Remain in your father's house; there you are safe." The girl drew from her bosom the defaced ducat she had just received together with the crucifix.
"Hearken, Fatia Negra! my father says that this badly coined piece of gold places your life in my hand.

And know, besides, Fatia Negra, that I have sworn on this Crucified One here that if ever you betray me I will kill you in my fury without thinking twice about the how or where.

It is not well that two such dangerous objects should repose on my heart.
Look! I give them both to you." "Wherefore, Anicza ?" "Take the things, I say, and keep them, for my guardian angel knows, I have told him, that with me they are not in a safe place.

You do not know me yet." The girl burst out crying, and Fatia Negra could no longer soothe her with kisses, and then old Onucz poked his gray shaggy head through the doorway and said: "I have been paid already, Domnule, have you ?" Fatia Negra stroked the girl's hair and face and whispered her not to take on so.
The stitches of the old Roumanian's patience now, at last, gave way altogether.

"Domnule," said he, "would you not, if I earnestly besought you to do so, begin to think of the day on which you intend to become my daughter's husband ?" For a moment Fatia Negra seemed thunderstruck; then he recovered himself and replied in a calm but menacing voice: "If ever it occurs to you to put the question to me again, your head will reach home an hour earlier than yourself." The old man made no reply, but he seized the girl by the hand and led her away with him, returning to the mill with her by the same way that he had come.