seized the money: the magistrate has it. Take care!"
Then she disappeared as noiselessly as she had come.
In a moment the sweat on Sárvölgyi's body turned to ice. His teeth chattered from fever.
What the gypsy woman had said was, for him, the terror of death.