"A heyduke!" cried Ráby in amazement, "why who could have placed him there?"
"That was just what I asked him, and he told me the municipality had done so."
"But what does the municipality mean by planting a heyduke before my door? And why did not Böske tell me?"
"Because the good soul had only one idea in her head—as sweet simplicity ordinarily has. She wormed out of the fellow why he stood there, and he told her he was ordered to look after a maniac inside, whom, if he tried to go out, he was to seize and bind. Had Böske told you a man was waiting for you then, nervous and feeble as you were, you would have sprung out of bed and had a hand-to-hand fight with him, and he would have bound you, weak invalid as you were, and carried you away to the mad-house, whence you were not likely to get out again. So Böske was silent."
"And I was so angry with her. But now we are good friends again, aren't we?"
"To be sure we are. But what shall we do with the others?"
"With my enemies?"
"No, with your friends! You can always be even with your foes, but your friends are another matter. The heads of the magistracy have not been idle during the ten weeks you were ill. To-day you appear with the imperial orders to elect a new municipality in Szent-Endre. Yet you will see that the folks here will choose exactly the same lot again."
"That surely is impossible!"
"Unluckily, it's not at all so. The mob whom you befriended, have been clearly bought over by the magistracy, who have not spared their wine for the last three weeks to convince the townsfolk that the present municipality are the best set of men going. They have befooled the peasants into believing they won't have to pay tithes next year, and blackened you in their eyes, so that the whole town is enraged against you. They say you have come to 'rectify' the taxes, and instead of the six thousand gulden it has paid up till now, Szent-Endre will have to yield thirty thousand, and that is why you trouble about their money matters."