"They are a cursed lot," he cried, as he threw the weapon on to the table. "But I've paid them out; they won't ride quite so merrily back as they did in coming, I'll be bound. I'm sorry, however, the shot did not finish them."
Then he looked round the room. "Bless me, what a miserable light! Is that what you call lighting up?" And he whistled to the hostess, who hurried up with a dozen candles, and promptly placed them on the table in as many sticks.
Ráby's companions had placed themselves before him, so that their mantles rather screened him from the highwayman. But the latter spied him out at once owing to his dress, and seizing Ráby by the hand, he dragged him out into the middle of the room. For a moment, they looked each other steadily in the face, and Ráby recognised in the robber-leader, his wife, Fruzsinka!
And thus it was that they met. But the supposed highwayman still did not betray the situation. He drew Ráby closer to him, and whispered hastily in his ear, "Pretend you are frightened, and make your escape by the door."
Ráby obeyed, and with a bound across the room, in a trice was outside. Fruzsinka followed him, and grasped his hand in hers.
"We have no time for talking. A whole gang of heydukes from Pesth is on your track. Come away immediately; here are the horses of your persecutors; up and ride for your life till you have left the frontier behind you. Do not trust even your companions who will follow you, but do not wait for them."
And so saying, she helped Ráby to mount, only he was so exhausted he found it difficult to keep his seat, and was crying like a child.
"Weep not thus, wretched man," she cried impatiently. "Shame on you for your weakness! Why do you look at me like that? We have nothing more to do with each other, you and I. But fly, and look not back, and beware of ever setting foot in this accursed country again, for whose sake you have made both me and yourself so miserable."
While she spoke, she cast her cloak about him to protect him from the bitter cold of the winter's night.
Ráby would have spoken one last word, but she cut him short by switching his horse's flanks with her riding whip, whereat the animal bounded away over the ground, where the snow already lay a foot deep. And the last sound Ráby heard from the "csárda" was the cracking of Villám Pista's whip.