"And you really intend to read out the proclamation, to seize the General, take away the guns, and capture the barrack?"
"Yes, and much more besides, when the business has been fairly begun."
Shaggy Hanák began to scratch his head still harder, and seemed to have a thousand and one things to put to rights in the horse's trappings. At last he came out with the following proposition:
"Listen, comrade! Don't you think it would be better if, when you went into the town, I remained outside and read the proclamation to all the people coming to market?"
"You can read then?"
"Read! A pretty sort of sexton I should be if I couldn't read!"
"Very well. I rather like your idea;" whereupon Maria drew from her side-pocket a couple of cigars wrapped up in part of an odd number of the Leutschau county newspaper, and gave the sheet to her valiant comrade, who glanced over it with the air of a connoisseur, and, after declaring aloud that he quite grasped its meaning, folded it neatly up, and stuck it in the braiding of his cap.
"I'll read it in my best style," said he, "and will come to your assistance at the head of a fresh band of them."
Maria approved of his design, and, whipping up her horse, galloped towards the town at such a rate that shaggy Hanák felt constrained to pray Heaven that his comrade might not break his neck before he got there.