The mounted cavalier pranced up to the coach, the noble charger tossing his proud head to and fro, so that the harness-fringe flew round him.
"Now we've got something to laugh at and no mistake," growled the coachman. Yet he laughed too in spite of himself.
The highwayman himself began to laugh as he accosted the president.
"So you've recognised me, have you, for the celebrated Gyöngyöm Miska?"
"How pray did you become Gyöngyöm Miska?"
"Don't you remember me by that name? You yourself gave it me. Have you forgotten how when, years ago, in the County Assembly, I had begun a speech, you called out to me in the middle of it, 'Ay, Gyöngyöm (my jewel), hold your peace; you understand no more of these things than half a dozen oxen put together,' so that I could not get any 'forrader,' for people laughing at me. Since those days the name has stuck to me. Everywhere I go I am received with the greeting, 'Here's Gyöngyöm Miska, worse luck!' So then, I say to myself, 'I'll be a Gyöngyöm Miska,' and show them such things as no one else can. And people talk about me, don't they?"
"But you won't rob me, will you?" implored his victim. "Do you want my horses?"
"Make your mind easy. I rob nobody. I only take what is given me, and carry off what the possessor does not value, and as for such wretched nags as you drive, I tell you plainly I wouldn't have them at a gift. I am pretty hard to please in horseflesh, I can tell you. So don't let's waste time in talking. I ask for nothing that people have not got. I know too that you are in a hurry. So just give me ten gold pieces, and then you can drive on."
The president did not wish to understand the hint, as he said sulkily, "What do you mean?"
"Only those ten Kremnitz ducats that you drew as salary for your work on the Bench."