The old man kissed the youth's hand and stammered some unintelligible words of blessing.

At that moment the door opened, and little Elise came in with two glasses of wine-soup on a platter from the kitchen.

She placed the fragrant steaming drink on the table, spread beneath it a snow-white diaper, and with her sweet gracious voice invited the stranger to partake thereof, as it would warm and comfort him.

The stranger gently stroked her sweet pretty face, kissed her fair head, and touching glasses with his host, emptied his own at one manly gulp.

"And right good it is, my little hostess! It has made quite a man of me."

The old man needed far more pressing. The little girl had to taste it first to put him in the humour for it. It was quite clear that this adopted father ran a great risk of being spoiled.

Peter Zudar's face was now quite bright and cheerful.

"Ah, sir!" said he to the stranger, "I have never felt before as I feel now. My heart feels as light as if no load had ever lain upon it. I feel myself a man. How long will you remain with me? I hope it will be for a long time."

"It cannot be, my worthy fellow, my vocation summons me elsewhere. By the way, hast thou any apprentices or assistants who require spiritual consolations?"

Peter Zudar's face grew dark at these words.

"I have only one 'prentice," said he at last, "and, sir, waste not any words of the Lord upon him—one must not cast bread before dogs."

"Hast thou no other?"

"Not long ago this 'prentice of mine brought a stranger to my house. Early next morning, before I could see him, he escaped through the loft and over the fence, why or whither I know not to this day. This was not the first case of the kind."

"Then my mission to this house is ended," said the stranger, sighing involuntarily. "Accept from me this little Prayer Book as a souvenir; as often as thou dost read it thou wilt find consolation. On its cover is the name of that lady whom thou must not forget."

The old man pressed the little book to his lips and concealed it in his coffer.

"And I, what shall I give, what can I give to you, my spiritual benefactor, and, after God, my regenerator, as a token of my gratitude; what can I give you, I say?"

The stranger hastily replied:

"If I might be so bold as to ask for something, give me the half of thy treasures, the little embroidered baby's cap."

For a moment the headsman was overpowered with astonishment, then he quickly undid once more the little bundle of clothes, drew forth, the pearl-trimmed cap, regarded it steadily, and a tear fell from his eye as he did so, then he kissed it, and handed it to the stranger without a word.

"If thou dost find it so hard to part with it I will not take it."

"Nay, it will be well disposed of," whispered the old man, and he pressed it into the hand of the youth, who thrust the little relic into his bosom.

"And now God be with thee, and go and lie down, for it is late. As for me, I have a long journey to make before daybreak."

The headsman would have gone with him to help him to saddle his horse, but the stranger restrained him.

"I will arouse thy lad," said he, "I have a word for his ear."

"But the watch-dogs are vicious."

"They will do me no harm."

The stranger would not be persuaded. On reaching the kitchen he wrapped himself in his mantle, and after inquiring whereabouts near the stables the 'prentice usually slept, took a lighted lamp in his hand and went forth into the courtyard.

The mastiffs when they beheld him slunk away, growling timidly and uneasily, and only began to bark with all their throats when they found themselves safely behind the house. Those strange eyes had the effect of a spell on man and beast. Meanwhile the headsman could be heard singing within his room the hymn:

"Ere slumber fall upon mine eyes."

The youth hastened towards the night-quarters of the headsman's 'prentice. On the way thither he encountered the young woman. He pinched her ear and tapped her on the shoulder.

"Get along with you, you naughty boy!" said she.

And then the virago sauntered back into the kitchen, leaving her guest to go where he liked.

His quest was an easy one now. He had only to proceed in the direction from whence the woman had come. Ivan feigned to be asleep.

"Hie! my little brother! up! up!" cried the stranger, and tugged at the fellow's hair till he opened his eyes in terror.

"Well! what's the row? what do you want with me?"

"What do I want? I'll very soon let you know, you rascal, get up, I say!"

Ivan made no very great haste to obey.

The stranger wasted no more words upon him but began buffeting him right and left, till his head waggled on his shoulders.

Full of fury Ivan started up from his couch and fell upon his tormentor; but the latter, with serpentine agility, clutched the fellow's throat tightly with his right hand and pressed his head against the wall, while with his left he held a large pistol in front of his nose.

"You dare to move, you rogue, that's all, and I'll spread you out over the wall like a painted picture."

The lad was awed by the unexpected strength of that fist and the threatening proximity of the pistol.

"But, sir, what in heaven's name have I done?" he babbled. "Who are you, and what do you want of me?"

"Who am I, eh? I am a police-sergeant, you rascal. I am pursuing a deserter, whom you have concealed. Come, speak, what have you done with him?"

Ivan had already begun to recover himself a little.

"I'll tell you the truth, I will indeed, only let me go. It is true that I enticed a deserter hither, but it was not to conceal him."

"You did not bring him hither to conceal him, eh? You lie, you dog. Another falsehood, and I'll tie you to my horse's tail and drag you all the way to Dukla. What did you do with him?"

"I'll tell you everything, Mr. Sergeant, I am a man of my word. It is true that I enticed a young gentleman here, at one time I was his lackey. Later on we became soldiers together. I was subsequently discharged because I was growing blind. I am speaking the truth, I was blind then. The young man had confidence in me, and one day, when he saw me in the street at Dukla, he implored me to hide him."

"What were you doing in Galicia?"

"My master sent me to buy horses, but I could not get any fit for us. I am speaking the truth, I assure you I am."

"Do you know why that man deserted?"

"Yes, he shot his captain because of a woman."

"Did you hear the woman's name?"

"I heard it, but I have forgotten it."

"You lie. You know it now. Come, out with it!"

"I'll say it then—Oh! my throat!—the Countess Kamienszka."

"Did you hear it from him?"

"No, it is my own idea, for he wrote her a letter while about to fly and sent me to the post with it, that is what put them on his track, I should think."

"That is none of your business, where is the man now? Don't lie! I shall know if you do, and in that case I will make an end of you at once."

"He is safe enough now, Mr. Officer, I assure you. He escaped before daybreak, but I denounced him, and he was arrested at the house of his own father."

The stranger dashed the fellow's head furiously against the wall, then flung him on the floor and kicked him.

"You denounced him, eh? Oh! you detestable dog!"

"But what is the matter, sir? Why do you strike me again? Surely I did right? I had him arrested, and they locked him up. He is in the pillory already, I daresay. What harm have I done?"

The stranger made an effort to master his passion, and, controlling his rage, answered coldly,

"What harm have you done, you fool! Haven't you made me take all my trouble in vain, and done me out of the promised reward to those who ferret out and hand over deserters. You dare to meddle with my affairs again, that's all!"

Gnashing his teeth, he kept his pistol grasped firmly in his hand; he would very much have liked to have beaten the fellow's shaggy poll about with the butt end of it.

"Go and saddle my horse this instant!"

Ivan was only too delighted to get clear of the narrow little room where he was so close to this dangerous visitor's muscular fists, and went to saddle the horse. While so employed, he could not help reflecting that the nag was just a trifle too good to be bestridden by a secret police-agent.

The stranger did not wait till he was ready, but hurried after him. Then he quickly mounted his horse, and presented something to Ivan.

"Here, take that!"

The fellow dodged his head, thinking he was about to get another buffet. Then the stranger flung a thaler at his feet.

"Take that, you dog, for your trouble. And now open the gate!"

The horse splashed the 'prentice's eyes and mouth full of mud as the stranger galloped away.

At the sound of the rapidly retreating hoofs the headsman thought to himself: "That was Heaven's own gracious messenger." The headsman's young wife, however, sighed: "Ah! that was a gay gentleman." But the 'prentice growled furiously: "It was old Nick himself."

And with that he picked up the thaler, wiped the mud off it, put it in his pocket, and then turned furiously upon the watch-dog and kicked out one of its teeth.

"Take that for not barking!" cried he.

* * * * *

The whole house of Hetfalu was still in mourning. The doctor from town looked in every day. There were two invalids to be seen to. Young Szephalmi was able indeed to go about, but he was like a worm-eaten plant, there seemed to be but little life within him. Old Hetfalusy, on the other hand, had altogether succumbed to his woe, he had taken to his bed, and was frequently tormented by epileptic fits.

The doctor, worthy Mr. Laurence Sarkantyus, regularly every day deposited his round-headed bamboo cane in the doorway, rubbed his short-cropped grey hair all over with his pocket handkerchief for a minute or two, felt the respective pulses, wrote out prescriptions for unguents and syrups; ordered baths, blisters, clysters, and cold douches—and all to no purpose, as both patients seemed to dwindle away more and more day by day. The only really doubtful point seemed to be, which of the two would bury the other?

One day, when Dr. Sarkantyus was superintending the preparation of a hot bath, a light chaise drove into the courtyard of the castle, from which our unknown friend descended, dressed in a stylish black frock coat, and shod with elegant calfskin shoes. His long hair was combed back and smoothed down behind his ears on both sides, and he had an eyeglass cocked knowingly in one eye. Altogether he looked very different from what he was when we last saw him. His characteristic sang froid, that peculiar rigidity of the lips, that faint furrow in the middle of the forehead between the eyebrows, and the gravity of the somewhat languid face, made the metamorphosis complete. A savant, a scholar of practical experience, a cosmopolitan physician stands before us.

He inquired for Mr. Szephalmi. The servants at once announced his arrival, and presently a broken-down, prematurely aged man appeared, with sunken cheeks, pale withered lips, and staring eyes starting from their sockets, and with but the ghost of their former brilliance and expressiveness.

After the first greetings the stranger handed him a letter. Szephalmi broke it open and read it with an apology for so doing, and all the time his hands trembled.

The letter was from his friend, Ambrose Ligety, who informed him that the bearer of the letter was a famous physician, who had just come from France, and cured maladies by means of magnetism. Would he allow this doctor to make experiments upon the old squire? He had reason to believe that such experiments would not be thrown away.

Szephalmi sighed deeply, and conducted the stranger into the parlour where he beckoned him to take a seat. As yet they had not exchanged a single word professionally.

Then Szephalmi went into an adjoining chamber, where he encountered Dr. Sarkantyus, and showed him the letter.

Dr. Sarkantyus thereupon told him that his honour, Judge Ligety, was a big donkey, that the French doctor was a still bigger one, but that the old gentleman would be the biggest one of all if he allowed himself to be meddled with. Let them try it, however, by all means, if they choose, he added.

Nevertheless, he could not help going out to have a look at this miraculous Scaraboeus that professed to be able to cure men with the tips of its antennae.

The young man greeted him with refined courtesy, and the Doctor anxious to show him that he understood French, addressed him in what he supposed to be that language, a smattering of which he had picked up as far back as the time of the Emperor Napoleon I.

"Vooz-ate oon medesen, monshoo?"

"Oui, monsieur, mon collegue."

"The Devil is your collegue, I am not!—Vooe-ate oon magnetizoor, monshoo?"

"Oui mon cher bonhomme."

"Zate—oon—sharlatanery, monshoo!"

"Comme toute la medecine, monsieur."

Dr. Sarkantyus put both hands behind his back, measured the young man first from head to foot, and then from foot to head, scratched his own head violently, and retreated precipitately.

And now Szephalmi rejoined the stranger, and begged him to come in and see the invalid.

In the adjoining chamber where old Hetfalusy was lying, the curtains were drawn and the floor was covered with carpets, so that no light and no noise should disturb the sufferer.

On the lofty bed lay a motionless figure, with closed eyes and hands folded across his breast, a motionless, helpless bit of earth, worse off indeed than other bits of earth, because it had the consciousness of existence.

The stranger approached the bed, seized one of the cold bony hands, tested the pulse and laid his hand on the invalid's forehead. It might have been a corpse that lay there. The eyes did not open, the blood scarce seemed to flow through the veins, the respiration was hardly perceptible.

"He lies like that all day long," said Szephalmi to the stranger.

The youth took his rings from his hands, asked for a glass of water, and drew the tips of his fingers first round the rim of the glass and then along the eyeballs and the temples of the old man in a downward direction.

Szephalmi stood beside him with a dubious expression. The young man at once observed it.

"You, sir, are also a sufferer," said he; "my method can cure you also."

Szephalmi smiled bitterly—galvanised corpses may smile in the same way.

"The balm that is to cure me does not exist," said he.

"My method does not depend on material substances. You shall see. In an hour's time you shall have actual experience of my treatment. Your cases are very much alike."

"How so?"

"They are due to the same cause. The hidden seat of the evil in both your cases is the mind, both of you are suffering from terrible bereavements, you have lost your wife and two children, the old man his daughter and two grandchildren."

The sick old man drew a long and deep sigh at these words, but his eyes still remained closed. Szephalmi sat down on a chair beside him, hid his face in his hands, and fell a weeping.

The young unknown continued to draw his fingers softly round the rim of the glass, producing a ghostly sort of low wailing sound.

"The water will become magnetic before long," said he, "and then we shall see."

"Yet," pursued he, "there is an even more evil malady than the sorrow of bereavement, and that is—remorse. You are both troubled by the bitter memories of an irrevocable past. You did not always love your children, your grandchildren, as you do now that they are both dead—and this is the greatest affliction of all."

At these words the sick Hetfalusy opened his eyes and gazed at the speaker in astonishment.

Szephalmi stammered sorrowfully:

"Oh, sir! why do you torture us with these words? They make the poor old man's heart bleed."

"I see. Already he begins to revive. The medicine is a violent one, no doubt, but for that very reason all the more efficacious. Suffering supervenes, and in suffering lies the very crisis of the malady. But a few more drops of this water. So! The reaction will be still more violent presently, as you shall see. The sick man will groan and have convulsions. Cold drops of sweat will exude from his temples. After that, however, he will grow calmer, and the cure will be complete if God help us."

The youth continued to magnetise the water.

"The sick man's greatest pain proceeds from the recollection of those years when first you made the acquaintance of his recently deceased daughter."

"What do you know, sir, of those years?" stammered Szephalmi, much surprised.

"As much as a doctor ought to know whose business it is to cure the hearts of his patients. He strongly opposed the marriage of the girl with you. He was wrong in so doing. True affection when excluded from the right road seeks out secret paths for itself. You discovered for yourselves some such secret path."

"Sir!"

"Hush! The patient is groaning. The cure is operating. These secret relations had consequences which could not be hidden. Your wife became a mother before she was yet your wife. Pardon me, sir, but it is as a doctor that I address you."

"How do you come to know all this?" faltered Szephalmi, in a scarcely audible voice. "And when it was kept so secret too!" he thought to himself. The same instant the old man made a violent effort to rise from his bed and compel the speaker to be silent.

"It is having a strong effect, a very strong effect," said the youth, feeling the sick man's pulse. "His pulse is beating ten strikes more a minute than it did just now. Squire Hetfalusy," he resumed, "on hearing these evil tidings flew into a violent temper; he was always a very passionate man. He told his daughter that if she did not kill her child, he himself would kill the pair of them. He would have married her to someone else, to a rich man of high rank. This unlucky accident must be kept secret. The girl was very miserable. Her brother stood forth in her defence, and took her part against his own father, and his father cursed him in consequence, expelled him from the house, and forbade him ever to show his face there again. And the uninvited guest, the little suckling who had no right to be born, also atoned for its fault; they said that it was dead. Oh, how the sick man is pressing my hand with his cramped fingers! This method of treatment is working wonders."

Szephalmi sank back into the depths of his arm-chair and shivered as if with an ague fit.

"The rich man, however, abandoned the bride on the very day of the wedding, and in that same year the elder Hetfalusy suddenly grew grey. You see, sir, I am well informed. A doctor ought to know every little detail relating to a case if he is to cure the patient. The father was now ready to let his daughter marry her former lover, but you were no longer inclined for such a marriage. One day, however, the girl went to you of her own accord, with the face of a lunatic, and threatened..."

"Hush, sir! for Heaven's sake!"

"Ah! how much more rapidly his blood is circulating. His muscles are twitching, his lips are convulsed, his arteries begin to throb—the girl threatened to reveal the fact that she had killed her child and so mount the scaffold, unless you made her your wife."

The sick man began to throw about his arms, and cold drops of sweat, like transparent pearls, welled forth from his forehead. Szephalmi arose and walked about the room wringing his hands.

"Who told you that?" he asked the stranger, suddenly planting himself right in front of him.

"Softly, sir, you are disturbing me. The patient is about to take a favourable turn, look how he is sweating. His sufferings are violent, and I am glad to see them, it shows that his vital energy is returning. Repose is a symptom of death, pain is a sign of life. Let us go on with our magnetising. These long passes from the temples to the shoulders work wonders. The whole soul of the sick man now clings to the thought that just because he himself cast forth his first grandchild, which he hated, therefore God took from him the other two which he loved. Notice, sir! that heaving bosom, those fiery red eyes, those swelling lips—all of them are in their way the interpreters of that one thought. God has punished him and you, the father and the grandfather; He has removed from you the blessing which you rejected of your own accord, and now you stand by yourselves in the world, so lonely, so comfortless, joined to each other by nothing but the recollection of a terrible loss."

Szephalmi buried his head among the pillows of the speechless invalid and sobbed bitterly.

Then the youth arose and took the old man's hand in his hand, gazed steadily into his burning eyes with his eyes, and with a voice of exaltation thus addressed the unhappy wretch, who seemed to be bearing in his bosom all the torments of Hell:

"Suppose someone were to come here to you now and say, 'Behold! that outcast child, whom you wished to think of as dead, nay, or murdered! whose birth you cursed, and whose death you prayed for, I now give her back to you!'—how would you feel?"

The sick man there and then drew the youth's hand up to his lips, and with an effort raised himself up in his bed. His lips were wide open, his tongue babbled something unintelligible, while Szephalmi regarded him with amazement, and tugged away at his own hair like one possessed.

The youth put his hand into his bosom and drew forth the little baby's cap embroidered with rosebuds and forget-me-nots, and held it up before the two men.

"What if someone were to restore to you the darling wearer of that little cap? What if I were to tell you that a single consolation still remained to you, an angel sent from Heaven in whom you could learn to rejoice once more? What if I were to tell you that she had grown up as gentle and as beautiful as those angels who are permitted to minister to the earth?"

At these words the father knelt down at the stranger's feet and kissed his hands in a transport of joy, while old Hetfalusy, in a sort of paroxysm threw himself off the bed, made a snatch at the little pearl-embroidered cap, and exclaimed in a piercing voice:

"Elise!"

The remedy had indeed been efficacious. The old man was actually sitting up and had recovered the use of his tongue.

The broken-down old man, who had been in a state of collapse, now violently seized the youth's arm with his still tremulous hand, and groped his way along it till he was able to touch the little cap with his lips.

"Elise, Elise, wore that! How beautiful she was!" he cried.

"Where is she?" sobbed Szephalmi, hiding his face in his hands.

"Now she is indeed beautiful. She is in safe hands too. She has found a loving father who guards her as the apple of his eye. And she is wise as well as beautiful. Her glorious eyes are as blue as the expanse of heaven, and radiant with innocence and goodness. Her lips are as small as wild strawberries, and when she smiles her pretty little face is full of dimples."

"Yes, yes, she promised to be like that!" stammered Szephalmi, pressing the stranger's hand to his heart.

But old Hetfalusy was sitting up in bed and insisted upon getting up.

"I am going. I am going for her. Lead me to her. I will fetch her."

"Softly, softly, sir. Lie down again! Remember that I am a doctor, and I have still to cure you. You must continue to lie in bed for some time, and cannot yet see your grandchild. The girl is with folks who love her. Her adopted father is all love, you have been all hatred. You must first be cured of that evil sickness."

"Of what sickness? I am no longer sick. I am quite cured."

"Of hatred. You have a cast-off son who perhaps at this very moment is standing on the threshold of destruction. You have no thought for him. You have still some hard stones in your heart. Those stones must first of all be pulverized and dissolved. Now if this son of yours were standing here, and you were to stretch out your arms to him and say, 'My child!' then you would be cured, then you might very well say, 'I am no longer sick.'"

"And shall I not see my child till then?" wailed Szephalmi.

"Sir, you are very exacting."

"Ask of me what you will, I place all my property at your disposal. If you will not bring my child hither, at least take me where I may see her. You need not tell her I am her father, I only want to exchange a word or two with her. Whatever price you may put on such a service I shall not consider it too great."

"Sir, I am no impostor who wants to make money out of you. The only recompense I claim for restoring to you your lost child is that you welcome back the youth who was driven from this home. I have odd desires sometimes, but I stick to them."

The young man shrugged his shoulders, refolded the little pearl-trimmed cap, thrust it into his bosom again, and coldly replied:

"And if we cannot save this young man?"

"Then I shall keep my secret and you will never know where the girl is."

Old Hetfalusy sighed deeply.

"Bring me pen and paper," said he to his son-in-law.

The latter looked at him as if he did not understand.

The old man insisted impatiently.

"Place the table here and give me writing-materials, I say."

When he had got what he wanted he beckoned to the stranger.

"Listen, sir, to what I write," said he. Then he arose from his bed, took up the pen, and wrote with a trembling hand the following letter:

"TO GENERAL VERTESSY,

"SIR,—By a divine miracle I have recovered within the last hour my power of speech, and the use of my fingers. The very first word I am able to speak and to write I address to you who have such good cause to hate me, and that word is—mercy! I ask of you mercy towards that son of mine to whom I myself have never shown mercy. I ask for mercy from you who in your judicial capacity have never shown mercy to anyone. You know full well that all the faults of this child of mine are due entirely to me. You know that my cruelty has made life a wilderness to him and filled him with cynical bitterness—he who was always so tender-hearted that even an angry look was pain to him. Behold, sir! the one man who could venture to insult you with impunity now lies in the dust before you, and begs for your compassion. And in order that such compassion may not appear as rust on your iron character, show this letter to the world and say: 'My mortal enemy has wept before me in the dust in order that I might condescend to stoop down and raise him up.' Your humbled, eternally faithful servant,

"BENJAMIN HETFALUSY."

"Would you look at this letter, sir?" asked the old man, turning towards the stranger—and there were tears in his eyes.

"I thank you," faltered the stranger, and he himself hastened to fold up the letter and seal it.

"Szephalmi will deliver it."

"Nay, sir, I will see to that myself."

"You will? But who, then, are you?"

"That I will tell you—perhaps—some day."

The old man took the youth's hand in both his, and pressing them warmly, said in a voice that trembled with emotion:

"God help you!"

At that moment Dr. Sarkantyus peeped in at the door, and was amazed to see the old man talking and writing the address on a letter with his own right hand, while his whole countenance was warm with feeling. This magnetic cure was truly marvellous.

He approached the youth and, bowing respectfully, remarked,

"Mossoo! vooz ate oon anshantoor!"

"Possibly, but why should we not speak Hungarian?" replied the other smiling.

"Then you are not French?" asked the dumfounded doctor.

"Why should I be? It does not follow because a person may have just come from France that therefore he is a Frenchman, does it?"

"All the better pleased, I am sure, my dear colleague!"—and then it suddenly occurred to him that only a short time ago he had said to him in Hungarian: "The Devil may be your colleague, I'm not!"

"All you have to do now is to give the patient tonics; that won't interfere with my cure. I shall come back again in a few days, and by that time I hope he will be quite strong. Till then, let us trust in God!"

The young unknown then hastened to his carriage, Szephalmi accompanying him the whole way.

Everyone who had recently seen the old man apparently on the verge of the grave, and now beheld him completely changed, going about with a lively irritable temper and rosy cheeks, were amazed at this wonder-doctor who could perform cures by the mere touch of his finger-tips.

"He must be a magician!" said they.

* * * * *

The unknown next presented himself at the residence of General Vertessy.

They told him this was not the official hour for being received; at such times the General was wont to be with his wife. He replied:

"So much the better; what I have to tell him will be better told in the presence of his wife."

The General was informed of this odd wish, and took to the idea so kindly that he ordered the young man to be instantly admitted.

And, in a few moments, a handsome, courtly youth stood before him, who greeted the General frankly and the General's wife ceremoniously. In his hands he carried a small forage-cap with a border of thin gold thread round it, and his whole style and bearing testified to the fact that, somewhere or other, he had been brought up as a soldier.

"I beg your pardon, General, for disturbing you so unconscionably, and robbing you of your most precious moments, but the business on which I have come admits of no delay. My name is Count Kamienszky, I come from Poland, and I bring a petition in favour of young Hetfalusy, who deserted in the belief that he had shot his captain."

The General's face grew suddenly cold. He had become a cast-iron statue, just as he was wont to be when on parade.

"From whom is your petition?"

"From the very officer for whom his bullet was intended. That bullet did not strike home, but stuck fast in his laced jacket; yet it was well aimed too at thirty paces, just in the middle of the heart."

"And what does the officer want?"

"Pardon for the deserter. He admits that he was in the wrong. He insulted a woman—I speak with absolute certainty, for I am that woman's relation—and he would now make good his fault by imploring pardon for the man who stood forth to wipe out that insult."

"To implore pardon is not enough. What can he say in the man's defence?"

"He certifies that the youth was a pattern of soldierly honour, valour, and discipline, that his comrades idolized him, his superiors liked him, and they now unanimously unite in this petition for his pardon. I have brought letters with me to prove all that I say; be so good as to peruse them!"

The General took the letters and read them through. He discovered more than one old comrade, more than one dear friend among the names written there. The young man had spoken the truth. But what was the use of it all. The claims of duty only became the more urgent.

"Sir," said the General coldly, folding up the letters again and placing them on the table, "I gather from your manner and bearing that you were brought up as a soldier."

"You are right, General. I passed the years of my childhood at a military institution, and a little time ago I was a soldier myself."

"In that case you must have some notion of the absolute necessity of the strictest discipline so long as the soldier is under arms."

"I am well aware of it, and it was not that which made me abandon a military career. If he whom I am now addressing were to say to me, 'I stand here as a judge,' I should simply withdraw, knowing that my cause was lost. But, sir, I am now addressing the man that is in you, a man with a heart, a being blessed with human feeling, 'tis to him that I would speak."

And the large black eyes of the stranger had such a heart-searching expression in them that the General turned away from him.

Then, as if still in search of hope and confidence, the youth glanced in the direction of the General's wife, and her bright eyes gave him in return such a look of encouragement, as if to bid him not to fear, for they two were certainly at one in the matter.

But now the General turned sharply round upon the stranger again.

"Do you know what I am commonly called, whether from fear, or fun, or respect, I will not say, that is all one to me, but do you know what they commonly call me?"

"Yes, they call you 'the man of iron,' yet even iron melts in a smelting-furnace."

"Do you fancy there in such a smelting-furnace in the world?"

"I hope so. I have got one more letter for you. I ought to have given it to you first of all, but I have kept it till last. The handwriting will be familiar to you. Take it and read it through."

The General was dumfounded when he recognised the handwriting in which the address was written. The hand which had penned those lines had been somewhat tremulous, that was plain from the irregularity of the script, but he recognised it perfectly all the same.

As he regarded it he grew a shade paler.

He opened the letter, and his eyes remained riveted on the very first line as if he were too astonished to proceed any further.

"Read on, General, I beg. Read it out aloud," murmured the youth; "we shall see whether the iron will melt or not."

The General stared stiffly for a time at the young man, then he read the letter through in silence, finally refolding it and thrusting it into his breast-pocket.

Then he turned to the window, and remained for a long time in a brown study.

Suddenly he turned once more towards the youth and said:

"Sir, devise some means whereby I may save this man. Find, I say, some way or mode of salvation compatible with soldierly honour, and I will pursue it."

The youth, surprised, overcome, rushed towards the General, seized his muscular hand, and would certainly have kissed it had not the General drawn it back.

Vertessy was very near losing his composure.

"Stay here!" said he. "There you have," pointing at Cornelia, "a confederate who would also take the stronghold by assault. Deliberate together, and devise some expedient. I leave you to yourselves."

And with that he quitted the room, leaving the young man alone with his wife.

And when he had gone, when the door had closed to behind him, the figure of the strange youth lost its soldierly bearing, and his limbs with a painful spasm subsided into that picturesque pose in which artists generally represent Niobe, or the Daughters of Sion mourning by the willows of Babylon. Every trace of energy and vigour vanished from his face, his eyelids closed over his tearful eyes, and his lips parted with an expression of the deepest emotion. Once more he raised his languishing head to show his strength of mind, but the effort was useless. In the presence of a woman such affectation was no longer possible, and when his eyes met those of Cornelia, he suddenly burst into tears, fell sobbing on his knees before her, seized her hand, pressed it convulsively to his breast, and trembling and gasping, said to her in a voice full of agony:

"Oh, madame, by the tender mercies of God, I implore you to help me and not forsake me."

Cornelia regarded him with wondering eyes, her shrewd intellect had already deciphered the enigma, but her eyes still looked doubtful.

"Who are you?" she asked.

The stranger covered his blushing face with both hands and sobbed forth:

"A woman, an unhappy woman, who loves, who is beside herself, who is ready to die for him she loves."



CHAPTER IX.

THE PLAGUE.

There is a mighty Potentate among us here below, the secrets of whose existence are still unknown to our wise men, although they have a lot to tell us about her power; a Potentate whom they have not yet taught us to fear, or else everybody would not still be turning to her full of hope.

This Potentate is not Hell, but the Earth.

Yes, the good, the blessed, the peaceful Earth. She is not violent like the other elements, fire, water, and air. She calmly allows herself to be trampled underfoot; lets us make great wounds in her; lets us load her broad back with cities and towns; crush her bones by driving deep mining-shafts into her—and for all that she allows us who plague her so, to live and multiply in the midst of her dust.

Has anyone ever inquired of her: Oh, my sovereign mistress! thou good and blessed Earth! art thou pleased with the deeds we do upon thee? Can it please thee, perchance, to see us root up thy beauteous fresh woods from off thee, leaving thy tormented body all naked in the blaze of the Sun? Can it please thee to see us constrain thy flowing rivers within narrow basins, dry up thy lakes and leave thee athirst? Can it please thee to see us tear open thy body, break it up into little fragments, and compel these fragments to produce meat and drink for us? Can it please thee to see us drench thy flowery meads with blood and hide away the bones of our dead in thy bosom? Can it please thee that we live upon thee here, and bless and curse thee that thou mayest nourish us, and rack our brains as to how we may best multiply our species in those portions of the earth where men are still but few?

Nevertheless, the Earth patiently endures all this ill-treatment. Only now and then does she tremble with a fleeting horror, and then the palaces heaped upon her totter to their very foundations. Yet are there any among us who understand the hint?

And then for centuries afterwards she gives not a single sign of life. She puts up with her naughty children as every good mother does. She overlooks and hides away their faults and endures in their stead the visitations of Heaven. She is never angry with them, she never punishes them. She cherishes and nourishes them, and expects no gratitude in return. She only pines and pines, she only frets within herself, she only grieves and is anxious about the fate of her children, her selfish, heartless children: grief and anguish, the nastiness and the wickedness of man slowly undermine her strength and suddenly the Earth sickens.

Oh! how man falls down and perishes when the earth is sick!—like the parasitical aphis-grub from the jaundiced leaves!

New sorts of death for which there is no name appear in the midst of the terrified peoples, and a breath of air carries off the bravest and the strongest. In vain they shut themselves up within stone walls, anoint their bodies with salutary balms, and hold their very breath. Death invisible stalks through the fast-closed doors and seeks out them that fear him. No vitiated air, no contagion is necessary; men have but to hear the name of this strange death and they tremble and die.

This is no mere mortal malady, the Earth, the Earth herself is sick.

* * * * *

And how comical too this terror is!

I remember those times. I was only a child then, I fancy, and the general terror affected me but little; nay, the novelty of the situation rather diverted me. We were not allowed to go to school, we had a vacation for an indefinite period at which I was much delighted I must confess. Our towns were separated from each other by military cordons, and all strangers passing to and fro were rigorously examined. My good father, whose gentle, serious face is one of my most pleasant memories, buckled on his silver-hilted sword and went off himself to mount guard somewhere. I had greater confidence in that sword than in the whole English navy. My blessed, thoughtful, mother hung round each of our necks little bags with large bits of camphor in them, in the beneficial effects of which we believed absolutely, and strictly forbade us to eat melons and peaches. And we were good dutiful children and strictly obeyed her commands. And yet in that very year, just as if Nature had resolved to be satirical at our expense, our gardens and orchards overflowed with an abundance of magnificent fruit. And there we allowed them all to rot. We had a doctor in those days, a fine old fellow, who, when the danger was at its height, went fearlessly from house to house. He had white hair, rosy cheeks, and a slim, erect figure, and was always cracking jokes with us. He used to say: "No funk, no risk of Death!" and would pick up the beautiful golden melons before our eyes and eat them with the best appetite in the world, and he took no harm from them, for he feared no danger. You had only to live regularly and trust in God, he used to say. He would laugh when we asked him: "Is it true that the air is full of tiny scarce visible insects, the inhaling of which brings about the disease?" "If you believe in these insects you had better keep your mouths shut lest they fly into them while you are talking," he would say. And subsequently when we heard the drowsy monotonous tolling of the bells and the funeral dirges sung day after day, morning and evening, beneath our windows, and saw orphans following in the track of the lumbering corpse-carts; when they told us that everyone in the neighbouring houses had died off in two days, and we saw all the windows of the house opposite fast-closed, and not a soul looking through them; at such a time it was good to fold one's hands in prayer and reflect that we were still all together, and that not one of us had been taken away, but God had preserved us from all calamity. Our hope was weak, for there was no foundation for it to build upon, but our faith was strong and all-sufficing.

Such is the sole impression I have retained of that memorable year.

Ah! elsewhere that same year was not content with embroidering its mourning robe with mere tears, it used blood also, and taught the land a twofold lesson at a heavy cost.

* * * * *

The circular letters issued by the county authorities flew from village to village, informing the local sages of the approaching peril of which even the well-formed knew no more than they had known ten years before, no more than they actually know now.

The local sages, that is to say the justices and the schoolmasters, were directed to explain to the ignorant people the contents of these circular letters.

Explain indeed! Men whose own knowledge was of the most elementary description, men who looked for supernatural causes in the most natural phenomena, were to explain what was still a profound mystery to the collective wisdom of the world!

Mr. Korde, whom we remember as one of the two schoolmasters of Hetfalu, accordingly, by dint of bellowing, gathered all his subjects around him. It was the day before breaking up for the holidays, and drawing from his pocket the folded and corded vellum document, he gave them to understand that he was going to explain it to them. They, in their turn, were to explain it when they got home to their dear parents.

"Blockheads!" this was his usual mode of addressing his jeunesse doree—"blockheads! you see here before you the letter patent of His Honour, the magistrate, signifying that all the schools are to be shut up, and the whole village is to be on the alert, inasmuch as a terrible disease, called the 'morbus,' is about to enter the kingdom. When the morbus lays hold of anybody the individual in question has not even time to look over his shoulder, but falls down dead on the spot. Down he drops, and there he stays.

"The morbus begins in this way. The gall overflows into the vital essences, and becomes gall-fever or cholera, consequently take care you don't aggravate me.

"Moreover, the morbus in question is to be found inside this year's melons, apricots, and all sorts of fruit; so every man jack of you who doesn't want to be a dead 'un mustn't go guzzling berries and such like."

Here a couple of Scythians from the northern counties began squabbling loudly on the back benches.

"Hie, there, you blockhead! Mike Turlyik, I know it is you—what was I talking about?"

"You was saying that—that—that—no more apricots were to be sneaked from his reverence's garden."

"Come out here, my son, wilt thou? I've a word to say in thine ear!"

And he leathered the unfortunate Mike soundly. Yet the lad after all had reasoned not illogically, for he had started from the assumption that the prohibition in question had been inserted in the letter patent for the express purpose of scaring the people away from the priest's orchard, his reverence being the only man in the village who cultivated fruit-trees.

"And now let us return to the matter in hand. Listen now, you addlepates!

"Bathing, too, is very dangerous just now, and, in fact, every sort of washing with cold water, for thereby the vital essence within a man is easily upset. On the other hand, brandy-drinking is very wholesome, for thereby the volume of spiritual essence in man is at any rate increased. Work on an empty stomach is also dangerous, as also are too much reflection and brain-racking. On the other hand the eating of roast meat and as little walking about in the sun as possible are very profitable."

This passage delighted the addlepates immensely.

"Inasmuch, however, as it is quite possible that a man from a neighbouring village might easily convey to us in his jacket or knapsack this morbus, which, by the way, is as catching as sheep-ticks; therefore it is ordered that nobody is to quit his own village, either by cart or on foot, and no stranger is to be admitted from without. Should anyone require, however, to pass through the district, he must first of all be locked securely in a cowshed beyond the limits of the village, and there his clothes must be well smoked ('fumigated' they call it), and he himself well doused in a ducking-tub, and if he has any coin about him it must be rubbed with ashes, which life-imperilling occupation will be duly attended to by the local gipsies."

After a pause, Mr. Korde resumed his learned instructions as follows:

"If, nevertheless, anyone, despite these wise regulations, should catch the morbus, there is only one antidote, the name whereof is Vismuthum. Vismuthum, vismuthi, neuter gender, second declension. In Hungarian viszmuta, in Slovak vismuthium, in English bismuth."

At this point the worthy preceptor was overcome by a violent fit of coughing, for he was now bound by his directions to explain the properties of this mysterious substance whose name he himself had just that moment learnt for the first time from his letter patent.

"Well, now! listen all of you, for I shall examine you presently upon all that I have been telling you. Vismuthum is a powder, or rather a fluid, or perhaps 'twere better to say a powder of a—a quite indefinable colour. It is prepared in all sorts of ways, and has no particular odour, and in substance much resembles piskotum.[2] Everyone who partakes of it instantly becomes quite well again. First of all it is to be taken in a coffee spoon (his reverence will supply the spoon gratis), and then, if that has no effect, in a tablespoon. If that also has no effect, then two tablespoons must be taken, and so on in increasing doses, until the morbus leaves the patient altogether. It is to be had in the apothecary's shop at Kassa, so whoever does not go and get some has only himself to blame if he dies. Poor men will receive it gratis from Dr. Sarkantyus, and those who won't take it willingly will have it crammed down their throats by force, and it will be also sprinkled in all the wells of drinking water that the people may get some of it that way. It will therefore be much better to make the acquaintance of vismuthum in a friendly manner, than go to the devil one way or other for not taking it."

[Footnote 2: Antimony.]

The young people appreciated this last witticism and roared with laughter.

One of Mr. Korde's cubs took the liberty, however, of stretching out two fingers, which signified that he had a question to ask.

"Well, Slipik, out with it!"

"Mr. Rector, is the stuff sweetish like?"

"Asine! have I not told you what it was? You have not been attending; hold out your paw!"

The urchin got a smart rap on the palm of his hand with the ruler.

"And now the other!"

And so both hands smarted instead of his ears.

"And now, Guszti Klimpa, stand out and repeat to these blockheads what I have been saying."

Guszti Klimpa was the head boy, because his father rented the village pot-house, and he himself wore the best jacket of them all, so he was the master's favourite. The urchin hastily pocketed the pen-knife with which he had hitherto been carving his bench, blushed deeply in his embarrassment, and his eyes almost started from his head in his endeavours to find an answer to the question put to him.

"Well, my son, come, what did I say now?"

The lad took a plunge at random.

"Nixnus is a fluid which becomes a powder, which, can be made from anything, and very much resembles a piskota."[3]

[Footnote 3: Biscuit.]

"Bene, proestanter, eminentissime. Only not piskota but piskotum;[4] not feminine, you know, but neuter gender, second declension."

[Footnote 4: Antimony.]

So Guszti Klimpa returned to his seat very well satisfied with himself.

"Moreover, this I must add—and mind you tell it to your parents when you get home—that nothing is so good in these dangerous times as to drink one glass of brandy in the early morning on an empty stomach, another in the afternoon, a third on lying down, and as many times more as one feels any foreign substance in the stomach. That is the best remedy of all. And, Guszti Klimpa! mind you don't forget to inform your dear father that your schoolmaster, the rector, is very much afraid of the morbus, and that my spirit flask is still with you."

Guszti Klimpa's face assumed a pious expression at this reminder, and shoving beneath his hymn-book the shaft of his quill pen out of which he was manufacturing a pocket pistol, he promised to deliver the message at home.

"And now let us sing a hymn and say a prayer. And after that there will be no more school till the morbus has departed."

Great was the joy of the promising youths at these words. Guszti Klimpa fired off his improvised pistol underneath the bench, and the pellet hit Mr. Korde full on the nose, whereupon he well trounced Joska Slipik, though he knew very well that he was not the culprit.

Whilst the wrongfully flogged urchin was still howling, the others began singing the hymn. So long as the low notes predominated Mr. Korde's voice was alone audible, but at the crescendoes the youthful believers had it all their own way, and shrieked till the windows rattled, the rector beating time the while by lightly tapping the heads of the Faithful with his ruler whenever they departed from the impracticable melody.

After that, Guszti Klimpa grappled with a prayer, and recited the morning devotions instead of the evening devotions by mistake, a lapse of which the rector, however, took no notice. The Amen was no sooner uttered than the youngsters, with a wild yell, made a solid rush for the door, bearing in mind Mr. Korde's laudable habit on such occasions of lambing it into the hindermost by way of protesting against the general uproar. When the whole class was fairly out in the street again, its delight at being released from school for some time to come was too much for it, and in the exuberance of its high spirits it fell tooth and nail upon the Lutheran lads who were playing at ball in front of their own church, broke a couple of their heads, scribbled: "Vivat vacatio" on the walls of every house they came to, slammed to every gate they passed, and roused every dog in the village to fury pitch—thus giving the whole world to understand that the rector, Mr. Michael Korde, had given his promising pupils an extraordinary holiday, because the morbus was coming, and it was not good for people to congregate together at such times.

* * * * *

And now the village ancients and the women were trooping home from church.

Every face was dominated by an expression of dumb terror.

In the church the priest also had read aloud the letter from the county authorities, adding a short discourse of his own to the effect that a calm confidence in the providence of God and a clear Christian conscience were worth far more than all the medicaments, cordons, and bismuth powder in the world.

"We are all, however, in the hands of God," he said, "and if we live well we shall die well. A righteous man need never fear Death."

The old hag, "the death-bird," was crouching there on the church steps with a bundle of healing herbs in her lap, and her crutch under her armpits, and with her chin resting on her knee. She kept counting all who came out of the church: "One! two! three!" Every time she came to three she began all over again—every third person was superfluous.

And now all had gone, only she remained behind, she and shaggy Hanak, the bellringer.

After the departure of the people a little white dog came running along, and, as often happens, peeped into the church.

"Clear out of that!" cried the sexton, flinging the large church door key after him.

The aged sybil lifted a skinny finger and shook it menacingly at the sexton.

"Hanak! shaggy Hanak! Why dost thou drive away the dog? I tell thee, and I tell thee the truth, that it were better for thee, aye! and for others also, if they could be as such dogs instead of the two-legged beasts they really are, for ere long we shall be in a world where not the voice of thy bell, but the howling of dogs will accompany the dead to their last resting-place. Therefore trouble not thyself about the dogs, Hanak, shaggy Hanak."

The bellringer durst not reply. He closed the church door softly, got out of the woman's way, and while he hastened off, it seemed to him as if his head was dizzy from some cause or other, and his feet were tottering beneath him.

When he handed the church door key over to the priest, his reverence gave him to understand that by order of the authorities the church bells were not to be tolled for the dead during the outbreak of the plague to avoid alarming the people.

As he went home that evening shaggy Hanak's head waggled from side to side, as if every hair upon it was a heavy debt. As he went along he heard all the dogs howling. Well, henceforth they would have to follow the dead to their graves.

After that Hanak had not the heart to go home, but sought comfort in the pot-house, where the village sages were already sitting in council together and discussing the problems of the Future.



CHAPTER X.

A LEADER OF THE PEOPLE.

The other rector, Mr. Thomas Bodza, had read a lot of things in the course of his life.

He had read the history of Themistocles who, with a handful of Greeks, converted millions of Persians into rubbish heaps; he had read of the exploits of the valiant Marahas, who, when one of their warriors flung his sandal into the air and uttered thrice the word: "Marha, Marha, Marha!" swept the Roman legions from the face of Pannonia; he had learnt from the Spanish historian all about Ferdinand VII., who chased the Moors from the Alhambra where they had held sway for hundreds of years; he had read of the Scythian Bertezena, who, starting in life as a simple smith had delivered his race from the grinding yoke of the Geougs;—and finally he had not only read but learnt by heart all the great works of our savants in which it is demonstrated with the most exact scholarship and the most inflexible logic, that the Greeks, the Marahas, the Spaniards, the Scythians, and, in fact, all the most famous nations of the earth have originated from a single powerful race which numbers among its chiefest branches, such noble nations as the Russians, the Poles, the Bohemians, and the Croats, &c., inasmuch as the languages of all these various nations are so crammed with original Slavonic words, that if these words were suddenly demanded back from them by their rightful owners, any sort of verbal intercourse amongst the nations in question would be henceforth impossible.

All this Thomas Bodza had read and crammed into his head. Once he had even written a dissertation in which, with astonishing profundity and ingenuity, he had demonstrated the striking resemblance and the identical significance of the Greek ο ν and the Slavonic tiszi, which dissertation was received with general applause in the local mutual improvement society where he recited it.

In his library were to be found all those learned tomes which do our dear native land the honour of only noticing her in order to disparage her, attributing inter alia a Slavonic origin to all our chief towns, and forcing upon us the crushing conviction that we Hungarians cannot even call a single water-course our own, inasmuch as all our rivers rise in other countries—certainly a most depressing, poverty-stricken state of things, especially as regards our cattle dealers and boatmen, who, of course, can do so little without water.

After long-continued scientific investigations, materially assisted by a vigorous imagination, Thomas Bodza had constructed a map of his own, in which the various countries appeared in a shape diverging essentially from that which they actually occupy, and indeed only the figure of the virgin Europa, and the outlines of the unchangeable water-courses made one suspect that it was a representation of the old world at all. Not only did the boundaries of the realm suffer strange permutations, but the classical termination "grad,"[5] unusual and unnatural as it seemed to all but the initiated, was tacked on pretty frequently to the names of purely Hungarian towns both small and great; and there was also noticeable this slight and fanciful deviation from the strict truth, to wit, that whereas cities of unappropriatable Asiatic origin like Debreczen, Kecskemet, Nagy-Koeros, and others, appeared degraded into insignificant villages by being marked with tiny points, every little twopenny-halfpenny Slavonic village in the Carpathians was magnified into a cathedral city, or starred to represent a formidable fortress.

[Footnote 5: The Slavonic word for "town," thus Constantinople is Tsargrad.]

The worthy paedagogue used to sit brooding over this map for hours. He would draw his boundaries with a pair of compasses, construct imaginary roads from town to town, and reconstruct a fortress from the imposing ruins in the bed of the River Waag. Nay, he even ventured upon the audacious experiment of cutting through the mountain chain separating the River Hernad from the River Poprad, and uniting these two rivers (in a state of nature they flow in diametrically opposite directions) into one broad continuous water-course, thus bringing together all the various branches of that scattered family of kindred nations which dwells between the White Sea and the Black.

In those days very little was known among us of railways beyond the rumour (the newspapers mentioned it as a sort of curiosity) that a certain Englishman, called William Griffiths, wanted to make a wheel-track of iron. Thomas Bodza's idea therefore of a continuous European waterway almost deserved to be called sublime.

Such exaltation is innocent enough in itself. It is found, more or less, in every race, and is especially vigorous wherever an impoverished, orphaned stock is aware of the existence of a powerful, dominating, gigantic kinsman beyond a mountain range.[6] Unfortunately, however, this exaltation did not remain an empty poetical dream in the bosom of our village paedagogue.

[Footnote 6: E.g., The Slovaks in north Hungary, who know that Russia lies beyond the Carpathians.]

Even as a student his heart was full of a bitter hatred of everything Hungarian. He went to school at Pressburg, that peculiar town where the traders are German, the gentry Hungarian, and the poor Slavonic. The traders pick holes in the gentry and the poor folks hate them both. He saw the heady young squires of the Alfoeld[7] idle away their time at school in unedifying contrast to the diligent sober conduct of himself and his friends, and yet the masters treated them with the greatest distinction. Some of them scarcely attended the lectures at all, and yet they sat on the front benches. They were able to have private lessons, and thus easily outstripped the poor scholars who had to slave night and day to keep pace with them. They marched about in fine clothes and got their poorer fellow-students to copy out their exercises for them. At the public examinations they declaimed Hungarian verses with such emphasis, with such a fire of enthusiasm, that even that portion of the audience which did not understand a word of their fulminating periods cheered them vociferously, whereas he, Thomas Bodza, recited the affected, pedestrian, poetic effusions of the Slavonic School of self-improvement without the slightest effect. Even in the rude arena of material strength the Asiatic race showed a determination to be paramount. The youths of the Alfoeld were the better wrestlers, more skilful in gymnastic exercises, and in all serious encounters asserted themselves with more self-confidence and greater enthusiasm; they boasted ostentatiously of their nationality, and scornfully looked down upon his.

[Footnote 7: The great Hungarian plain.]

And then, too, during the sessions of the Diet, when the haughty Hungarian gentry flocked to the capital from every quarter of the realm with extraordinary pomp and splendour, a new and clamorous life filled all the streets, and the brilliant visitors monopolized every yard of free space. It frequently happened, in the evenings, that a dozen or so of high-spirited jurati would join hand to hand, occupy the whole road, and squeeze against the wall any shabby-coated alienist who happened to come in their way. The poor devil might be carrying home his meagre jusculum[8] under his mantle in a coarse unvarnished pot, with a piece of brown bread stuck into it, revolving in his mind the whole time the story of another poor scholar in days gone by who, once upon a time, used, in the same way, to carry home his humble mess of pottage in just such another coarse earthenware pot, and who, nevertheless, came to be one of the princes, one of the great men of Hungary, with a great big coat of arms, and castles to dwell in. He forgot, however, to reflect that he, with whom he compared his own fate, was gifted at the outset with intellect and virile courage, qualities with which he himself had only been very modestly equipped by nature; their common misery in early life was the sole point of resemblance between them.

[Footnote 8: Pottage.]

These first bitter impressions never left his mind. He registered the disfavour of fortune and the fruits of his own limited capacity among the grievances of the oppressed nationality to which he belonged. Years of want, his little dilapidated dwelling—granted him in his capacity of village teacher but shoved away into an obscure corner of Hetfalu—his meagre barley-bread, his sordid frock-coat—all these things aggravated the anguish of his soul.

His occasional intercourse with the lord of the manor, the arrogant and pretentious Hetfalusy, was not calculated to reconcile him with his destiny. Hetfalusy regarded as a profitless loafer every man who did not seek his bread with spade and hoe, unless, of course, he happened to be a gentleman by birth. He applied this theory to the schoolmaster race especially, whom he conceived to have been invented for the express purpose of eternally hounding on the common folks against their lawful masters, the gentry. As if the world could not go on comfortably without the peasant learning his letters! What he heard in church was quite enough for him surely! On one occasion, when mention was made in his presence of a village shepherd who had forged a bank-note, he observed that if the fellow had not learnt to write he would never have gone astray. The national school teachers, he said, were the natural attorneys of the agricultural population as against the landlords. And Hetfalusy gave practical expression to his belief whenever he had the chance. The corn he was bound to supply to the schoolmaster was always measured out to him from the bottom of the sieve; he seized the courtyard of the school for his threshers, so that during school-time not a word of the lessons could be heard for the racket; he never repaired the building set apart for the cultivation of the muses, but looked on while the schoolmaster himself patched up the holes in his wall with balls of clay borrowed from his own garden, and re-thatched the dilapidated rush-roof with his own hand. Frequently he would rate the schoolmaster in the public thoroughfare, in the presence of the gaping rustics, on the flimsiest pretext, and bully him as if he were the lowest of his menials.

Thomas Bodza totted up all these outrages on the back of his map, and whenever he was immersed in that odd production, his eyes always fastened themselves on three red crosses which he had marked over the little town which indicated Hetfalu; and at all such times he would heave a deep sigh, as if he found this long waiting for the day of retribution almost too much for his patience.

For that a day of retribution would arrive sooner or later was his strong belief.

Frequently, on popular festivals, you might notice on his index-finger a rude iron ring (the handiwork of a blacksmith rather than of a jeweller, from the look of it), the seal of which was engraved with the three letters: U. S. S. On such occasions, anyone observing him closely could have remarked that he carried his head higher than usual, and whenever he was asked what these initial letters signified, he would simply shrug his shoulders and say that he had got the ring from a comrade in his student days, and really did not know what the letters meant.

During vacation time he would regularly undertake long journeys on foot into distant parts of the land, traversing no end of mountains and valleys, and always returning home more surlily disposed towards the lord of the manor than ever, at the same time dropping mysterious hints in the presence of his confidants, and talking darkly of old expectations being realised, of extraordinary forthcoming events, and of important changes in the general order of things here below.

Nowadays people will scarcely believe that there are men whose whole course of life is determined by such baseless and centrifugal ideas. Such a species of human ambition is certainly a great rarity. It resembles that cryptogram which goes by the name of "star-ashes," whose tremulous spray-like masses only appear in rare seasons and odd places after the warm summer rains. No ordinary soil is good enough for them.

At any rate, Mr. Thomas Bodza would have acted more wisely if he had endeavoured to inoculate the minds of the faithful committed to his charge with a little reading, a little writing, and some slight knowledge of geography, ethnology, natural history, and fruit cultivation, instead of assembling round him all the loafers of the district in the pot-house, the meeting-house, at the hut of the forest rangers, or in some underground cellar outside the village, and there putting into their heads ideas which, interpreted by their ignorant fanaticism, could only be productive of infinite mischief.

He had in all the villages round about personal acquaintances, whom he was wont to visit successively in the course of every year, and whose fantastic aspirations he constantly did his best to keep alive.

And at last the opportunity had presented itself for beginning his great work.

Being a very well-read man himself, he had been the first to learn from the newspapers of the approach of that dangerous contagious sickness, the antidotes against which were still unknown.

Suddenly a mysterious rumour began to spread through the villages that a powerful foreign nation was about to invade the kingdom for the purpose of reconquering for the descendants of the Quadi and the Marahanas the Pannonian provinces that they had held centuries before.

The country folk could see for themselves the soldiery hastening on its way through the land to the frontiers; every carter, tramp, and traveller, brought news of the military cordons which were drawn far and wide, from town to town, and required every person passing to and fro to show his passport, a very unusual institution in those days.

The wiser and better informed persons quieted the whisperers by explaining that these measures were not adopted against any foreign foe, but were simply taken to prevent the spread of the terrible pestilence which was already raging beyond the limits of the kingdom.

And then a still more terrible rumour began to raise aloft its dragon-like head.

It was generally said, muttered, whispered, and at last proclaimed aloud, that it was no pestilence the people had to fear, but that the gentry themselves who had resolved to exterminate the common-folks!

They had determined to exterminate them in an execrable horrible way—by poison! They were casting into the barns, the wells, and the vats of the pot-house a deadly poison of swift operation-that was the way in which they meant to destroy the people.

The doctors, apothecaries, and innkeepers had all been corrupted; everyone with short cropped hair; everyone who wore a cloth coat was to be regarded as an enemy; nobody was to be trusted!

Who spread this terrible rumour?—spread it first of all in secret, in mysterious whispers from house to house, but presently proclaimed it in the public thoroughfares with a loud voice and amidst the clash of arms? Ah! who can say? So much only is certain that the tissues of this network of calumny spread far and wide. It is possible to make human weakness, ignorance, and rustic stupidity believe almost anything. The severity of the gentry in the past had, no doubt, contributed something to this end; but certainly not much, for, as a matter of fact, the common people raged most furiously against those of the gentry who had done them most good; it was their benefactors they treated the most savagely. And then, too, the usual vices of every community, the love of loot, the thirst for vengeance, blind fury, anger of heart, low greed, were so many additional predisposing causes of the horrors that followed.

Yet a red thread ran all through this woof of sorrow and mourning; "blind destiny," upon whom man so cheerfully casts the burden of his sins, had but little to do with it at all.

* * * * *

It was after vespers, and Thomas Bodza was taking a walk across the fields. This was his usual promenade. Sometimes he went as far as the boundaries of the neighbouring village with a little book under his arm which he perused with philosophic tranquility.

It was the works of Horace, all of whose verses he knew by heart; for, inasmuch as it had once been very wisely observed in his presence by some distinguished scholar that no other human lute-strummer had ever sung so beautifully and so grandly as Horace, it thenceforth became a point of honour with Mr. Bodza to read nothing else; so he never troubled his head about any other poet or poets, whatever language they wrote in. He made an exception in favour of himself indeed, for he also had his moments of inspiration, but even his poems were not quite as good as those of Horace.

And now also he was reading over again those lines he already knew so well. He had sat down to rest beneath a large poplar tree on a big round stone that had often served him as a seat before, and he had just come to the verses, beginning with the beautiful words:

"Nunc est bibendum! Nunc pede libero, Pulsando tellus...."

when the sound of approaching footsteps disturbed his tranquil enjoyment.

"I have been awaiting you, Ivan," said the master, thrusting his little book beneath his arm again, but not before he had carefully turned down the leaf at the place where he had stopped reading, lest he should forget where he had left off.

"I could only get off late. The old man would not let me go till vespers."

"Ivan, the long expected signal has at last been given."

"How so?" inquired the fellow, amazed.

"It has been announced in every church, in every school; it has been nailed in printed form on every wall, on every post. The county itself has given the signal. That about which the people were still in doubt, that which it refused to believe, it believes now, for it has been officially proclaimed. Death is approaching, and woe to him who fears it. I fear it not. Do you?"

The fellow shuddered, yet he replied,

"Not I."

"The plague will break out suddenly in various places, and wherever there are dead bodies, there the living will fly to arms, and seek out those on whom they would wreak their vengeance."

Ivan's face turned a pale green, but he stifled his inward terror. It was indeed a terrible time that was coming.

"In the town there is a great commotion, but that does not amount to much. I know the Hetfalu folks. They are cowards and only half ours so far. There are many strangers, many traitors among them. Even when their fury is at the highest point, a gentleman with silver buttons has only to come among them with honied words, or a heyduke has only to appear among them with a stick, or, at the most, a couple of gamekeepers with loaded muskets, and they scatter and fly in all directions like startled game. It is useless; they are a race of cowards. They are a mongrel set after all. Yet here must be our starting point. We must compel the folks here to tackle to the business—a petty village cannot take the initiative without some stimulus from without."

Ivan listened to the master's words admiringly; he began to have the strong conviction that Bodza possessed the qualifications of a great general.

"We must bring in the folks from some neighbouring village just to stir them up. The people of the Tribo district are best suited for that I should think. Many of them are shepherds and herdsmen; men who lie in the fields, who can be brought together in the night time, without anyone observing it. There is a distillery in the village too, and he who says that poison is concocted there does not lie in the least. In general, every village should choose its leaders from some other village, so that the local gentry may not recognise the strange faces. Some men are easily put out if people, when they begin to supplicate, call them by their name."

Ivan nodded his head approvingly at these sage suggestions. Bodza will certainly deserve a plume of feathers in his cap, thought he.

"You will go at night to all the shepherds, one after the other, and bring them together in front of the lonely inn near the main-road. I will not tell you what you are to do, you must be guided by your own common-sense. You must not all remain on the high road however, some of you must march towards the village."

"The best hiding-place will be the headsman's dwelling."

"Will not the Zudar woman betray us?"

"Not till she has burnt down the castle of Hetfalusy, at any rate."

"Does she hate them then as much as her mother, the old crone?"

"As much! far more. The old crone is all talk."

"I have often heard her say that Hetfalusy seized her property, but one can't go by what she says. She says that one wing of the castle is built upon her land."

"It was like this. Dame Anna's husband was a poor gentleman who had a little plot of land in the neighbourhood of the castle, which was the occasion of an eternal squabble between him and the lord of the manor. One day, Hetfalusy—you know how overbearing these great gentlemen are!—suddenly fell upon this poor gentleman as he was walking on this little plot of land of his and gave him a sound drubbing. The result was a great lawsuit. Hetfalusy questioned Dudoky's gentility, and the latter could not make good his claim to be regarded as an armiger. He lost his case in the local court, and the suit dragged on for years. The heavy law costs soon swallowed up all the appellant's means, till at last his little property was put up to auction to defray his expenses. Hetfalusy acquired it for a mere song, and even while the suit was proceeding, he revenged himself on his adversary by building a new wing to his house on the very plot of land the ownership of which was still a matter of dispute. Then Dudoky had an apoplectic stroke which carried him off. His orphan daughter took service for a time in town. Thence she got into a house of no very extraordinary reputation where somebody suddenly found her and offered her his hand in marriage. The wretched woman agreed and accepted him. And who, you will ask, was the luckless creature who sought out a wife in such a place? She only discovered it on the wedding-day. It was the headsman of Hetfalusy. Thus Barbara Dudoky became the headsman's bride. If old Dame Anna became mad, her daughter was partly the cause of it. This also they put down to the account of the Hetfalusies. Since then Dame Anna has frequently sought opportunities for revenging herself on the Hetfalusy family—'the snail-brood,' as Barbara is wont to call them. The old night-owl loves to torment the souls of those who anger her; she loves to fill the inner rooms of the splendid Hetfalusy castle with tears and groaning; she loves to see her haughty enemy grow grey beneath his load of sin and sorrow; she rejoices at the spectacle of his shame and remorse and agony of mind, for the old hag knows how to concoct the sort of venom that corrodes the heart. Now Barbara is not like that. Whenever that woman speaks of the Hetfalusies, her downy lips swell out, her cheeks flush, her black eyes cast forth sparks like a crackling fire, and if at such times she has a knife in her hands, it is not well to approach her. She longs to taste the blood of her enemy, and smack her lips over it; she longs to see his haughty castle in a blaze. I have often heard her say so, and then add, 'After that they may kill me if they like, I don't care.' Oh! that is indeed a terrible woman, you ought to see her."

"A veritable Libussa!" cried Thomas rapturously. "If we win, a great destiny awaits her. Are you in love with her?"

"Perhaps it is more correct to say she loves me. I am very comfortable with her, anyway. The old man does not mind a bit."

"He must be got out of the way."

"We'll take care of that."

"All the exits from the place must be seized after nightfall, and a band of our bravest lads must make a dash for the town hall. Take care that no close-cropped head[9] escapes from the place, even if he be dressed as a peasant. The rest shall be my care."

[Footnote 9: No gentleman.]

"All right, master."

"Then we must have Mekipiros ready in front of the forester's hut."

"Why that, master? The fellow is dumb and foolish. You know that he bit out his tongue under torture."

"So much the better. He cannot talk. He must have brandy, and lots of it."

"When he drinks brandy he becomes like a wild beast. He can bite and scratch now, but when he is drunk you can make him worry people like a dog."

"That is just what we want. There may be things to be done which a man would willingly keep out of and yet have done all the same. Do you take me?"

"Yes, perfectly, you are worthy of all admiration, master. We can let loose this wild beast in cases where we don't want our own hands to be soiled. When he has lots of brandy he would shoot his own father if you put a gun in his hands. And if anything goes wrong we can lay all the blame on him."

The master regarded his pupil with a look of solemn reproach.

"And you are capable," said he, "capable of saying in cold blood, 'if anything goes wrong'? Ivan, you are not a true believer. Ivan, you are a worthless fellow."

The youth was greatly taken aback at these words, and made a feeble attempt to defend himself.

"Ivan, you are a worthless fellow, I say. I regret that I chose you out to take part in this great work."

Ivan grew angry.

"What! you chose me! Why, it was I who chose you! Am I not the head of the conspiracy?"

"And am I not its soul?"

"What! with those weak pipe-stem arms of yours! Look at my arms! Look!" said Ivan, turning up his shirt sleeves and exposing his fleshy arms. "I could do more with one of my arms than you could with your whole body."

"And yet you are a coward if you ask, shall we succeed?"

"I'll show what I am when I am on the spot," said Ivan, sticking out his brawny chest and boastfully thumping it with his clenched fist; at that moment he wore the expression of a savage proud of his bones and sinews.

"Till then, however, let there be peace between us," said Bodza, extending his dry and skinny hand towards Ivan in token of reconciliation, and Ivan squeezed the hand with all his might, not so much to convince the master of the firmness of his friendship as to give him some idea of the expressive vigour of his grip.

Bodza did not move a muscle of his face during this violent tension; but, all at once, Ivan began writhing, his features contracted with pain, and he placed one hand on his stomach.

"Well, what is the matter?" inquired Bodza.

The fellow doubled up with pain.

"I have a sudden stitch, in the side."

"What! is that all? and you make so much fuss over it! I didn't flinch just now, when you nearly crushed my fingers, did I?"

"But this is horrible—such spasms."

"Perchance, Ivan, you too have been poisoned."

"Oh, don't joke like that," said the fellow with a pale and agitated face.

"Why you know the whole thing to be a fable."

Ivan gave a great sigh with an air of relief.

"It has gone now. I felt so odd. It is a fable, of course. But what a peculiar pain it was!"

"Drive the idea out of your head and swallow some comforting cordial. And now go and look after our confidants."

Ivan was still a little pale, and it seemed to him as if the master's face also was of an odd yellow colour.

"How yellow the sky is!" said he, looking up, "not a speck of blue anywhere. And what a long black cloud is rising up from the horizon—just like a large black bird."

"Gape not at the sky, Ivan, but make haste and have everything ready against the night."

"You can look right into the sun, there's not a bit of light in it when it goes down," murmured he—and his head felt strangely dizzy.

"What have you got to do with the sky, or the sun, or the clouds?" inquired the master sarcastically.

"Nothing, I suppose, nor with what is beyond them either. Good night, my master," he cried after a pause, and turned truculently away.

"A happy and peaceful good night!" said the other with an ironical smile.

"Pleasant dreams."

"And a joyful awakening."

And with that they parted. The master returned towards the village, reading the immortal verses of Horace all the way along. But Ivan hastened towards the lonely forest hut, looking up from time to time at the yellow sky, the faded sun, and the long black cloud, and then glancing around him horror-stricken, to perceive that he cast no shadow either before or behind.

That sombre yellow light, how odd it was!—and then, too, that brown, copper-coloured cloud, which was gradually covering the whole earth, and enveloping the whole horizon with its broad sluggish wings like some huge bat-like monster of the Nether World! And the little black letters in the master's open book seemed to be dancing together in long dizzying rows, and this is what he read:

"... Pallida Mors Aequo pede pulsat Pauperum tabernas Regumnque turres..."



CHAPTER XI.

THE FIRST SPARK.

Maria Kamienszka talked for the whole of a long hour with the General's wife.

She told her all she knew of that unhappy family, whose fate was bound up with the General's by such tragic memories.

She had learnt to know the disowned and rejected son as a gallant young officer in Galicia, and the relations which had sprung up between them were the tenderest imaginable.

The calamity which compelled the youth to fly had profoundly affected but not overwhelmed her, for Maria, with that virile determination which has so frequently distinguished the Polish women, had followed up the track of the vanished youth step by step, and when, at last, she had discovered him, she had devoted all the ingenuity of a loving heart to the desperate task of saving him.

The enthusiastic words of the girl had electrified Cornelia Vertessy; indeed, she, the gentler, calmer of the two, was quite carried away by Maria's courage, energy, readiness of resource and impulsive enthusiasm, so that she considered the most fantastic projects which the Polish lady elaborated on the spur of the moment with the rapidity of cloud formation, as perfectly natural and feasible.

They agreed between them that old Hetfalusy and his son-in-law should be brought together to the General's, that Cornelia, at the same time, should present to them the child who was believed to have perished, Maria undertaking to get it from its adopted father. They argued that the scene which would ensue, when the father and grandfather recognised the child they so ardently longed to see could not fail to touch the heart of the General, who at the same instant, when the grandfather recovered his grandchild, would complete the old man's joy by presenting him with his son also.

The dear conspirators had calculated all contingencies, and the whole thing seemed to them as feasible as it was romantic, and therefore bound to succeed ... but they forgot that Fate was, after all, mine host, and that the reckoning was in mine host's own hands and not in theirs.

Nevertheless, Maria, dressed in her masculine attire, which best suited her present purpose, mounted her nag again, and hastened off towards Hetfalu. On her way she posted a letter in which she instructed old Hetfalusy to get into his carriage and hasten to town as soon as possible, she herself meant to go straight to the headsman's dwelling.

It was already late when she turned into the main-road. The sun had already sunk, and there was in the sky that red glare, so trying to the eyes, which envelops every object in a yellow light and obliterates every shadow. In the western sky blood-red rays, like the spokes of a wheel, cut up the oddly-coloured sky into segments; while in the opposite, eastern firmament, solar rays of a similar description rose brown and lofty, like the horns of the crown of an avenging angel.

There was a sombre air of homelessness about the whole region. Not a bird was flying in the air, no cattle were grazing in the fields, even the merry chirp of the crickets was no longer to be heard in the wayside ditches. The road itself was overgrown with grass on both sides, scarce leaving room for a little winding ribbon of a track in the centre, and even there the ruts, which the last luckless cart had left behind it, were hidden by weeds. It was weeks since anybody had passed that way, for every village was afraid of the village next to it, every man avoided his neighbour, and feared to look upon his face.

The lanes and byeways had been quite abandoned, they were only distinguishable by the luxuriant crop of weeds which covered them—weeds more rampant and of darker colour than were to be found elsewhere. The whole land looked just as it used to look in the olden times after a Tartar invasion.

The horse trotted along all alone, before and behind him there was no trace either of man or beast, the rider looked round about her with a melancholy eye.

Here and there on both sides of the road crooked trees were tottering to their fall. They had been stripped bare by the devastating army of caterpillars, and instead of their beautiful green leaves they were clothed with the rags of dusty spider-webs; further away the fruitless orchards looked as if they had been burnt with fire, and, stretching to the horizon, as far as the eye could reach, the arid corn-fields had the appearance of being covered with nothing but scrappy stubble.

The atmosphere was oppressive and lay like a stifling weight on the breast of man; and if, now and then, a faint breath of air flitted languidly over the country, it was as burning hot as if it had just come out of the mouth of a blast-furnace, and only increased the exhausting sensation of oppression.

Then slowly, very slowly, it began to grow dark. There was a long black stripe all along the edge of the sky, which gradually bulged out into a sort of black veil, and as the infrequent stars twinkled forth in the pallid sky, this dark veil blotted them out one by one; it was just as if some mighty spirit-hand had drawn a crape curtain across a funeral vault bright with glittering lamps.

It was already midnight when Maria Kamienszka perceived the first roadside csarda[10] which, according to her calculations, lay midway between the county-town and Hetfala. In the midnight gloom and silence it was easier to distinguish distant sounds than to clearly recognise near objects.

[Footnote 10: Inn.]

It seemed to Maria as if she heard a medley of despairing yells and savage maledictions, and dimly discernible masses of men were moving up and down all round the house.

Instinctively she felt for the pistols in her saddle bow—there they were in their proper place.

In a few moments she was close up to the house and perceived clearly at last, with a tremor of horror, the spectacle that had long been engaging her attention.

Some hundreds of peasants, the dregs of the agricultural population, were swarming in and out of the csarda door, savagely singing and shouting. Two large casks had been planted in front of the house, their bottoms had been stoved in, and those of the mob who had got near enough were ladling out the brandy they contained in their hats. Some of these gentlemen could only keep their legs at all by leaning upon the object nearest to them. A white-bearded Jew had been tied to the leg of a chair placed between the two casks. The drunken mob was bestowing most of its attention upon him, and pulling out his beard hair by hair as they cross-examined him. The tortured victim was howling horribly, but would give his tormentors no answer, only from time to time he implored them to spare his innocent daughter. A childish shape, evidently a woman's, was lying across the threshold, and everyone going in and out of the door gave it a kick as he passed through. Fortunately she felt nothing more now.

Maria, full of indignation, spurred her horse right into the midst of the mob that was tormenting the old innkeeper, and exclaimed in a voice of virile assurance:

"What are you all doing here?"

The mob only first perceived the horse when it was right amongst them.

A young lout with a stumpy nose, which had evidently been broken some time or other, a bare breast, and a shock of ragged hair covering his face, answered the question.

"We are paying off a poisoner, young sir, if you must know."

"What poisoner do you mean?" inquired Maria, who had not the remotest idea what the fellow was driving at.

"What!" cried the stripling defiantly, "do you mean to say you don't know? Why, haven't the gentry got the Jews to put poison in the brandy! Why, everyone knows that."

Maria was so dumfounded that she had not a word to say in reply.

"Look! how he pretends to know nothing about it. But we are up to them. They may weave their plans as artfully as they like, we've got eyes in our heads all the same. All is betrayed. Come, thou Jew! confess that there is poison in that cask!"

And yet they all went on drinking out of the barrel as if they had made up their minds to discover what poison really tasted like.

The lout of a spokesman now filled his hat with brandy up to the brim, and held it out towards Maria.

"Come, young sir," said he, "if you don't believe that there's poison in it, just taste for yourself and see."

Maria, full of loathing, pushed aside the dirty hat-full of nauseous fluid.

"You see! he won't drink it! he knows there is poison in it."

"Pull him off his horse!" cried a voice from the midst of the crowd.

"We ought to hang him up where the Hetfalusy squires are going to be hung!" roared the others.

The dirty lout, who had offered her brandy, quickly seized the horse's bridle, and several of the mob stretched out their hands towards Maria.

These savage menaces acted like a stimulant upon the Polish lady, she recovered her presence of mind instantly. She brought down the round knob of her riding-whip like lightning on the head of the fellow who was trying to hold her horse back, and he fell like a log prone to the ground. Then giving her good steed the spur she leaped clear of the encircling mob. A bludgeon came whizzing after her just above her head, and the belated sweeping strokes of a couple of scythes just missed her. One or two agile young ruffians even set off after her, and as two large waggons lay right across her path a little further on, they made sure of overtaking her there. But the lady, with a single bound, leaped over the obstacle, whereupon her pursuers remained behind, but as she turned her back upon them they sent after her a horrible yell of laughter. "That's right, go on!" she heard them cry, "you are going to a good place, where you'll be well looked after—ha, ha, ha!"

Maria had only proceeded a few hundred paces when she was thunderstruck to perceive that her horse was beginning to limp. More than once it stumbled heavily, and suddenly it went dead lame.

The good steed, when it leaped the obstruction, must assuredly have sprained its front leg.

Presently it could scarce put one foot before the other, and Maria was obliged to tighten the reins continually to relieve the poor beast and prevent it from stumbling as much as possible. It was as well that her pursuers had abandoned the chase, for she could scarce have hoped to escape from them now.

But what sort of disorderly mob could this be? Maria, now growing thoroughly alarmed, began to ask herself; a mob which had the audacity to indulge in such excesses in the midst of a civilised, constitutional state, in despite of all law and order? She had not the remotest idea that it was a widespread rebellion of the most horrible description.

Meanwhile, that black curtain had been drawn right across the sky, the whole region was in pitch-black darkness, one star after another had been blotted out, the horse hung its head and frequently whinnied. Maria felt that she could no longer remain safely in her saddle, fearing as she did that the horse might at any moment fall head foremost. So she dismounted, and letting the reins hang over her arm, led the horse along beside her.

It was hard to discern the grass-grown path in the darkness, and Maria immediately directed her footsteps towards a bright light in front of her a long way off, which seemed to proceed from the windows of some wayside house.

As she drew nearer to this house it seemed to her as if masses of men were flitting backwards and forwards, and the din of many voices struck upon her ear.