"Yes, they all live there still, but the houses no longer belong to them. The magistrate has bought one, the notary another, and Peter Paprika a third. The original owners are only there as tenants, and now they have put an execution in the houses." "And wherefore?" "For what was owing for tithes." "And is old Sajtós still there, who used to be so good to us boys when we came home from school?" "Yes, indeed, you may see her any Sunday at the church door begging." "Sajtós begging? Why she was quite a well-to-do woman. What has happened to her?" "Oh, the old story, 'bad times.' There are many more who have come to beggary in the same way. Just go any Sunday morning past the door of the Catholic church, where the beggars congregate, and you will see plenty of your old acquaintances," said Marczi sorrowfully. "But what has brought them to it?" And Marczi told him many a sad record of oppression and misery that wrung Ráby's heart as he listened. But now they had arrived at the lower town, where the ruins of the forty houses burned out in the great fire still stood. The streets hereabouts were nearly a morass and all but impassable. The men who were commencing to put the roofs on, greeted Ráby timidly, as if half afraid, and they quickly drove indoors the women who stood furtively about in the surrounding courts. Ráby's questions they only answered with the greatest caution, fencing with his enquiries as to why the work of restoration had been so long delayed. Marczi drew him away. "They will never tell you where the shoe pinches," he said, "whatever bait you offer; they know too well what the end for them would be. You would listen to their grievance and then retail it to the Emperor. He would send to the town council to know why his subjects' wrongs were not redressed? Thereupon the complainants would be arrested, get twenty strokes with the lash, and the Kaiser would be told the grievances of his subjects were amended. Oh, our people know better than to complain! At no price would they confess why their houses are yet unfinished, or how much of the compensation is still owing." "Surely their wrongs cry aloud to Heaven," said Ráby indignantly. "I only wish I could get documentary evidence of it!" "Well, they won't give it to you, but if you really wish it, I could get you many such testimonies by to-morrow, and bring them to your house." "And are you not afraid of the authorities being angry with you?" "I? What does their anger matter to me, I don't need them, but they can't do without me. I've got them too much in my power. Listen, for you are an honest man, to no other would I venture to say it. One day they summoned me to bring my masons' tools to the Town Hall. No sooner had I arrived, than they bid me go to the secret passage with the notary, which only he and I know of; the aperture was made during the Turkish rule, and except the notary and the Rascian 'pope,' no one knows the whereabouts. I had to wall up the opening."