"Yes, and much more besides, when the business has been fairly begun." Shaggy Hanák began to scratch his head still harder, and seemed to have a thousand and one things to put to rights in the horse's trappings. At last he came out with the following proposition: "Listen, comrade! Don't you think it would be better if, when you went into the town, I remained outside and read the proclamation to all the people coming to market?" "You can read then?" "Read! A pretty sort of sexton I should be if I couldn't read!" "Very well. I rather like your idea;" whereupon Maria drew from her side-pocket a couple of cigars wrapped up in part of an odd number of the Leutschau county newspaper, and gave the sheet to her valiant comrade, who glanced over it with the air of a connoisseur, and, after declaring aloud that he quite grasped its meaning, folded it neatly up, and stuck it in the braiding of his cap. "I'll read it in my best style," said he, "and will come to your assistance at the head of a fresh band of them." Maria approved of his design, and, whipping up her horse, galloped towards the town at such a rate that shaggy Hanák felt constrained to pray Heaven that his comrade might not break his neck before he got there. CHAPTER XII. IN THE MIDST OF THE FIRE. Zudár was to-night more anxious than at other times. He had put up the iron shutters in front of his windows immediately after dusk, and had gone to bed much earlier than usual. The evening prayer of the little girl soothed him for a while. "Amen! Amen!" he kept repeating after her, laying stress upon the word--and then something began agitating him again strangely. "An evil foreboding, an evil foreboding," he kept on murmuring; "some great calamity is about to befall me." "You have caught cold, my good father," said the little girl soothingly, stroking the old man's forehead with her tiny hand; "your hand is trembling, your head is burning..." "I am all shivering inside," said the old man; "a sort of deadly coldness seems to come from within me. Don't you hear a noise in the courtyard?" "There is nothing, my father. Only the horses are stamping in the stable." "But don't you hear talking, whispering beneath the windows, just as if someone was digging at the wall below?" "The dog is settling down for the night; 'tis he who is scratching down below there. Go to rest, my good father!" "I will lie down, but I shall not be able to sleep. Put my musket at the head of my bed." Elise took the gun down from the wall, examined it carefully to make sure that it was in perfect order, and then leaned it against the bed. Then they both lay down.