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And all this must have been done while Szilard had been sitting outside and his men had been sleeping! "Then your sword is sharp, sir, eh?" enquired the blind man, "for I hear the footsteps of Fatia Negra." The sensitive ears of the blind man "scented" so to speak the well known footfalls while they were still approaching on the distant forest paths.
"Why, don't you know that the bill is for 40,000 florins?" "What?" thundered the young vagabond. And kicking aside his chair, he snatched up a knife lying by the side of his plate and, bareheaded as he was, rushed towards the door. Szilard had need of all his dexterity to catch him before he reached it and prevent him from rushing into the street like a madman.
The magical mysteriousness which enveloped his pursuer; the marvellous audacity which ensured the success of all his projects; his gigantic bodily strength all these things were sufficient to make any man's heart beat more quickly at the prospect of encountering Black-Mask in a life and death struggle at a lonely place. But Szilard was resolved to see the business through.
"If only you had become mine," Szilard mentally apostrophized poor Henrietta, "you would now have had a cosey little chimney-corner, and a nice little room all to yourself; and though I could not have bought you jewels, the best of every morsel of food we shared together would always have been yours."
Szilard hustled the rediscovered "prodigal son" off the boards and never let him stop for an instant till he had got him safe and sound into his own private room. There he embraced him again, held him at arms' length and had a good look at him. The lad seemed to be twenty years old at the very least, yet really he was but fifteen. Play acting, want and premature shaving soon make a youth look old.
"What has happened?" cried the confounded Szilard. "There must be a traitor among them, sir, a hireling of Fatia Negra; he has his hirelings everywhere, in forests, in palaces, in dungeons, in barracks, everywhere. And this traitor has mingled thorn-apple juice in the drink of his comrades and they will now sleep on for a night and a day.
"Whoever the baron may be," rejoined Szilard, "I suppose he is at least a gentleman; and if a woman looks him straight in the face on the wedding day and says to him: 'I cannot love you because I love another and always will love another, I cannot think he will be so devoid of feeling as to make her his wife notwithstanding."
"What is the good of that, he will only swim out again." "Yes, but his pistols will then be full of water and he will be unable to use them against you." Szilard began to perceive that he had a most determined ally with all sorts of ideas in his head that had never occurred to himself.
In fact I have invited the magistrate who commands the corps to make Hidvár the centre of his operations and if he is a sensible man he will accept my invitation. The name of my guest I have not yet mentioned," continued Leonard with easy levity, "it is Szilard Vamhidy, a justice of the peace of the county of Arad really a very nice young man." Henrietta became as white as a statue.
The pandurs lay in long rows stretched out upon the straw in the meal magazine. Szilard spoke to them, first gently, then loudly, and at last angrily, calling them by name, one after the other; but not one of them awoke. He tore the sleepers away from their places, but they were not aware of it; as soon as he let them go they rolled back again into their former positions.
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