It is evening, but the sun had just set, and left a cloudless ruddy sky behind it. On the horizon two or three towers are to be seen so far distant that the traveller who is hurrying before us cannot hope to reach any one of them by nightfall.
The dust had not so overlaid him, nor had the sun so tanned his face that we cannot recognize in these handsome noble features the pride of the youth of Pressburg, Lorand.
The long journey he has accomplished has evidently not impaired the strength of his muscles, for the horseman who is coming behind him, has to ride hard to overtake him.
The latter leaned back in his shortened stirrups, after the manner of hussars, and wore a silver-buttoned jacket, a greasy hat, and ragged red trousers. Thrown half over his shoulders was a garment of wolf-skins; around his waist was a wide belt from which two pistol-barrels gleamed, while in the leg of one of his boots a silver-chased knife was thrust. The horse's harness was glittering with silver, just as the ragged, stained garments of its master.
The rider approached at a trot, but the traveller had not yet thought it worth while to look back and see who was coming after him. Presently he came up to the solitary figure, trudging along, doggedly.
"Good evening, student."
Lorand looked up at him.
"Good evening, gypsy."
At these words the horseman drew aside his skin-mantle that the student might see the pistol-barrels, and consider that even if he were a gypsy, he was something more than a mere musician. But Lorand did not betray the slightest emotion: he did not even take down from his shoulder the stick, on which he was carrying his boots. He was walking bare-footed. It was cheaper.
"Oh, you are proud of your red boots!" sneered the rider, looking down at Lorand's bare-feet.