"Then you think the letter is about Magdalene?"
"I am sure there is no other woman in the household. But if all these beautiful women, young and old, hanging in these frames, were living, Tihamer would still give his heart to Magdalene alone. For if a handsome woman were all he asked, he would have had it right there in Madocsany, and he need not have made any pilgrimages for her."
"But just look out of the window. Do you see how the ice is crashing out of the river? When the fool came over, the ice had just begun to move; but now heavy blocks of it are rolling along. See, the huts along the bank have been swept away, and the ice has cut off thick tree trunks like a razor. Do you think a human being could cross the river to-night?"
"Gracious Lord, I have read in the Bible that Peter trod the water with bare feet, and that was a sea. Whatever is in the Bible, as a good Lutheran, I must believe."
"But that was in old times, and it was Saint Peter; he could do anything. To-day is To-day."
"All I know, gracious Lord, is that a priest can do a good deal, a lover can do more, and when you get both in one, he can do everything."
"We must talk it over with Berezowski." The old suitor, since his return from the wedding feast at Bittse, had been staying at Mitosin Castle. It was understood that he should wed the beautiful Magdalene, and take her to his house in Galicia. The license was all ready. The only reason that the marriage had not yet taken place was that father-in-law and son-in-law kept the bottle going from hand to hand until morning, and then the lover had to be dragged off to bed by his hands and feet, and neither a fire alarm nor a murderer's stroke could have roused him from his bed. Afternoons, this bigot Lord would not enter into any churchly ceremony, and so the wedding was put off from day to day; and the wedding feast was secretly consumed by the guests in advance.
To-day too they shook and pulled the bridegroom elect; they roared in his ear; but to all their attempts, his only reply was a movement of the hand to brush away a fly, or of the foot, as aimed at a dog; and then he slept on steadily.
"Wait," said Lord Grazian, "I have an idea. I will question the girl." And he went in search of his daughter. He found Magdalene at an open window.
"Well, my child, you must have hot blood to open the window in such ice-cold weather as this."