"Does the gentleman happen to know what the surveyors are planning here?" asked the new-comer. Ráby was naturally ready to satisfy worthy curiosity. "That," he answered, "is a great hospital the Emperor is erecting. A building we much need," he added. And they talked of various other things, in the course of which it came out that the new-comer was a pork-dealer in Pesth, whereupon Ráby opined that he had the honour of speaking to a member of the famous "Guild of pork merchants." But this new friend talked of many things beside his own trade. They had now come to the winding path which led along the side of the wood, but the stranger's fund of conversation continued to be apparently inexhaustible. He mentioned, among other things, that he preferred this walk because the road was not yet made. Since it had been the fashion to have the roads in the city paved, he said, he no longer cared to walk in the streets. The whole paving scheme had been a hobby of the present burgomaster, who, as everyone knew, had been a German shoemaker, and had only introduced paving-stones so as to give the German shoemakers preference over the Hungarian bootmakers, for since they had had pavements to walk on, people naturally wore fewer boots, for you only need shoes for the paving stones. It was not long before the two reached the little inn, which stood there even then for the refreshment of travellers. "What do you say to turning in for a glass of beer?" asked his companion, "you get a capital brand here." Ráby answered that he did not drink beer, whereupon the pork-dealer pressed him to touch glasses with him, and promptly drew out his purse as a proof of his readiness to pay the reckoning. But Ráby insisted that he only drank water. "Well, if that is the case," returned his fellow-wayfarer, "you cannot do better than have a glass; the water here is of unusual excellence. Just wait here, and I will go in and get some beer for myself, and send you out a glass of water. It comes from the famous Elias spring; there is no such water in the world." Ráby gladly assented; tired and thirsty as he was with his walk, he longed for just such a refreshing draught. So into the inn the good man hurried, but he soon reappeared, followed by a neat little waitress bearing a wooden tray with a large pewter mug of water on it. The girl looked at him while he drank, with her innocent blue eyes, so that Ráby hardly noticed, as he returned her scrutiny, that the water left a curiously bitter after-taste in his mouth. When he set the mug down, he observed that there was a white sediment at the bottom of it. Rather scared in spite of himself, he asked the girl if there was anything in the water. "I don't know," she answered, "if so, the gentleman who has just gone, put it in." "Has he gone?" "Yes, he went out by the back door. He did not even wait to take the change which I brought him."