"But that was in the old days, in old-fashioned warfare."
"Well, the Wallachians are now no further advanced in military science than were the Tartars then."
"Yes, but at that time the Szekler Stone was in a condition for defence," objected Manasseh.
"And how do you know I haven't put it in such a condition again?" asked the other.
"I should like to see how you have accomplished it."
"I shall not show you, for you are not a soldier, and no civilian shall see my fortifications. I will show them to the two young ladies; they count as combatants. The other day they coaxed Alexander to lend them his pistols, and since then they have been practising shooting at a mark in the garden behind the house."
"What, does my wife know how to handle a pistol?"
"To be sure; and it's no elderberry popgun, either. You may depend upon it, she'll sell her life dear. You needn't laugh."
The rocky height known as the Szekler Stone commands a view of vast extent. Nestled among the hills, twenty-two villages may be counted from its summit, with the Aranyos River winding this way and that among them, like a ribbon of silver, until it empties into another tortuous stream which carries its waters to the Maros. But on the opposite side, toward the northwest, in striking contrast with this picture of happy human industry, a boundless waste of rugged, forest-clad mountain peaks meets the eye, with no sign of house or hamlet.
From the side toward Toroczko, which lay smiling in the valley, its fruit-trees in full bloom, its fields looking like so many squares of green carpet, and its church-spire rising conspicuous above the foliage, one could hear, like the throbbing of a giant's heart, the heavy beating of steam hammers. There the scythe and the ploughshare were being fashioned, and all the implements wherewith the hand of man subdued to his use those rugged hillsides.