At this the doctor was ready to thrash him on the spot.
"What! mix what is all full of dust with what is still pure—go to the devil!"
"I humbly crave your pardon, doctor, but wouldn't it do for the cattle?" asked the mischief-maker with an obsequious smile.
"Cattle indeed! Does the fellow suppose I carry about drugs for pigs and oxen."
"I mean there's so much of it."
"None too much for such cattle as you, but now what has been spilt must be swept away."
And the doctor snatched the damaged box from the fellow's hands, and hastened into the house with it.
The Leather-bell remained kneeling on the ground, staring amazedly with foolish, wide-open eyes at the spilt powder. Then he moistened the tip of his index-finger in his mouth, and dipping it gingerly in the powder, transferred a tiny morsel thereof to the tip of his tongue, and instantly fell expectorating in every direction. At last he frantically scraped a good bit of it together, drew his handkerchief from his breast-pocket, shovelled a portion of the suspicious substance into it, looking round cautiously all the time in case anyone should see him, then shuffled out of the hall, departed from the courtyard by way of the garden, and, once free of the house, set off running rapidly towards the inn on the outskirts of the village, as if the most fleet-footed of horrors were behind him, his head, as usual, being a good yard or so in advance of his feet.
When he entered the tavern it never once struck him how very calm and peaceful it happened to be there at that particular moment. Mr. Martin Csicseri, the village justice, was sitting at the head of the table, and before him on the table lay his long hazel stick.
"I wish you a very good evening, my dear Mr. Justice and good Mr. Comrade, if I may make so free. 'Tis a good job you are here. And where may Hamza and Spletyko be?"