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Paralyzed with terror Makkabesku continued to hold the discharged gun in front of him as if he expected it to go off again of its own accord; but Fatia Negra, catching hold of the end of the gun with one hand, wrenched it out of the innkeeper's grasp and brought down the butt of it so violently on the top of his head that he collapsed in a senseless condition.
In these mining regions there are no Jews, all the inns and csárdás are in the hands of the Armenians and Wallachs: the people are content with them and the Hungarian gentry like them. Young Makkabesku had built up his den in a most picturesque situation beside a stream gushing down from among the mountains and forming a waterfall close to the very house.
After that nobody knew what happened. When Hátszegi and his servants arrived with the patched-up carriage, Makkabesku was still lying on the ground unconscious, his wife was thundering at the locked door, the door of the guest chamber was smashed and the cupboard in the wall had been broken into and pillaged.
Makkabesku certainly felt a great stream of courage flow into his heart at the knowledge that he held in his hand a weapon which could kill the most terrible of men twice over. "But what about your lordship?" he enquired. "Oh, I've got two revolvers in my pocket."
The countess shrugged her round shoulders slightly and went on playing. "That is not possible," resumed the baron, answering his own query, "for I myself saw the blow which Makkabesku received on the head from the butt of the musket, and I can tell your ladyship that there are no four thousand ducats in the world for the sake of which I could lend my head to such a blow."
Makkabesku permitted all this to go on before his very eyes, but he had raised the gun and held it firmly pressed against his cheek, he wanted the robber to draw nearer still that he might make quite sure of him. When there were only three yards between them he aimed right at the middle of the intruder, pressed the trigger of the gun and the right barrel also exploded.
"Look ye, my daughter, have supper ready by my return, and take care not to over-salt the soup!" and then with the nonchalance becoming his station he sauntered across the bridge again into the highroad, followed all the way by the eyes of Makkabesku. "What a gallant fellow it is!" reflected the Roumanian. The innkeeper did not count courage among his virtues.
His lordship is always in such capital spirits. Even when his carriage comes to grief he will have his joke all the same." The point of the joke was that Makkabesku was a man not much beyond forty though there were flecks of grey on the back of his head here and there. The girl, on the other hand, was scarcely sixteen when the Roumanian gentleman took her to wife.
Makkabesku was a very long time coming to, but he contrived at last, in a very tremulous voice, to tell Hátszegi the somnambulistic case of the double shots, nay he called Heaven to witness that Fatia Negra had caught the bullets in his hands as if they were flies. "You're a fool," cried Hátszegi angrily. "I suppose you fired above his head on both occasions."
"And then I fancy that there's still quite enough of me left to defend a woman against anybody, even though it were the devil himself. And I should advise that worthy Fatia Negra not to show his mug to me, for my stunted hand does not fire guns as our friend Makkabesku is in the habit of doing, nor will my bullets be caught like flies, I warrant."
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