Kitabı oku: «The Village Notary: A Romance of Hungarian Life», sayfa 20

Mr. Kishlaki walked, meanwhile, to and fro in a terrible state of excitement. His wife followed him; and, placing her hand on his shoulder, she asked: "What is the matter with you?"

"I think of the confounded scrape into which my weakness has brought me. It was in my power to save that man: I might have done it orderly and legally; and what's the consequence? My only son is compelled to step in, and get himself into trouble, perhaps he will destroy the brightest hopes of his life, and I am not even allowed to ask him to desist."

"My dear father!" cried Kalman; "how can I possibly destroy my hopes by saving the life of a fellow-creature?"

"Who knows what the Retys will do when they learn that it was you who saved Viola? You are aware of Lady Rety's vindictive character. I am sure she hates you for what you did for Tengelyi."

"It does not signify,", replied Kalman, quietly. "I ask no favour at the hands of Rety or his haughty lady; and as for Etelka, I trust this letter will convince you that she, at least, will not owe me any grudge for what I mean to do." Saying which, he produced the letter which Janosh had brought him.

"She is an angelic creature; she is, indeed!" said Lady Kishlaki, looking over her husband's shoulder, as he read the letter. "You are right, my son. You're in duty bound to save Viola."

"It's the first letter I ever had from Etelka," cried Kalman. "If she asked me to commit a crime, I'd do it with the greatest pleasure; and this – "

"God forbid that I should oppose it!" said the old man. "Your motives are good and generous; but still, what you intend doing is a crime according to law. If you should be detected, I tremble to think of the consequences!"

"Our success is certain," said Kalman. "Nothing can be more easy than to make the haiduks drunk. To keep them sober would be a far more difficult task. There's a door, of which I have the key. Nothing can be more simple."

"But suppose they were to know of it? Suppose they were to indict you?"

"Indict me?" cried Kalman, laughing. "My dear father, are you not aware that, to proceed against me, they must have the consent of the quorum? How will they ever get it?" And, pocketing the keys, he left the room.

"A generous lad!" said his mother. "How can Etelka help being fond of him?"

"Capital plan!" sighed Kishlaki; "capital plan, if it remains a secret. It's indeed a generous action; but it's criminal, my love; it's against the laws."

"Do not worry yourself with these thoughts."

"And to think that I had it in my power to prevent it!"

"Never mind. Viola is saved; that's enough for all intents and purposes."

"A cruel law, this," sighed Kishlaki. "I wonder what stuff the man was made of who first proposed it!"

CHAP. IX

To make people reasonable is a difficult thing at all times; but there are cases in which it is not less difficult to make them unreasonable. Kalman Kishlaki was doomed to learn the truth of this maxim, for all his endeavours to induce Mr. Skinner to drink away the niggardly allowance of sense with which Nature had provided that individual, proved abortive. As for Mr. Catspaw, we need not mention him, for he was one of those wretches who are always sober. To intoxicate him was a thing that Kalman never dreamed of. The other guests, not even excepting Baron Shoskuty, answered without any invitations, and as it were spontaneously, to the wishes of their young host; the judge alone stood unshaken, like a sturdy rock in a troubled sea. Mr. Skinner was one of the deepest drinkers in the county; he was not indeed a stranger to the condition in which Kalman wished to see him; but the presence of Völgyeshy, whom he hated, the admonitions of Mr. Catspaw, and above all his honest ambition to add fresh honours to his former trophies, made him proof against any quantity of wine which Kalman induced him to take.

"You'd like to make me drunk, now, wouldn't you?" said he, tossing off a large tumbler of red wine. "Don't be ridiculous, my fine fellow! who ever saw me drunk?"

"I have," smiled Mr. Kenihazy from his place at the card-table; "I've seen you as drunk as David's sow!"

"Who did?" cried Mr. Skinner.

Zatonyi, who, leaning on his elbows, watched Mr. Catspaw shuffling the cards, raised his head at the sound of the judge's shrill voice, and observed that, after all, the day's business was neatly done.

"This is my sixteenth case," added he; "and, somehow or other, we always managed to do for somebody."

"Nihil ad rem!" cried Mr. Skinner; "it's this man I want to ask."

"Nihil ad rem, indeed!" hiccoughed Zatonyi, "are not we in court-martial assembled? It is provided that the court shall sit until the sentence has been executed."

"Fiddlesticks! it's nothing ad rem, I tell you! I want to ask Kenihazy!"

"Oh, fiddlesticks! eh?" cried the assessor, striking the table with his fist, "when I say – eh, what did I want to say? yes, that's it, that's no fiddlesticks! Consider, domine spectabilis, to whom you're speaking, and where you are; I say, sir, lie prostrate in the face of the sanctity of the place; for, sir, this is a court-martial!"

Mr. Skinner became more and more impatient.

Kalman, who hoped that a quarrel between them would serve his purposes better than the heaviest Tokay, nodded approvingly to Zatonyi, who went on, to the great annoyance of Mr. Skinner, though doubtless very much to his own satisfaction.

"This is not a place for your frivolous jokes, sir – frivolous, I say, sir; and make the most of it, if you please! Up to the criminal's execution, we sit as a court-martial – all the time, sir, without intermission, without – fiddlesticks! It is provided in the articles, chapter four thousand five hundred and twenty-four, that we are to eat in court-martial, sir, and we play at Tarok in court-martial, sir, and we – "

"Cease your row!" snarled the justice.

"I will make a row! And I must make a row, and I'm entitled to make a row, and I'd like to see the man who'd prevent me from making a row! I'm as much of an assessor as any man in the county!"

The Baron had meanwhile studied his cards. He was prepared to come out strong, and he urged them to continue the game; but neither Mr. Skinner nor Kenihazy would listen to him, for Kalman did his utmost to excite them still more. Mr. Skinner fancied he saw a sneer on Völgyeshy's lips, which he could not ascribe to any thing but the doubts which it was evident that hated person entertained of his assertion, that he, Paul Skinner, would drink three glasses to Mr. Kenihazy's one, and remain sober into the bargain.

"Don't boast!" said Kalman. "I'll never believe you."

"You won't?"

"No, indeed! I'll back Kenihazy against anybody."

"You will, will you? I say two cows to my greyhound."

"Done! Your greyhound is mangy; but I don't care. I am sure to win."

"Done, I say! Hand us the glasses."

Kalman could scarcely repress a smile of triumph, while Mr. Catspaw moved heaven and earth to prevent the bet; but Kenihazy laughed, and emptied his glass, the valorous judge followed his lead with three glasses, and the game was continued, though rather more noisily than before.

While Kalman was thus occupied in settling the masters, Janosh imitated his example with signal success in the servants' hall; indeed so strenuous were his attacks upon the general sobriety, that scarcely one of the haiduks and peasants was left to whom an impartial observer would have awarded the laurels of abstinence.

A deep silence prevailed in the prisoner's room, at the door of which two of the least intoxicated among the haiduks were placed. Vandory had passed above an hour in the cell, attempting to administer the comforts of religion to the condemned criminal; and when he left, Susi came to take her last leave of her husband, for, according to Mr. Skinner's express orders, she was forbidden to remain later than nine o'clock.

Both Viola and Susi were fearfully anxious and disturbed in their minds. Viola had often thought of the death which awaited him. From the moment of his capture in the St. Vilmosh forest, he knew that his doom was fixed. He made no excuses to the judges, he gave them no fair words; not from pride, but because he knew that neither prayers nor promises could avail him. And what, after all, is death but the loss of life? And was his life of those which a man would grieve to lose? There were his wife and children – but was it not likely that they would be happier, or at least quieter, after the misfortune in whose anticipation they passed their days? Of what good could he be to his wife? Was he not the cause of her misery? of her homeless beggary? Of what use could he be to his children? Was not his name a stigma on their lives? Could he hope, could he pray for any thing for them, except that they might be as unlike their father as possible?

"When I am gone," thought he, "who knows but people may forget that I ever lived? My wife, too, will, perhaps, forget that accursed creature, whose life filled hers with shame and sorrow. My children will have other names; they will go to another place, and all will be well and good. I have but one duty, and that is to die."

His tranquillity of mind was disturbed by the plan of escape which Janosh communicated to him. The old soldier was, indeed, resolved to delay that communication till the last moment, lest Susi's excitement and joy should attract the attention and awaken the suspicions of the justice and his myrmidons. But when he entered the room which had been assigned to Susi and her children; when he saw the pale woman nursing the youngest child in her arms, and utterly lost in the gloom of her despair; when Pishta, with his eyes red with weeping, came up to him, asking him to comfort his mother, and when the infant awoke, and smiled at him, the old hussar was not proof against so much love and so much sorrow; and when Susi, kissing the child, exclaimed, "The poor little thing knows not how soon it will be an orphan!" he wept, and cried out, "No, no, Susi! this here child is as little likely to become an orphan as you are likely to be a widow!" And it was only by her look of utter amazement that he became conscious of what he had said.

There were now no means of keeping the secret. Little Pishta was sent away, and Janosh told her in a whisper of all that they intended to do.

"You see," added he, "we've thought of everything. Don't fret, now; in a few hours, when the gentlemen and the keepers are asleep, (and they are settled, I tell you,) you'll see your husband at large, and on horseback, too. It's no use being sad, and it's no use despairing – that is to say – yes! I mean you ought to despair; you ought to be sad; come, wail and pray, and ask for mercy! else they'll smell a rat. I am an old fool, and ought to know better than to tell you, for if you cannot impose upon them, it's all over with us."

Susi whispered some questions to Janosh, to which he answered in the same subdued tone of voice; adding,

"Give me your child, that I may look at it, and dance it on my knee. What a sweet child it is!" said he, his whole face radiant with smiles; "I never saw a prettier child: and it laughs, too, and at me! No, my fine fellow, we won't let your father come to harm. Ej, Susi, I wish to goodness I had a child like this!"

"My children will love you as their second father," said she, with a happy and grateful look.

"Yes, as their second father," said the old man, sighing; "but it must be a fine thing to be loved as a real father. I say, Susi, I've often thought why God hasn't given me children. You'll say it's because I have no wife. That's true. But why haven't I got a wife? If they had not sent me to the wars, I'd be a grandfather by this time; and, believe me, I'd give my silver medal and my cross for such children as yours. I'd give them both for a single child! Well, God's will be done. Perhaps I have no children because if I had I'd not be so fond of other people's. Young children are all equally beautiful; there's no difference between them. They are fresh and lively, like river trout; but in course of time one half of them turn out to be frogs, and worse."

Janosh saw that Pishta came back with Vandory to call his mother to Viola. Imploring her not to betray the secret, he walked away, fearful lest Susi should want the strength to dissemble her thoughts. His anxiety on this head was perfectly gratuitous. The good news, which Susi communicated to her husband, filled them both with unspeakable dismay. Whoever could have seen Viola would have thought that his stout heart was at last overcome with the fear of death. Need we marvel at this? Was not life powerful within him, trembling in every nerve, throbbing in every vein? Was not his wife by his side? Could he forget his children, whom his death might drive to ruin and, possibly, to crime? Viola had long wished to change his mode of life. He was now at liberty to do so. The brother of the Gulyash was dead. The poor man died at the moment when he was preparing to take his wife and three children to another county, where a place as Gulyash was promised to him. The papers and passports which were necessary for this purpose were in the hands of old Ishtvan, who had promised to take Viola to the place. There, above a hundred miles from the scene of his misfortunes, in a lonely tanya, where nobody knew him or cared to know him, could he not hope to live happily, peacefully, and contentedly? But did not that happiness hang on a slender thread, indeed? Were there not a hundred chances between him and its attainment? A whim of the justice's, a different position of the sentinels, the noise of a falling plank, could snatch the cup of life and liberty from his lips, and cast him back into the valley of the shadow of death.

He was in this state of mind when Mr. Skinner made his appearance in the cell. He was accompanied by Mr. Catspaw and the steward, for his umbra, Kenihazy, was in a state which rendered him unfit to be company to any one, even to Mr. Skinner. The change in Viola's manner was too striking to escape the attention of either the attorney or the steward. The justice perambulated the cell with a show of great dignity, and a futile attempt to examine into the condition of the walls. He poked his stick into the straw which served Viola for a lair; when the steward walked up to him, and whispered that the robber had lost all his former boldness.

"Indeed!" cried Mr. Skinner, with a shrill laugh. "I say, Viola, where's your pluck? Where's your impertinence, man? Ain't you going to die game, eh, Viola?"

"Sir," said the robber, biting his lips, "the step which I am preparing to take is bitter, and, I will own it, I feel for my family. What is to become of them?"

"Your family? Oh! your wife! Never mind; I'll protect her."

Viola looked daggers at the man; but he curbed his temper and was silent.

"And as for your children," continued the justice in a bantering tone, "they're very fine children, are they not? – eh? Well, they'll grow up, and come to be hanged – eh? But what's the use of this palaver? I say, Susi, be off! You've had plenty of time for your gossip; and I say, Viola, make your will and all that sort of thing."

The prisoner, deeply sensible of his precarious position, embraced his trembling wife: but Susi would not leave him; she clung to him in all the madness of sorrow.

"I say! you've had time enough to howl and lament!" cried the justice. "Make an end of it, and be off!" And suiting the action to the word, he seized Susi by her dress, and led her to the door. Mr. Catspaw and the steward followed her; but the justice stayed behind, gloating over the sufferings of the prisoner. At length he laughed, and said, – "I say, Viola, who's the man that's in at the death? Who'll swing? I said I'd do it, and you see I'm as good as my word!" And turning on his heels, he left the room, and locked the door.

Two of the soberest men were placed in the hall to watch that door; but even they, thanks to the endeavours of Janosh, were not sober enough for Mr. Catspaw, who was just in the act of lamenting that, in consequence of their host's excessive liberality, there was not a man in the house but was drunk, when he was interrupted by Mr. Skinner.

"Who is drunk? What is drunk?" said the worthy justice, turning fiercely upon the attorney. "I say, sir, nobody's drunk here – no one was drunk here – no one will be drunk – and indeed no one can be drunk! That's what I say, sir! Who dares to contradict me?"

"Don't be a fool!" whispered the attorney; "who the devil said any thing of you? But look at these fellows! they're roaring drunk."

"D – n you, he's right! – Confound you, you are roaring drunk! Blast me, I'll have you hanged! If that robber escapes, one of you shall swing in his place! I say, fellows, look sharp! It's truly disgusting," continued the sapient justice, "that men will get drunk – drown their reason in wine, for all the world like so many beasts."

The sentinels vowed, as usual, that they had not had a drop ever so long, and that the prisoner should not escape though he were the very devil; but Mr. Catspaw, alike distrustful of their vigilance and sobriety, insisted on seeing the door double-locked, and on taking away the key. Mr. Skinner protested against this encroachment on the duties of his office. He knew that the attorney suspected him of being less sober than he might have been, and this suspicion rendered him the more obstinate. He pocketed the key and sought his bed-room, denouncing drink and drunkards in the true temperance meeting style.

The inmates of Kishlak manor-house followed his example. The judges, the sentinels at the gate and round the house, the steward, and all retired to rest; and although Susi watched, though Kalman paced his own room with all the impatience of his age, and though old Kishlaki himself, for the first time since many years, courted sleep in vain, yet the house and its environs were hushed and silent. Stillness reigned in the prisoner's cell; the sentinels at the door stood gaping, and waiting for the hour of their relief. The night was cold, and though they did their best to keep the cold out, or at least out of their stomachs, they shivered and complained of the chilly night air. Janosh, who seemed to like the cold and darkness, had meanwhile met Peti, who held Viola's horse at the further end of the garden. The gipsy brought a crowbar and all other tools which they wanted for their purpose; he told the hussar that the Gulyash Ishtvan had promised to bring his cart and horses to the threshing-floor, in order to take away Susi and her children. The old soldier was greatly pleased with this good news. He tied the horse to the garden gate, and told the gipsy to conceal himself somewhere near the loft. This done, he went to look after the sentinels, whom, to his great disgust, he found still awake.

"Is it not ten o'clock?" asked one of them, when Janosh came up.

"Of course it is!" said his comrade. "I'd rather do any robot service than this cold kind of work. It's too much for a soldier, and it's far too much for me. My comrade here was in the wars; he tells me they never force soldiers to play the sentinel so long as we must."

"Who can help it?" said the other man. "It's by order, you know."

"Oh, indeed! It's easy enough, I dare say, to give an order; go and come! stand still! be starved with hunger and cold! – nothing's more easy than play the devil with a poor fellow, while they are stretching their limbs in their warm beds. At least they ought to give us something to eat, or some brandy; I'm sure I was never so cold in all my born days!"

"Don't get sulky!" said Janosh. "I'll tell you what I'll do for you. Master Kalman has given me a bottle of brandy to drink his health. Suppose I go for it. It's nearly full."

He went away and told Kalman how matters stood. When he returned, he brought them a bottle of Sliwowiza and a loaf of bread.

"You see," said he, "that's the way things go on when there's no proper officer. If the judge or any of the other gentlemen had been in the army, they would have made some provision for you, and got some one to relieve you, but as it is – "

"Why, I do hope and trust they will relieve us!" cried one of the men.

"Blessed are those that put their trust in the Lord," retorted Janosh, laughing; "I'd be happy to know who is to relieve you? Why, man, they're all asleep!"

"Give me the bottle! I'm as cold as ice!" said the other man, shaking his head, while his comrade stood drowsily leaning on his musket.

Janosh handed him the bottle, and assured the two men that there was no chance of their being relieved from their duty, and that nothing was more likely than their falling asleep about daybreak, the very time when the justice would go his rounds, – in which case he (Janosh) had no ambition to be in their skins. The bottle went from hand to hand, to keep them awake, as Janosh said, until the poor fellows swore that they would not stand it any longer, and that, come what may, they must sleep.

"Very well!" said Janosh; "I've been in the wars, you know! I'm used to the service. You see I'm not at all sleepy. You may go to the shed and lie on the straw, and when I'm tired I'll wake you. A little sleep will do you good; and by the time the justice turns out you'll be all right."

His offer was readily accepted. The two men walked off, and their loud snoring soon informed Janosh that there was now no obstacle to the execution of his plans. Leaving the musket behind, he walked to the shed, where he assured himself of the firm and sound sleep of the two sentinels; and, having done this, he hastened to the loft, where Peti and Kalman waited for him. Janosh pulled off his boots, (there was no occasion for the gipsy's following his example,) and, having lighted a lamp, he crept up the stairs to the top of the house. Kalman kept watch by the lower door. Wrapped up in his cloak, he listened with a beating heart, lest something might interfere with the success of their scheme.

Something of the kind was likely to happen. Kalman was scarcely at his post when he heard the sound of steps approaching from the house in which the judges slept. The young man stepped aside to escape being discovered, and he had already begun to blame himself for failing to "settle" Mr. Skinner sufficiently, when he saw that the person who approached the place, holding a lamp in one hand and a cudgel in the other, was not Skinner, but Mr. Catspaw, the attorney. Kalman raised his hand, and was preparing to rush forward, with a view of "doing for" the lawyer by knocking him down; when, luckily for the attorney, it struck him that that delicate operation could not be performed without some noise, and, consequently, not without hazarding the success of the enterprise. Mr. Catspaw was therefore allowed to pass on, which that worthy man did with the utmost unconcern. But his peaceful and happy state of mind was changed to utter disgust, confusion, and dismay, when, on reaching the door of Viola's cell, he found that there were no sentinels to guard the prisoner.

"Confound it!" muttered he, "they're after no good in this house. That young fellow Kalman has made them all drunk – Skinner, the sentinels, the servants, and all. They would like Viola to escape. They tried it this morning, and as it was no go, they mean to do it by brute force. Confound them! I'll go back and wake some of the men, – I'll remain here and watch the door, – what the devil am I to do? That fellow must be got out of the way! If the case is tried in a common court, he'll say enough to implicate me in the matter; and goodness knows what may come of it! There are some who hate me! – " And the attorney was about to return to the lower parts of the house, when his attention was attracted by an extraordinary noise, which seemed to come from the prisoner's cell. The noise resembled that of the breaking of planks. He crept to the door and listened. There was the creaking and the sound of the raising of planks; and immediately afterwards there was a sound of some heavy object being carefully lowered into the cell.

"They are breaking through the ceiling!" cried the attorney; "d – n them! I'll stop them yet!" and, in defiance of his usual prudence, he attempted, though unsuccessfully, to open the door. He cursed Skinner for pocketing the key. Peti and Janosh, who were at work on the upper loft, had provided themselves with a ladder, which they lowered into the cell, the noise of which operation was distinctly heard by Kalman, and, indeed, by the sentinels in the shed, whom it awaked, though not sufficiently to induce them to get up, which, considering the quantity of liquor they had drunk, was by no means an easy matter. But if the noise was lost upon them, it was not lost upon the steward; on the contrary, so effectually did it tell upon him, that he fell into an agony of fear and despair.

That worthy servant of the Kishlakis had never donned his nightcap with so proud and happy a feeling as on that night. The great condescension of the members of the court, nor even excepting the Baron, for all that he was a magnate; the important duties which he had to perform, such as the guarding of the prisoner, the construction of the gallows, and other arrangements which required ability and tact, and which brought out his "savoir faire," gave him still stronger feelings of his own importance than those which usually pervaded his unwieldy frame. He gloried in himself, and lay awake, magnifying and exalting his own name.

"I'm born for better things," said he. "I was never meant for farming. To look after the manure, and the planting, and the ploughing and threshing, – curse it! it's slow work, and I am too good for it! I ought to be a lawyer. Providence created me expressly for that profession! Wouldn't I get on in that line! I might come to be a sheriff, and an assessor of the high court, and indeed a lord-lieutenant, and a magnate of the empire! For what place is too high for a Hungarian lawyer?"

Such were the stout man's thoughts. His imagination borrowed a glow from his cups, (for he, too, had drunk deep), and the cares of his fancied honours and dignities kept him awake, in spite of the fatigues of the day, and, indeed, in spite of his own endeavours to go to sleep. He, to whom it was an easy matter to talk a whole party to sleep, now vainly exerted his skill upon himself. He tried every means; he occupied himself with figures and accounts. But the figures danced in a wild maze, and, somehow or other, the accounts would not tally. He opened his eyes, and looked around. The dying glare of his candle threw a dim light on the objects in the room, filling it with gaunt and shadowy forms. He shuddered, and extinguished the candle; but the darkness made matters worse. His thoughts would run on robberies and murders. The greatest brigand in the county, a man sentenced to death, was a prisoner in his house. Who knows what Viola's friends were about? Perhaps they were numerous. Perhaps they were formidable and fierce. Nothing was more natural than that they should attack the house, and liberate their captain. And if so, what was to become of the poor steward, who had so jealously watched lest he might escape, and who had protested, yes, and in the presence of at least a hundred people, every one of whom might have told the robbers of it, that Viola must needs be hanged? That thought made him shake in his bed. And besides, was not his door wide open? Did he not keep it open ever since he was afraid of apoplexy? What was to prevent the outlaws from entering his room, and hanging him on his bed-post? Nothing; for the haiduk, whose duty it was to sleep on the threshold, had been taken away to join the watch on Viola.

The poor steward's alarm had come to its acmé, when he heard the noise of steps in the loft over his head. He sat up in his bed. He heard the steps very distinctly, and immediately afterwards he heard the creaking and breaking of the planks. Yes! the most dreaded event had come to pass. The robbers were at their work of death and destruction! They were burning the house, and cutting the throats of all the inmates! "Gracious God!" groaned he, clasping his hands. What could he do? He might lock the door! There was a singing in his ear, his heart beat irregularly, his breath failed him, his face was covered with sweat, and his limbs trembled, – all these were symptoms of an apoplectic fit. "If I lock the door, I am utterly lost!" thought he; "for no one can come to my assistance!" He hid his head under the blankets. But the noise grew louder, and he fancied somebody was breaking through the wall of the room next to his. Perhaps there were not less than a hundred robbers; perhaps they were bent upon torturing him! Unless the door was locked, there was no possibility of screaming for help; for he knew the first thing they intended to do was to gag him. But then, he was in a perspiration; the room was icy cold: to get up and stand on the cold floor was literally courting a fit of apoplexy. But when he heard Mr. Catspaw hallooing, his fear got the better of all other considerations. He jumped out of bed, wrapped himself up in a blanket, and ran to the door. But what can equal his horror when he heard the door of the corridor turning on its hinges, and when quick steps approached him! He dropped the blanket because it interfered with his movements, and seized the key, when the door was flung open. Before him stood a small man, wrapped in a bunda.

There is a tide in the affairs of a coward in which fear makes him a hero. Such a moment had come for the steward. Furious as a stag at bay, reckless as a man who sees certain death before him, merciless as one to whom no mercy is given, senseless, maddened, frenzied, he rushed upon the new comer, and in the very next moment Mr. Catspaw measured his length on the ground, and roared for help.

"Murder!" screamed the attorney.

"Assassin!" bawled the steward, throttling his adversary with his left hand while he punched the wretched man's head with his right.