Baroness Orczy

“ Kemény András, put back your knife! your mother—ah! she is a saint!—will be waiting at the cross-road for you; shall I go and tell her that I left her only son with a knife in his hand, after he has promised half an hour ago, to forgive so that he may be forgiven. Come, come, give me that knife, and do not look so fiercely at me. I am only a weak old man, and not worth quarrelling with. ”

“ As for old Kemény, it was impossible to kindle a spark of pride in him, by talking to him of his boy.
“Another mouth to feed,” he would say dolefully.
“Why! you niggardly old miser, you have enough and to spare, to feed a dozen sturdy lads like your little András boy. What is the use of hoarding? He will never want” And one or two of the older peasants, contemporaries of his own, would try to break through the barrier of old Kemény’s impenetrable silence over his own affairs. ”

“ Then, without a word, he turned and fled towards the cross-road, on the way to Kisfalu, where his mother stood waiting for him.
After that episode, he, like his father, ceased to go to church, he wished to avoid the mocking laughter and the kindly sympathy, which alike stung and wounded his pride. With passionate devotion he poured all the pent-up flood of his intensely affectionate nature on the mother, who bore her hard lot with such exemplary patience. Worked to death almost, as he often was, on field and farm, he never was too tired to try and lighten some of his mother’s tasks. ”

“ He was soon old enough to notice, that his father was an object of hatred and derision, his mother and himself one of contempt and compassion; he saw how much coarser was his linen, how much shabbier his boots than those of the shepherds or herdsmen, who worked for wage, and slept under the blue vault of heaven ”

“ Far out on the horizon, a tiny speck had gradually grown larger as it drew nearer, and Rosenstein, with a sigh of contentment, noted that the speck soon assumed the shape of a man on horseback. The two herdsmen as they departed down the road had also looked at the fast approaching speck, and pronounced it to be Kemény András on his black mare ”

“ The Jew, while seemingly overcome with fatigue and the heat, his eyes closed, his mouth open, lost not a word of what they said.
The young peasants were discussing the eternal topic of the lord of Bideskút’s mysterious buildings and contrivances, that were supposed to do the work, they and their fathers before them had done with their own hands.
“I have heard my master say,” said the one, “that it will grind as much corn in one day, as would take a month, with six windmills at work to do; and that three men with it can do the work of twenty.” ”

“ Mark me, evil will come on your lord and his house, sooner or later.”
“What can come but evil, of bringing the devil into the village. Jankó told my mother that the big books came from a place called England.” ”