Pirka replied that she had bestraddled a broomstick, flown out of the window, and left this wench behind in her stead.
Annie believed Pirka, and bawled to Michal to take herself off and feed the swine.
So little did she recognize Michal.
Then Pirka took her bundle on her back and went off with Michal and Valentine to show them the way to Bártfa, while Simplex stayed behind with the kopanitschar's wife, so that in case the headsman's assistants should stop there for a drink on their way back from Eperies, he might give them an earful of lies. And that is really what he did do. Simplex actually saw and spoke to Henry himself, and made him believe that he, Simplex, had stood close to the burning house, and seen and heard the two women shrieking for help behind a window; but no one could get at them, and the whole tower in which they were had been burnt to the ground. Henry Catsrider, therefore, might be quite sure that he had become an orphan and a widower on the same day.
At Bártfa, meanwhile, Pirka got Michal a place in a respectable shopkeeper's family, where they willingly took her in because she was so very plain. It was a sort of guarantee that no one would attempt to court her, and thereby deprive them of a useful servant.
Yet even this maid only kept her place for three days, for on the evening of the fourth day, they caught her talking in a gateway with a farm laborer from over the way, who had only come to Bártfa a few days before. The guilty pair were immediately seized; for the people of Bártfa, who took good care never to fall into their own mouse traps, were immensely delighted whenever they could catch strangers in them. So both man and maid were committed to jail, and taken next day before the clergyman, when they were married in due form and then discharged. In the marriage certificate handed to them on their departure, Valentine Kalondai's name stood there right enough, but Michal was therein described as Milly Barbara.
Neither of them reflected, at the time, that this was a false certificate; all that they then thought about was that they at last belonged to each other.
Barbara Pirka had kept very quiet till after the wedding was over, and then Valentine gave her all the money he had about him (some hundred and fifty ducats or so), only keeping enough to buy victuals for his wife and himself on their way home. Then he said to Pirka:
"Now we are going to Transylvania, but you had better go to Poland, for here you might be called to account for the valuables in your possession."
Pirka laughed.