"
"That they cannot: the whole lot of them are mere boors who have never
seen a carriage with an iron axle."
"Let me go then, and your lordship remain here."
"I suppose you want me, then, to show your daughter how to cook?"
The innkeeper's eyebrows contracted at these words; his desire to go
visibly subsided.
"But suppose I am afraid of being left alone in the house with so much
money?"
"Come, come, wretched man!" cried Hatszegi at last losing all patience,
"you don't suppose that your blockhead of a bandit is lying in wait for
me, do you? Look you now! I'll leave you my gun. Take it in your hand
and plant yourself there before the door. Bring out a chair, if you
like, and sit down on it. Pull down the hammers of both barrels and hold
your thumb on them and your index finger on the trigger. The left barrel
is filled with ten buckshot and you can be quite sure that whoever
approaches you from the lower end of this passage will inevitably get
five in his body,--and five of them is enough for anybody. The second
barrel, the right one I mean, is loaded with a bullet which we generally
keep in reserve for a wild beast, at the last moment, at six paces; at
that distance any child could kill a giant. Don't be afraid, if he wore
a coat of mail, it would go through it, for that bullet has a steel
point and would perforate a leaden door. Come, you are not afraid now,
surely?"
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.
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