But Ráby bowed his head on his knees, and clasped his fettered hands in prayer for the soul that had so lately taken flight from this valley of tears. But had he known it, Ráby was praying, not for the soul of Mariska, but for that of his wretched wife, for it was she whom they were bearing to the grave.
Fruzsinka had been, all unknown to him, a prisoner like himself, and this was the end. How she had come there we shall learn later, for meantime there are other factors in this strange history to be reckoned with, and Ráby is still languishing in his dungeon.
CHAPTER XLVII.
Ráby no longer dreaded the poisoned food that he expected his gaoler to bring him, but next morning, strange to say, Janosics appeared with empty hands and a malicious leer on his ill-favoured features.
"Do I have no food to-day?" asked the prisoner.
"Yes, indeed, my dear friend, from to-day you live like a prince. No more bread and water for you, but just a jolly good dinner of the best, and as much red wine as you like. And your fetters are to come off, and you are to be moved into better quarters. You know, I daresay, as well as I can tell you, what all this means."
Ráby shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, it means that to-day your death-sentence is to be formally approved in court, and that the scaffold is your destination. Till then, you are to be kept in the condemned cell, and have everything you like as befits a criminal under sentence of death, and enjoy yourself while you may."
It was too true, and no jest. The locksmith came and filed off the prisoner's fetters once more, and then the barber shaved him, but the closeness with which his hair was cut, signified only too clearly it was the "toilet of the condemned."