We walked along the river Galga, and frost from the hills came on the breath of the icy wind. Coming home we crossed the courtyard. There was a light in the stable and a pink-cheeked, fair little girl was sitting on the threshold. Indoors a woman was sitting on a stool beside a cow and one could hear the milk squirting regularly, sharply, into the pail. The coachman doffed his hat and remained bareheaded, a farmer who was leaning against the wall stood up and saluted us. I could not help thinking of the war-cry of ‘The Red Newspaper’: “Class war must be carried into the villages!” They were talking of the agitators in Aszód. “Let them bark,” said the farmer placidly; “first we’ll see what those people in Budapest are up to.” I could not distinguish his face but it seemed to me that it was not an individual but the whole Hungarian peasantry, suspicious, cautious, who had spoken. The Hungarian peasant speaks little and is not over-fond of work. Now he leans on his plough and watches gravely who shall be the owner of the soil. “Michael Károlyi has promised it to us. It is true he did not redeem his pledge, and what he gave of his own was, as it turned out later, no longer his property.” “The Communists have promised even more,” said Elisabeth Kállay in the cautious way which the times had taught us. “They only promise the townsfolk that everything is to be theirs,” said the farmer; “here they say that the land too, is common property.” “Well, well,” said the coachman, “it is not easy to understand these new-fangled laws.” “That is why we first listened to the Communists,” continued the farmer reflectively. “We wanted to see what was going to happen to the land. But later on....” He remained silent for a time, as if debating with himself if he ought to speak out or not. So the coachman continued: “When they started to talk about the law abolishing religion, we did not like it.” “That’s so,” agreed the farmer; “nor did we like it when they made a law that, if I may be excused mentioning such things, if people lived together for a year in free love, that should make them a lawfully wedded couple.” There was silence for a time. The men, ashamed to talk to us of these matters, seemed to whisper among themselves. “But what roused the women into white heat,” the farmer laughed, “was the decision that even a married man could marry like this over and over again, as his old marriage was automatically dissolved by any subsequent union.” The former gravity had disappeared. “After that the Communists were in a hurry, I can tell you, to get on their carts. They would not dare to come back here at any price.” The woman had finished the milking some while ago and was standing in the stable door beside the child. Now she spoke from her dark corner: “They said they would make picture-shows of the churches, and that there would be no more illegitimate children, nor any inheritance, and that the State would take over our children.”