It surely belonged to some poor man or other.

It did--and the poor man was the parish-priest.
Henrietta often saw him, a tall, grey-bearded man in a long black cassock, hastening to his little garden; there the reverend gentleman would divest himself of his long habit, produce a rake, and work till late in the evening.

Henrietta fancied at first that was merely a dietetic diversion, but afterwards, when she found him there the next day and the day after that, and at every hour of the day; when she saw him wiping the sweat from his brow in the burning afternoons and leaning wearily at intervals on his rake to rest a while from his labour, then she was persuaded that this work was not a pastime, but a bitter toil for daily bread.
Often times she would very much have liked to ask him how this was, but she was a stranger in these parts and did not understand his language; at last, however, the priest, perceiving the lady one day, peered at her through the palings and wished her good-day in the purest Hungarian, thereby giving her to understand that the language of the gentry was well known to him.
Henrietta begged the old man to leave his labour and come to her.
"It cannot be, your ladyship; his lordship has forbidden me to appear in his courts." "Why ?" "I am always a nuisance." "How so ?" "Because I am always on some begging errand.

At one time the wind carries off the roof of the church; at another, something is broken in the belfry.

It is a year ago now since the school was burnt down, and since then the walls have become overgrown with thistles; the schoolmaster too has gone away, and there is nobody to teach the children, so that they grow up louts and robbers, to the great hurt and harm of the gentry." "But why is not all this put to rights ?" "Because the poor folks are lazy and drunken, and his lordship is stingy." Henrietta was astonished at the old man's words.
"Yes, stingy, that's the word," continued the priest.