And then, his heavy fist still reposing on the bundle of documents, he requested the conrector to fold together a sheet of paper and, "fracto margine," to write, in the name of the town council, a letter of citation to the headsman of Zeb, Henry Catsrider, bidding him, as in duty bound, to appear within eight days at the city of Kassa, in order to execute the law's sentences which had been passed that day, copies of which were sent him. He was then to present his account to the civic auditor, who was authorized to discharge it. This citation Valentine also subscribed.
He had still a faint glimmer of hope.
When Henry Catsrider receives this citation and learns that he, the headsman of Zeb, must come face to face with Valentine Kalondai whom he had formerly robbed of his beloved, he was then a genius, a luminary, a cleric and a scholar, face to face with him who had once been an expelled convict, but now was sheriff; when he reflects that he who was now a branded monster, an outcast from every city, is to appear before his former rival, who was now the first magistrate of one of the most important cities of the land; and when, besides all that, Henry Catsrider discovers that one of the condemned, on whom a masterpiece of his hellish art was to be performed, was his father's former housekeeper, who had once actually been his own nurse and suckled him, why, then, he would surely have human feeling enough to remain at home, and, as he was often wont to do, send his oldest apprentice to execute the sentence in his stead.
Valentine actually believed that there was still some human feeling left in Henry Catsrider!
When all this had been done he arose from his seat of honor.
The whole town council bowed before him. The conrector, Ignatius Zwirina the younger, expressed the satisfaction felt by all the burgesses at having a sheriff whose wise and firm administration would serve as an example to all his successors.
And now Valentine hastened home.
He asked no questions. He let no one speak. He stifled the words on the lips of his mother and his wife with kisses. Then he took his pretty Michal on his knee, and whispered in her ear in the tones of a lover to his lady:
"Come what may or must! Be it weal or woe, our comfort is that we shall share it together!"
And pretty Michal was content that it should be so.