Outside on the skirts of the far-spreading town they could see tents pitched upon the plain, with standards floating over them—cavalry moving about in squadrons—infantry standing in serried ranks—here and there horsemen in hussar uniforms hurrying from point to point, their loose dolmans trailing behind them. They could hear the rolling of drums, the braying of bugles, and, away far beyond, the booming of great guns.
“Who goes there?” came the abrupt hail of a sentry speaking in the Magyar tongue, while a soldier in Honved dress showed himself in the door of a shepherd’s hut. He was the spokesman of a picket-guard concealed within the house.
“Friends!” answered the Austrian Count, in the same language in which the hail had been given. “Friends to the cause: Eljen Kossuth!”
At the magic words the soldier lowered his carbine, while his half-dozen comrades came crowding out from their concealment.
A pass to headquarters, obtained by the Count in Arad, made the parley short, and the two travellers continued their journey amidst cries of “Eljen Kossuth!”
Chapter Twenty Seven.
The Broken Swords.
In half an hour afterwards, Count Roseveldt and Captain Maynard—for it was they who were thus rapidly travelling—reached Vilagos, and passed on to the camp of the Hungarian army.