Didn’t they kill the pedlar for the sake of a bag of tobacco, and old Katiza for a couple of hens?”      

       “Why do you rake up things that happened twenty years ago?” cried another over the table. “You’d better tell us rather who killed Red Betty, and pulled Janos, the smith’s farm hand, down into the swamp?”      

       “Yes, or who cut the bridge supports, when the brook was in flood, so that two good cows broke through and drowned?”      

       “Yes, indeed, if we only knew what band of robbers and villains it is that is ravaging our village.”      

       “And they haven’t stopped yet, evidently.”      

       “This is the worst misfortune of all! What will our poor do now that they have murdered our good pastor, who cared for us all like a father?”      

       “He gave all he had to the poor, he kept nothing for himself.”      

       “Yes, indeed, that’s how it was. And now we can’t even give this good man Christian burial.”      

       “Shepherd Janci knew this morning early that we were going to have a new pastor,” whispered the landlord in the notary’s ear. The latter looked up astonished. “Who said so?” he asked.     

       “My boy Ferenz, who went to fetch him about seven o’clock. One of my cows was sick.”      

       Ferenz was sent for and told his story. The men listened with great interest, and the smith, a broad-shouldered elderly man, was particularly eager to hear, as he had always believed in the shepherd’s power of second sight. The tailor, who was more modern-minded, laughed and made his jokes at this. But the smith laid one mighty hand on the other’s shoulder, almost crushing the tailor’s slight form under its weight, and said gravely: “Friend, do you be silent in this matter. You’ve come from other parts and you do not know of things that have happened here in days gone by. Janci can do more than take care of his sheep. One day, when my little girl was playing in the street, he said to me, ‘Have a care of Maruschka, smith!’ and three days later the child was dead. The evening before Red Betty was murdered he saw her in a vision lying in a coffin in front of her door. He told it to the sexton, whom he 

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