The fat prelate sat with his forefinger on his
nose, covering his mouth as before; but Janko
continued:

"Their doom is this: The loving pair
Shall sit upon a donkey bare,
    Their faces turned towards his tail;
With hay and straw upon their hair:
And they shall follow in the rear
Of two long-bearded goats, and then
From street to street, with laugh and stare
    The crowds shall cry—All hail! All hail!"

The last words had hardly been tittered when
shouts of applause rung through the hall;
the two sinners uttered their feeble bravos,
by which they sought to join in the general
enthusiasm, when the count hastily rose—his
countenance had assumed a sudden change—
and with a loud and solemn voice he thus
addressed the company: " I know no appeal
against this sentence of condemnation. And I
believe that every one of my guests think as
I do, that it is most justly merited, and I will
now call upon my most chaste bride and my most
virtuous cousin, to say what is their verdict upon
the evidence?"

The question fell like a thunderbolt upon
their conscience, their breath seemed to fail
them; but they assumed a sort of heroic
indifference, till the countess, as if in innocent
simplicity, gently said; "I think the sentence
very sensible and very just! Solomon himself
could not have spoken more wisely;" and the
fat prelate declared he fully concurred in the
opinion of the lady.

"'Tis well! 'tis well!" cried the count.
"You have pronounced judgment upon
yourselves, and no time shall be lost in giving it
effect." The tables were turned—the guests
were dismissed, the servants had all received
instructions from their master. He ordered the
donkey and the goats to be brought to the door;
they had been kept in waiting till the order
should be given for the procession to set out.
The sinners stood as if smitten with the palsy,
unable to utter a word; a loud bray from the
long-eared, and one of the principal actors,
announced the opening of the drama. No prayer,
no tears availed, the prelate and the countess
were seized and mounted upon the ass, and the
procession marched away, preceded by a tablet
on which Janko's sentence was inscribed in large
letters, amidst the jeering and scoffing of an
innumerable crowd.

All the arrangements had, indeed, been made
by the count before the festival, which was but
the beginning of the sentence. The countess
was condemned to pass the remainder of her
days in a convent; the prelate was banished for
ever from his property, which he visited for the
last time in order there to receive the ignominious
punishment of flogging from the hands
of a corporal, after which he was condemned to
follow the drum as one of the rank and file of a
marching regiment. To his guest Janko, the
count presented the handsome dress he had
worn at the banquet and a hundred golden
ducats as a present, and sent him on his way
rejoicing.

And so, with garments and horse, and more
money than he had ever before possessed, Janko
gratefully took leave of the count, mounted his
steed, and went onward in search of other
adventures. Fortune had been shining upon him,
and he whistled and sang as he rode through
forests and over hills, still comforting himself
with the hope that the promise of the monk
would be fulfilled, and even better luck than
that with which he had been favoured might
fall to his share.

In the very midst of these reflections, a
splendid carriage approached, drawn by four
white horses, in which an ancient bishop was
seated. As it was only accompanied by an old
coachman and one humble attendant, Janko had
courage enough to stop the vehicle, and to
inquire who was within. The right reverend and
his attendants were dreadfully shocked at the
appearance of the armed stranger, and still more
at the very peremptory way in which the question
was put, and the bishop gravely answered,
"I am one of God's children." " Indeed!"
exclaimed Janko, " the very person I was seeking.
You owe to me a thousand horses in
performance of a promise made long ago, and as
I may have no second opportunity of reminding
you of that promise, I will just take your
carriage and horses in part payment." This
he said with a very stern countenance, upon
which the bishop sprung out of the carriage,
and with his trembling servants quietly departed,
for Janko had placed his right hand on the
handle of his sabre, and seemed to threaten
their destruction if there was any hesitation in
obeying his mandate.

So he tied his horse behind the carriage,
seated himself on the box, and went on his way
rejoicing. But the thought occurred to him
that the bishop, notwithstanding his assumed
resignation, might apply to the magistrate in
the next village, and cause him to be arrested
as a highway robber; so he thought it more
prudent to avoid the highway, and through
the alleys of the forest to place some distance
between them. The forest was very extensive,
and after many hours of travel Janko had not
got half way through it. In fact, he was a little
perplexed, for he did not know his way, and he
unexpectedly found himself and his carriage in
a morass, deeper and deeper embedded the more
he sought to extricate them. The more the
horses plunged about the less seemed the chance
of their deliverance, and at last neither
backwards nor forwards could they move. It seemed
to Janko as if he were about to lose all his
possessions. Happily, the horse which was behind
the carriage was not so thoroughly whelmed in
the mud, so Janko managed to get on his back,
happy to have the means of getting away,
leaving the carriage and its conductors in the
morass.

Looking about him with great anxiety, he
saw in the wood a herd of swine with their
keeper. He thought it would be best to call