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‘Count, you’re mad!’ said the fuller laughing, and he gave the young man a playful push with his massive shoulder. Then he added, ‘I can give you some money if you’re short.’

‘Certainly not! If you want the gun then buy it … but no hand-outs. That I won’t accept!’

‘Let’s have a look at it then.’

They got down at Laszlo’s little house and went in. Fabian bought the weapon at once but refused to take the case even though Laszlo pressed it on him. What did he need with the case, said Fabian. It would only get in the way and anyhow it had Laszlo’s name on it. He went out, threw the gun under the seat in the cart and paid for it at once, two hundred crowns in cash, which was an absurdly low price for such a splendid double-barrelled Purdey. Of course Fabian had no idea what a treasure he was getting and even fancied he was being over-generous. Then he drove off.

Laszlo remained alone in the darkening room. Two bank notes lay upon the table before him and so he had enough money to drink himself into oblivion. With money he could drink, and with drink he could forget … and now especially he needed something to wash away that sentimental heart-ache he had momentarily felt when Fabian had seized the Purdey with his great coarse hands and practically run out of the door with it. Why, he wondered, had that action given him such a sudden stab of pain? Why now, suddenly, when so long ago he had decided that anything that reminded him of his lost past was hateful. Oh, well, it was good that he had seen the last of it!

Laszlo was still barefooted since he had taken off his sodden boots and socks on coming into the room. He decided he would have to send old Marton out for brandy so he picked up one of the notes and stepped out onto the hallway that separated the part of the house where he lived from Marton’s own lodging. This was a widish room with a fireplace, behind which was the kitchen that had been used by all the inhabitants of the house when it had lodged two tenant families. He opened the door opposite and there was the old servant crouching down on the floor with a candle beside him: he was stretching the hare-skin on a plank of wood. Caught in the act he stared up as his master too dumbfounded to speak. Laszlo burst out laughing.

‘You old rogue! Now I’ve caught you! Out with it, where did that hare come from?’

‘I caught it.’

‘How? Not while it was on the run, I’ll be bound.’

‘With a snare.’

‘Bravo indeed! I like that. Very clever. Where, may I ask?’

Balogh did not want to answer that. Still, he said, ‘In the forest.’

‘I see! In the forest! Well, if Azbej can steal my forest I suppose I can steal his hares! Why not? Now go over to Bischitz’s and bring me half a litre of brandy, the best he has. We’ll talk about all this later …’

And so Laszlo became a poacher, and his life was changed. In a few days he had learned the essentials from old Marton, how the snares were prepared and where were the most likely places to set them. After a while they would go in turns to the forest, Laszlo in the evening to set eight or ten snares in places they had already planned together, and Marton at dawn to collect the game. They caught two good hares in the first week.

This was the first thing in many years to give Laszlo any pleasure. His fingers, trained to the intricacies of the violin and keyboard, soon adapted to tying the most delicate of snares; and these he hung with such skill and art where his prey had trodden a path at the foot of a thornbush thicket, or along a branch, that neither man nor beast could have said they were there.

There was only one snag: he soon found that hares rarely went deep into the forests when the weather was fine nor even when the sky was merely overcast. Then they stayed out in the meadows and ploughed fields. They went to the woods only when it was exceptionally windy or when there was snow in the air. Then, and only then, was it worth the effort of setting the traps and snares.

This was not enough for Laszlo, for he had become so fond of this new game that he wanted to