"How far you have dropped behind your mistress!"
"Yes, and I will drop back still further, friend Simplex. She has recognized me. She has driven me away. I have now but one favor to ask of you. If you are really my friend, prove it by doing me a great service. I cannot accompany her further. You do so in my stead. If any evil befall Michal, stand by her and save her. You have your wits about you and know the region thoroughly. Be near her as long as possible. Let me know how it befalls, be it good or evil. You will find me at Kassa, in my mother's house."
Nowadays we should hurl back such a commission at the suggester's head. Nowadays everyone looks after himself, and no one is such a fool as to run after a woman whom a second person loves and a third person has married. But in former days men were different. Besides, they had not so much to do then as they have now, and a social law was then in force which has long since become obsolete, the law of friendship. It was not codified, yet its authority was universally deferred to and folios were written about it. This law of friendship gave a man the right to demand great things from his neighbor, and those who obeyed this law were bound together by stronger ties than any ties of kinship. We shall presently give many examples to show how much in those days the unwritten law of friendship was needed, a law passed by no parliament, sanctioned by no monarch, enforced by no tribunal, yet everywhere valid and effectual.
The trumpeter, contemptuously dubbed Simplex, promised to do all that his friend required of him and gave him his hand upon it, whereupon he hastened to overtake the lady, who was now some distance ahead.
But Valentine Kalondai remained standing on the hillside listening till the clattering of the horses' hoofs had quite died away. Then he turned and walked slowly off, to the great joy of the crows and ravens, who so long as he stood there did not venture to resume their banquet beneath the gallows. Meanwhile Michal was trying to overtake her husband, who was well on in front surrounded by the merry students.
The road became rougher and rougher as it wound down into the valley. The broad, well-wooded mountain-sides confined it within a precipitously shelving glen. The brook zigzagged across it and tore out the rolling stones, so that the very mules had to pick their way cautiously along. At first the way wound among large blocks of stone, but presently it ended abruptly at a yawning chasm among the rocks. Here the mountain stream plunged, roaring and foaming, down into a dizzy depth. Beyond the bridge the path reappeared, but now it was confined more than ever between two steep rocky walls, down the smooth slaty sides of which the moisture trickled continually, diffusing a misty, cavernous sort of smell over the whole of the dark rocky defile, which was overshadowed by nodding pine trees. The mules no longer picked their way among rocks, but among bones. All around lay the skeletons of men and of horses inextricably mixed together.
"Is this a burial-ground?" asked Michal of her Henry, not without a shudder.
But Henry had no answer ready. He said that he had never been that way before; he had gone to Keszmár by another road over the mountain ridge, a road which you could only pass on foot. But Simplex was at hand and he explained the mystery of the bones strewing the way, as he had heard it during his wanderings in the mountains from the lips of his guides.
Many years ago, the troops of the Prince of Transylvania, with some Turkish auxiliaries, had blockaded a regiment of Imperial cavalry in this defile, and after breaking down the bridge leading to the glen had massacred the whole lot without mercy. There was no place to bury the dead, and so they had lain there ever since. The students, from sheer mischief, now picked up two or three of the skulls and trundled them along the road. No doubt they were not the first who had amused themselves by playing bowls with dead men's bones.
"If Hafran were to catch you here, he and his merry men would play at bowls with your heads also," cried Simplex, without however either spoiling their good-humor or putting Michal in a better humor.