Ferko Lacza listened quietly to all this.
"Stuff and nonsense. Bosh!" exclaimed the ginger-bread baker, capping her version. "I'm afraid you've not heard right, dear Mistress Csikmak. They caught the girl directly, put her in irons, and brought her in between gendarmes. My lad was there when they took her to the Town-House."
Still the cowherd listened without stirring.
Suddenly, amid great commotion, arrived the above-mentioned laggard—young Mistress Pundor, she foremost, then the driver, lastly the brother-in-law, dragging a large chest. How polite a language is Hungarian, even an individual like the soap-making lady has her title of respect, "ifjasszony" (young mistress).
"Now Mistress Pundor will tell us what happened to the girl at the inn who poisoned the csikós," cried everyone.
"Yes, of course. Dear soul. Just let me get my breath a bit." With that she sat down on the large chest, a chair or bench would have smashed to atoms under her form.
"Did they catch pretty Klári? or has she run away?"
"Oh, my dears, why they have tried her already, condemned to death she is, to-morrow they put her in the convict's cell, and the execution is the day after. The headsman comes to-day from Szeged, and they have taken a room for him at the White Horse, because the folks at the Bull refused him. 'Tis as true as I'm sitting here. I have it from the porter himself, who comes to me for candles."
"And what sort of death is she to have?"
"Well, under the old rule—and richly she deserves it—they would set her on straw and burn her. But seeing she is of the better class, and her father of good family, they will only cut off her head. They generally behead gentlefolk."