"God bless you, my loyal comrade! Greet my dear mother. Tell her that to-morrow I am off to the wars. Eger is to be stormed. Tell her to pray that I may die a glorious death!"
With that he hastened back to his horse and darted away into the waste night.
"The ghost is riding back to his realm!"
"All good spirits praise the Lord!"
And if Dame Sarah prayed as her son desired her, her prayer was certainly heard in heaven. At the brilliant assault by which the city of Eger was won back to Hungary, Valentine Kalondai died a hero's death on the field of honor.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
In which everyone at last gets his deserts.
Old Zurdoki, whose unseemly amours had been the cause of the tragedy of two loving hearts, so far from being sobered by this sad occurrence, so far from taking to heart the blood of the gentle lady which had flowed through his foul fault, had no sooner escaped from Poland with a part of the Prince's routed troops (the rest had been carried away captive to the Crimea by the Tartars) than he set about another evil prank. Failing to seduce one of the pretty women, he now spread his nets for the second.
Here, too, he soon found a willing go-between. Even if Red Barbara were no more, there was still enough of witches and to spare. Was not Annie, the wife of the kopanitschar, at hand? So far from being scared at the fearful fate of her superior, she burned to occupy the vacant place of honor in the witches' ranks. For the saying of the sages, that from the blood of one martyr a hundred others spring up, is equally true when applied to evil-doers. Among sinners also there are enthusiasts who count it an honor to suffer for hell, and where one felon is executed a hundred are always ready to step into his shoes. This was especially the case with witches. The burnt and tortured members of that grim sisterhood always had immediate and innumerable successors. The world seemed too small to hold them all. The love of evil notoriety took possession of them like a sort of intoxication, and plunged into the abyss even those who otherwise would never have thought of becoming witches. It is thus that we are able to explain why Annie undertook a far more dangerous commission than even that by which Barbara had found her death. Moreover, the dazzling promises of Zurdoki, who was no niggard with his money, had also great weight with her. And Zurdoki was now richer than ever. George Rakoczy, when the Crim Tartars invaded Hungary, had intrusted the whole of his treasures to Zurdoki to conceal them in Berga Castle. On the way thither as much of this treasure might be lost as Zurdoki pleased. Who amid the hurly-burly of those troubled times would ever think of calling him to account for it?