When Peter Zudár felt it in his hand, his gigantic figure suddenly arose bolt upright, and there he stood amidst the smoke, amidst the flames, like an avenging demon, slashing about him with his sparkling blade as if he would say to the smoke and the flames, "Fear me! I am the headsman!" At that moment a thundering crash resounded behind him. His gun, which had been leaning up against the wall, suddenly exploded by reason of the intense heat, and the bullets penetrated the wall. The shock recalled Zudár, whom a sort of frenzy had seized for a moment, to his senses, and quickly crouching down upon the floor, he tore a cushion from the bed and dragging it after him, crept towards the gaping hole in the floor. The cushion he flung down before him and then leaped carefully after it. The cool air of the cellar gradually restored him to himself again; the oppression of the fierce heat no longer tortured his brain, the semi-darkness was so grateful to his eyes, already half-blinded by the flames, a semi-darkness but faintly illuminated by the gleam of the fiery-world above shining through the gap. Then it occurred to him that this very gap was now superfluous. In the stands of the cellar were several casks, large and small, either empty or full of beer and wine. He rolled one of the empty casks below the hole in the ceiling, and turned it upside down. Then he stove in the top of a beer-cask and dipped into it the cushion, allowing the beer to well soak through it. Then he mounted on the top of the empty cask and thrust the saturated cushion into the hole above. It was now quite dark in the cellar, but Peter Zudár knew his way about there all the same. He was well aware of the exact locality of the best cask of beer, and lost no time in staving in the top of it, found a pitcher in a niche close at hand, filled it with fresh beer, sat him down by the side of the barrel, and took a monstrously long pull at his pitcher. After that he moistened well his head and face, and then he replenished his pitcher and took another long draught. Above his head there the roof now fell in with a loud roar and a crash, and the whole tribe of flames laughed and roared in their joy at having done their work so well. "We have roasted his goose for him, anyhow!" cried Dame Zudár outside, and her band of rogues and scoundrels laughed and bounded for joy. But down in his underground asylum the old headsman sang from the depths of a fervent heart: "To thee, O Lord! on Sion's Hill, All praise and glory be." And he drew his fingers along the double edge of the sword--right well had it been sharpened, nowhere was there the trace of a notch, nowhere. CHAPTER XIII. THE LEATHER-BELL. We Magyars are very liberal in the distribution of nicknames, in this respect, indeed, our fancy outruns that of the Princes of the Orient, and the titles we bestow are even more appropriate than theirs.