"Child, child," he said, "put these thoughts out of your head. I have
done so too. If I could have laid hands on the murderer at first--may
God forgive me--I believe that Pista would not have been buried alone.
But now that is over, and we must submit. After all, six months'
imprisonment is not so small a matter as you suppose. You need only
ask me, I know something about it. Oh, it is hard to spend a winter in
a fireless cell, busy all day in dirty, disagreeable work, shivering at
night on the thin straw bed till your heart seems to turn to ice in
your body, and your teeth chatter so that you can't even swear, to say
nothing of the horrible vermin, the loathsome food, the tyrannical
jailers--a grave in summer is almost better than the prison in winter."
Panna made no reply, and the conversation stopped; but her father's
last words had not failed to make a deep impression upon her
imagination. She clung to the pictures he had conjured before her
mind; she found pleasure in them, painted them in still more vivid
hues, experienced a degree of consolation in them.
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