"Gyuri, awake!" he repeated in terror; but Gyuri's sleep was an eternal one—the boy was frozen.
When Pista saw that his comrade was dead, he tried in vain to release himself from his grasp; but the stiff dead arms were clasped so tightly round his neck, it was impossible to extricate them.
The terrified boy, finding himself face to face with the dead, who held him with such irresistible power in his fearful embrace, while the glazed and motionless eyes looked straight into his own, struggled fearfully through the snow, and dashed into the rushes, where the villagers who had come out to search for them most providentially found him, still crying out—"Gyuri, awake! Gyuri, let me go!"
They freed him with great difficulty from his companion's arms, but terror had deprived him of reason from that hour.
He never does any harm, or quarrels with anybody; and he speaks sensibly and quietly, unless his comrade's name is mentioned, when he will take to his heels and run as long as he has breath in his body.
Mental derangement does not always assume a melancholy form: here and there we meet with most grotesque examples, whose peculiar slyness and original ideas are most amusing. Outwardly they are always gay: who may know what passes within?
We had an instance of the latter species of madness in Transylvania. Boho Boris (silly Barbara) was known through the whole district.
She was never seen for one week in the same place, but wandered continually about; her whole travelling apparatus consisting of a guitar, which she slung around her neck, and went singing away to the next neighbour or the nearest town.
She found her table always covered; for she was quite at home in every gentleman's house, never waiting to be invited, and ordered all the servants about whether they would or not. Her apparel seemed to grow like the flowers of the meadow, without the assistance of tailors or marchandes de modes,—not that petticoats and ruffles actually sprang out of the earth on her account, but whenever she was tired of any article of apparel, or did not fancy wearing it longer, she would doff it at the first gentleman's house she came to, and put on a dress belonging to the lady of the mansion, declaring with the utmost gravity that it suited her very well; and the Transylvanian ladies were too generous not to leave her in her confidence, and in undisturbed possession of the new dress.