Similar difficulties awaited the good Patrol-officer with the second foot; but after working with six-horse power to force his foot into a receptacle never intended for it, he was at last able, with the ruddiness of satisfaction on his cheeks, to take a smiling survey of his gorgeous, tight-fitting boots, which harmonized so delightfully with the other dusty, greasy, ink-bespattered constituent parts of his dress. "Now, mark what I say!" said Csaky, sitting down with a lordly air on the solitary chair, whilst the clerk, standing before him, raised first one and then the other leg aloft, at the same time uttering a peculiar hissing sound, and turning a livid green and blue in his agony, for the boots had now begun to play havoc with his corns. "When did you last go your rounds?" "I really don't know." "But you ought to know. Why don't you make a note of it? The Prince wishes you to go your rounds at once, and you must look particularly sharp after all the places between Toroczko, Banfi-Hunyad, and Bonczhida. Besides the usual questions, you must ask the people whether they have seen any foreign wild beast in the surrounding woods." "Foreign wild beast?" mechanically repeated the wretched Patrol-officer. "And if at any place they tell you they have seen such beast, you must go personally into the districts indicated, and search till you come upon its track." "I cry your Excellency's pardon! but what manner of beast may it be?" asked the student timidly. "Come, come! don't be afraid! It is neither a seven-headed dragon nor yet a minotaur, but only a young panther." "A panther!" stammered the terrified Clement. "You are not expected to catch it," said Csaky cheerily. "You have only to discover its hiding-place and let me know." "And if this wild beast--whose existence indeed in Transylvania I very much doubt--should stray into the territory of Denis Banfi," asked Clement, "what am I to do then?" "You must go after it." "I cry your Excellency's pardon, but his property is a _liber baronatus_, where my jurisdiction ceases." "Don't be so stupid, Clement," said Csaky. "I never said you were to repair thither _vi et armis_: the whole expedition must remain a secret. You have only to follow the wild beast's track. We have it, on the best authority, that the beast is somewhere in the neighbourhood, and we trust to your dexterity to spot it. The rest will be done by more enterprising people than yourself." Clement regarded the mission as altogether odd and risky, but he dared not raise any objection, so he simply bowed low and sighed deeply. "Above all things we must have dexterity, expedition, and secrecy. Keep that constantly in mind." "I will go at once," cried Clement desperately; "but first I must borrow me a horse from some one or other, for I should not like to utterly ruin these beautiful boots by walking in them."