"And wherefore?"
"For what was owing for tithes."
"And is old Sajtós still there, who used to be so good to us boys when we came home from school?"
"Yes, indeed, you may see her any Sunday at the church door begging."
"Sajtós begging? Why she was quite a well-to-do woman. What has happened to her?"
"Oh, the old story, 'bad times.' There are many more who have come to beggary in the same way. Just go any Sunday morning past the door of the Catholic church, where the beggars congregate, and you will see plenty of your old acquaintances," said Marczi sorrowfully.
"But what has brought them to it?"
And Marczi told him many a sad record of oppression and misery that wrung Ráby's heart as he listened.
But now they had arrived at the lower town, where the ruins of the forty houses burned out in the great fire still stood. The streets hereabouts were nearly a morass and all but impassable.
The men who were commencing to put the roofs on, greeted Ráby timidly, as if half afraid, and they quickly drove indoors the women who stood furtively about in the surrounding courts. Ráby's questions they only answered with the greatest caution, fencing with his enquiries as to why the work of restoration had been so long delayed. Marczi drew him away.