"What's the use of such care? These people will not deceive me, they are not relatives of mine. They are entire strangers, who have never received a favor from me. I can trust them."
"At your own risk."
"Now then, gracious Lady, let us shake hands for the last time. I regret that I cannot offer you my right hand. Now we can part in peace; neither one of us owes the other anything more in this world." And he offered Idalia his left hand. "What account we may have to settle with each other in the world below, Beelzebub will tell us, I suppose." With that he pushed her hand aside violently, took his crutch in his left hand, clapped his cap on his bald head, and without a word, limped out of the room and did not look around until he had reached his boat.
Twelve haiduks carried the casks of money to his boat; were they all there or not? Nobody counted. Anything more?
Then Likovay seated himself in the stern of his boat, and said to his boatmen, "Push off."
The boat moved still more slowly than before; but what wonder, when it was heavier by the hundredweight of silver and gold?
CHAPTER XV.
THE GRAVE OF GOLD.
Grazian Likovay's gouty leg really was a good weather-prophet; they had hardly reached the middle of the Waag when the ice crowded around them, and the boat was held firm amid the blocks. One of the crew, at the peril of his life, had to cross the ice cakes to the shore, arouse the people of the castle, and return to the boat with a long rope. By clinging to this rope, Grazian and the crew, with the casks of gold, were brought to shore. Here the lord of the castle was met by Master Mathias with a troica on runners. The casks were put in, and Lord Grazian seated himself on the driver's seat, with Master Mathias beside him to guide the three horses.