The old woman collapsed once more. Close to the trellis gate stood a large heap of planks. She reached out and tapped them with her crutch. "Good timber here for ever so many nice coffins!" she mumbled to herself, and tripped away coughing and wheezing, and leaning heavily on her crutch. Benjamin Hétfalusy lay senseless in his own courtyard, and when he came to himself he was unable to utter a word. He had had a stroke, and his tongue was tied. Early next morning, while the whole house was still asleep, Mrs. Széphalmi, all alone, stealthily and unobserved, quitted the house and made her way across the park to old Magdolna's hut. This great lady, despite an outward show of culture, believed in and made use of all sorts of charms and quackeries, and it was not the first time, so credulous was she, that she had turned to the old woman for counsel. She had made her tell her her fortune by means of cards, predict the future, brew potions for her which would make her husband faithful, teach her spells which would cause flies and other vermin to vanish, to concoct balsamic cakes to keep the skin white--in fact, she hung upon every word the old crone uttered. Magdolna kept her waiting for a long time in the yard before she opened the door. She said, by way of excuse, that she had been praying, then she shut the door behind them. The great lady sat down on a straw-covered chair and began to weep. The old woman crouched down upon a stool and cleansed some mushrooms which she held in her lap. "Dame Magdolna, can you not help my son?" sobbed Mrs. Széphalmi. "No." "I will give all I have to whomsoever can cure him. Oh! if you could only see how much he suffers, nobody ever suffered so much before." "I know it, and he will suffer still more." "The doctors cannot cure him." "No healing herb that ever grew in the field can heal him; it would be all one even if you bathed him in balm." "He will die?" "'Twould be good for his soul if he did die." "What, is there then anything worse than death?" "Yes, damnation!" "You are raving. A child who four years ago was an angel in Heaven, a child only four years of age--damned!" "It has sinned enough to suffice for a long life, enough to merit damnation." "Then for such a sin there is no name among men." "There is a name for it, terrible and accursed--the murder of a sister." "Merciful God!--I will not hearken to you." "Why do you ask me, then? I have told nobody. Go home, my lady, you cannot buy the mercy of God for money." "And yet there must be something in it. He is repeatedly mentioning his sister's name. And--oh! what a look he has at such times!" "I know it. His groaning can be heard outside in the street. If a poor man's child wailed like that they would pitch it down a well." "Speak! How and where did it take place?"