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The inn is the only house in Marosfalva which boldly faces the street, all the others seem to be looking at it over their shoulders, the front of one house facing the back of its neighbour, with a bit of garden or yard between, and so on, the whole kilomètre length of the street.

Erös Béla belonged to this same supercilious set, and had made many enemies by his sarcastic denunciations of things that were almost thought sacred in Marosfalva. It was therefore quite an understood thing that the moment a csárdás was struck up, Erös Béla at once went to seek amusement elsewhere. Of course to-day was a very different occasion to the more usual village entertainments.

And in the tiny graveyard situated among the maize-fields to the north of Marosfalva, and which is the local Jewish burial ground, the suicide was quietly laid to rest. There was no religious service, for there was no minister of his religion present; an undertaker came down from Arad and saw to it all; there was no concourse of people, no singing, no flowers.

They had got over the pang of departure from home half an hour or an hour ago; they had already left the weeping mothers and sweethearts behind, so now they set to with a will in true Hungarian fashion to drown regrets and stifle unmanly tears by singing their favourite songs at the top of their rough voices, and ogling those girls of Marosfalva who happened to be unattached.

And therefore the whole population of Marosfalva and of the villages round spends its last happy four-and-twenty hours in trying to forget that nine o'clock of the fourteenth day of September is approaching with sure and giant strides; everyone has a wish to forget; the parents and grandparents, the sisters, the sweethearts, the lads themselves!

Elsa was happy freed from the brute who would have made her wretched for the rest of her life; and surely the good God, who could read the secret motives which lay in a fellow's heart, would not be hard on Andor for what he had done or left undone for Elsa's sake. "Kyrie eleison." But the daily routine of everyday life went on at Marosfalva just as it had done before the double tragedy of St.

So no one in Marosfalva knew that Andor had died of cholera in the hospital of Slovnitza until Lakatos Pál became sick, and in his loneliness spoke of the matter to Pater Bonifácius. Then there was universal mourning in the village. Andor had always been very popular: good-looking, as merry as a skylark and a splendid dancer, he was always the life and soul of every entertainment.

I think Pali bácsi was quite ready to do something really handsome for him. Now that Andor is dead he has no one; and when he dies his money all goes to the government. It is a pity," he added, with a shrug of the shoulders. "If a peasant of Marosfalva had it it would do good to the commune."

Mind you, it is the same in all the other villages, and in every town in Hungary so at least we have been given to understand but we have nothing to do with other villages or with the towns: they do just as the good God wills them to do. It is our lads the lads of Marosfalva and Kender and Fekete and Görcz who have to be packed off in train-loads to-day and taken away from us for three years.

"She has another two jolly days to look forward to," Irma néni had added complacently. "Perhaps it is as well that she should get some rest to-night." Ah, well! it was a queer wedding, and no mistake! The queerest that had ever been in Marosfalva within memory of man. A bride more prone to tears than to laughter!