"Simple Stevie of Debreczin!"[4] cried the horseman. "Do you believe such nonsense?"

[4] "Simple Stevie" is said to have been a student in the college of Debreczin, where he was notorious for his simplicity.

[4]

The beggar grinned. "What would you have?" said he. "People say a great many things of all sorts, and a fellow like me just believes and blunders along with the rest! If His Grace in there does live on Jews' flesh, I wish him good health; but for my own part I had rather have a little bit of chicken than roast Jew."

"Now, boy, listen. Just look there," began the horseman again: "if you can get into that castle and bring me word again how the world wags there, you shall have a hundred gold ducats in your hand."

[Pg 18]"A hundred ducats!" cried the beggar. "Why, I could buy a whole county with that, surely!"

[Pg 18]

"Not so much as that, little brother," said the rider; "but still it is a great deal of money!"

"And who will give it me?" asked the beggar, looking eagerly at the horseman.

"I myself," he answered. "But I am slow to believe people, and so I want first to know whether I can trust you."

The boy still had his eyes turned towards the castle. "Thunder!" said he presently, "the devil himself doesn't get in there by the proper way. But just wait a moment, sir, and let me think a little. So they don't live on Jews' flesh in there, eh, sir?"

"To be sure not! I fancy they live on something better than that."

"But still the Jews do go in and out—at least so people say, and what is in everybody's mouth is half true at all events."

"Right; but what then?"

"Why, I'll be a Jew, and go in, if they don't eat people up."

"But how?"

"I don't know yet. Give me a little time, or I shall not be able to hit upon it."

[Pg 19]"Of course. And now listen. Before I trust you blindly, I am going to prove you." He drew a sealed letter from his breast, wrote a few lines on the back with a pencil, and went on: "See this letter? Make haste with it to Visegrád; ask for admission, and say merely that you have brought the governor a letter from his son. 

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