But the girl pleaded so hard to be allowed to stay, to lean her head on the table and thus steal a nap, that he at last let her do as she pleased. Suddenly she awoke with a start to find it was day, and the sparrows were twittering at the windows.
The patient was then dreaming as well as sleeping. His lips moved, he murmured something and laughed. His eyes half opened, but evidently with a great effort, for they closed immediately. But his parched lips seemed to be asking for something.
"Shall I give you water?" whispered the girl.
So she brought him the water bottle, but he had not strength enough in his arms--this great fellow--even to raise the tumbler to his mouth. She had to lift his head and give it to him. Even while drinking he fell half asleep.
Hardly had his head touched the pillow when he began to hum aloud--probably a continuation of the gay air of his dreams:
"Why not love this world of ours? Gypsy maid, Magyar maid, both are flowers."
A day or two later the lad was on his feet again. Such tough fellows as he, born and bred on the puszta, do not linger long on the sick list when once the crisis is past. They abhor bed. So on the third day he told the doctor that he wished to get back to the horses at his place of service.
"Wait a bit, Sándor, my boy. Somebody has to speak with you first."
"Somebody" turned out to be the examining magistrate. On the third day, after the report, this official, with his notary and a gendarme, arrived at Mata to conduct the formal inquiry. The accused--the young woman--had already been examined, and had given a full account of everything. She denied nothing, only saying in her defence that she was very much in love with Sándor, and wished to make him love her as well.
All this was taken down in the protocol and signed. Nothing now remained but to confront the prisoner with her victim. And this was done as soon as the herdsman had regained sufficient strength.
Meanwhile he never once uttered the girl's name in the doctor's presence, pretending not to know that she had been in the house nursing him, and as the young man recovered consciousness, she ceased to show herself at all. Before confronting her with him, the magistrate read out the deposition to the girl, who confirmed it anew, and would not have a word altered.