"Where should he be? He's in his workshop of course. But your beard has grown since last I saw you."
"Since Mother Pirka regaled me with cheese soup, eh? Don't you recollect? I then promised to marry you as soon as I had grown up. Come now, shall we have a marriage feast?"
"If you give her too much of your jaw she'll ride you, the hag," said the wagoner, tugging one of his horses by the mane; "she'll put a bridle in your mouth at night, and ride you to the very top of the Krivan!"[2]
[2] One of the highest peaks of the Karpathians.
"You shall have all you want," said Barbara to Simplex. "Let the others eat first, and then come into the kitchen. You shall have a good supper."
"I'll take good care not to eat any of it," said the wagoner. "She'll be sure to give me something to drink which will turn me into a swine."
"You'll then at least have a finer burial than if you had remained a man," jeered Simplex.
Nothing could induce the wagoner to stir a step from beside his horses, and he was quite content to sup upon the buckwheat balls which he had brought with him in his knapsack. Simplex, on turning in himself about midnight, derisively assured his snoring companion that he neighed as if he were turned into a horse already.
Meanwhile the woman led the priest and his wife into the palisaded mansion.
It was a massive structure, consisting of numerous rooms united together by long narrow passages with heavy iron-clouted doors. She stopped at last in a hexagonal vaulted chamber, from the central arch of which hung a huge lamp. But a far brighter light came from the hearth, whereon enormous logs were sparkling and crackling.