At this Michal could not restrain her tears.
"Come, come, my pretty darling, don't weep! Shall I tell you a pretty tale? What shall it be about?"
Michal ceased to sob. She begged Pirka to tell her the story of the lady whose dress she had worn that day.
"Alas, alas, my darling! that is a very sad story; you'll not be able to sleep if you hear that."
But she told her about it all the same.
"There was once a wondrously beautiful lady, the only daughter of a noble house. They married her to a Polish lord whom she did not love. She loved another, a beautiful, brown Hungarian lad, and what is more she took care never to be very far away from him. One day the Polish nobleman observed that his wife had on a beautiful dress of cornflower-blue silk. He asked her: 'Where did you get that beautiful silk dress from?' She replied: 'My mother sent it to me from Szeszko as a birthday gift.' The husband did not shirk the trouble of riding all the way to Szeszko and asking his mother-in-law whether she had sent her daughter the beautiful blue dress. Back he came to his wife. 'Wife, your mother has told me that she sent you that blue dress. You have lied and your mother has lied also. Confess now from whom you got that beautiful dress.' Then his wife told him she had bought it at the Lemberg fair with her own money from an Armenian of Ungvar. The husband did not shirk the trouble of riding all the way to Ungvar. There he sought out the Armenian and asked if his wife had purchased from him the cornflower-blue dress. Then he came back and sent for his wife. 'Wife, wife, you have not spoken the truth, and the Armenian has lied as well as you, for he said you did buy the cornflower dress from him.' Then, at last, the woman confessed that she got the cornflower-blue dress from her lover. It was the death of her. She was condemned to be beheaded. She was obliged to mount the scaffold in her beautiful dress, and there take it off and put on sack-cloth. Never had so handsome a face, so majestic a figure and such a soft, swan-like neck been seen there before. It was then I met with the mishap I've already told you of. When my chief assistant seized the sword and saw such a beautiful creature before him, he grew green in the face, his eyes became fixed and glazed, his knees tottered, and at last, as if seized by an epileptic fit, he fell down and tumbled backward off the scaffold. Then I gave the sword to my younger assistant. He, however, sank down on his knees before the kneeling lady, held the handle of his sword in front of him like a crucifix, and began to chant an Ave Maria. The sheriff was filled with dismay, the Polish nobleman, who stood close by, began to curse, called all who dwelt in Hungary cowardly milksops, and spat on the scaffold. Filled with fury thereat, I seized the sword and with a single blow cut off the woman's head. Then I took up the head by its long tresses and dashed it in the nobleman's face. 'You Polack,' I cried, 'take home what is yours!' That was why they drove me away."
A cold shudder ran through Michal's limbs despite all her warm wrappings.
"How long Henry remains away," she whispered softly.
"I'll go out, my pretty lambkin, and listen at the door to hear what he is saying to the old master."
So Pirka went through the dining-room and stopped to listen at the iron door and find out what was going on in the tower; and Michal, meanwhile, sang that evening hymn which had reached the ears of the headsman and his son.