"No harm shall come to the child, so help me, God!"
Then Hétfalusy calmly surrendered his pistols to the Leather-bell, who politely kissed his hand for so doing, and straightway fired the pistols off in the air, so that they might do no harm to anyone.
The same instant the blaspheming mob fell upon the defenceless squire, tore at his grey locks and impotent limbs, and hurled him to the ground.
"Smash him, kill him, the poison-mixer!" resounded from every side, and the bloodthirsty cowards rushed furiously from their hiding-places with cudgels and flails, to the spot where the defenceless old squire was lying.
The worthy Leather-bell had not another word to say, but he cast himself at full length upon the prostrate gentleman, and, tightly embracing his frail figure, defended him with his own body from the first onset of the raging mob.
In vain they pummelled, in vain they kicked him, his self-sacrificing back endured everything, and patiently received the beating intended for his master.
The poor fellow, after all, would really have been a very good man if only he had not been so very simple.
"Clear out, will you!" cried Dame Zudár and Thomas Bodza simultaneously, "we must not kill him. We want to get something out of him, so he must live. Let no one hurt him, then, till he has received his sentence."
At last the two ringleaders succeeded in clearing away the furious mob from the mauled and trampled body of the squire. Then they raised him from the ground, tied his hands together, and fastened him tightly by one lean arm to the trellised gate of the castle. Blood oozed from the old man's limbs beneath the pressure of the rough cord, yet, with not so much as a groan did Benjamin Hétfalusy betray the torture he was suffering.