"Well," said the brigand, with the laugh his men dreaded to hear, "we shall have to ride a bit farther before we find one or the other. Come on, count! I'll pledge my word that the Austrians shall never hang you!"
Count Beula, little dreaming of the inner meaning of these words, galloped along with the band, and not another word was spoken till they reached the first tree.
Here the robber-captain called a halt, and making a sign that some of the party should surround the count, said to him,--
"This is where the Austrians would have hung you; but now, perhaps, they will hang Captain Botskay instead."
At this Beula, discovering a little shame, replied falteringly that they would only imprison me for a while; but as for him, he would never have got one step past that tree.
As soon as he had made an end of speaking, Batori raised his hand. The count was seized, torn from his horse, bound, a noose put round his neck, and he was placed directly beneath the fatal bough.
"Count Beula," cried the bandit, "you are a coward, and Hungary has no need of cowards. You have left that lad, who risked his life for you, to die. Now you shall die yourself. Though the Austrians have not caught you, you shall be hanged all the same."
The unhappy man begged piteously--not for his life, but that he might be shot.
Batori, however, remained inexorable, and while the poor wretch was still pleading gave the order. The men pulled at the rope, and the body of Count Beula hung swinging in the wind for the vultures and carrion crows to devour.
Thus, in the strangest way imaginable, it came to pass that Count Beula did hang like a common criminal by the roadside, though the Austrians were not his executioners.