"That's all very well," cried Bessy peevishly, "but what will happen afterwards? If you remain in your hole, and our good friend goes home, what am I to do all alone here by myself on the top of a rock? I shall never find my way home through this wood."
Then my friend, with cheap generosity, made this magnanimous offer:—
"Dear friend, take her home with you."
So that was to be the dénouement of this odd drama!
"No, my magnanimous friend. Not so! You go and reserve yourself for posterity. We two will remain here. One of two things is bound to happen. If those two men, armed with muskets, find me painting pictures in my album, they will believe either that I am a simple painter (they know that Károly Telepi is wandering about on a sketching tour here, and they'll take me for him, and Bessy for—my sister); or they'll not believe anything of the kind, and in that case they'll escort us both to Miskolcz. In the latter case you need have no fear of turning back. If, on the other hand, after the lapse of a few hours, you creep out of your cave and see me sitting as before, on the rocky ledge, and peaceably continuing my sketching, then you will know that the armed invasion has passed on further, and you can come back again to the Lady Elizabeth. Then I'll give you my blessing, and we'll return from whence we came—you to the east, I to the west."
With this he was satisfied.
"But don't betray me!" he murmured, casting a terrified look upon us; "even though they hale you off to the block, don't say where I am."
I gave him my word of honour that not even the Spanish boot should extort his secret from me, whereupon he went gingerly down upon all fours, scrambled up the rocky summit by the corkscrew path, and vanished among the bushes.
"Ugh! I only wish he hadn't taken the bread and bacon along with him!" lamented the girl he left behind him.
"I'll share mine with you; there's enough for two."