"I will wait while you run to Gyertyamos and hire a carriage for me. You shall have a thousand florins, the driver the same, and for every hour before sunrise that you accomplish your errand you shall receive an extra hundred."
"You won't see the sun rise," muttered the fiddler to himself as he obeyed the other's directions.
The burden proved not too heavy for the little man's back; he could have carried him all the way to Gyertyamos, but the horse must obey his rider, so into the church he went with him.
"There, Manasseh," he cried, in triumph, "there's our man!" And he dropped his burden on the stone floor.
Diurbanu cried out with pain as he fell, then raised himself on one elbow and met Manasseh's gaze.
"Kill me and be done with it," he muttered, in sullen despair.
But Manasseh remained standing with folded arms before him. "No, Benjamin Vajdar," said he, "you shall not die by my hand. He who kills Cain is seven times cursed. My promise to an angel whom you would have destroyed is your safeguard. I shall neither kill you myself nor let any one else lay hands on you. You are to live many days yet and continue in the way you have begun, obeying the sinful impulses of your wicked nature, and doing evil to those that have done nothing but good to you. You weigh upon our house like a curse, but it is God's will thus to prove and try our hearts. Fulfil your destiny, plot your wicked scheme's against us, and then at last, broken, humbled, scorned of all the world beside, come back to us and sue for pity at the door of those to whom you have shown no pity. God's will be done!"
Manasseh allowed himself to use no reproach, no word of withering scorn, in thus addressing his enemy. He even spoke in German, to spare the fallen man's shame in the gipsy's presence. He had the horse in readiness for its master, and bade the fiddler help him lift the injured rider into the saddle and tie him there with ropes to ensure him against a second fall, especially as one foot was now unfit for the stirrup.
"Aha!" cried the little gipsy, "a good idea! We'll take him alive and show him off in Toroczko."
The fires in the village made the spirited horse restive and hard to manage. Manasseh took him by the bridle and led him out of the church, the gipsy following at the animal's heels.