The writhing figure tore off his clothes, which burned his limbs like a shirt of Nessus, and while so doing the hidden silver coins he had received from Sárvölgyi fell to the ground.
"Devil take you, money and all!" he shouted, dashing the coins against the door. "Here's your cursed money! Pick it up!"
Then he staggered on, leaning against the railing and howling in pain:
"Help! Help! A fortune for a glass of water! Only let me live until I can drag that fellow with me! Help, man, help!"
A deathly numbness possessed Sárvölgyi. If that figure of horror were no "spirit," he must hasten to make him so. He would betray all. That was the greatest danger. He must not live.
He could not see him from the window. Perhaps if he opened the shutters, he could fire at him. He was a highwayman: who could call Sárvölgyi to account for shooting him? He had done it in self-defence.
If only his hands would not tremble so! It was impossible to hit him with a pistol except by placing the barrel to his forehead.
Should he go out to him?
Who would dare to go out to meet that demon face to face? Could the spider leave its web?
While he hesitated, while he struggled to measure the distance from door to window and back, a new sound was heard in the street:—three horsemen came trotting up from the end of the village, and in them Sárvölgyi recognized, from their uniforms, the country police.