"Valentine! Valentine!" cried Dame Sarah, threatening her son with the large carving-knife which she always kept hanging by her side. "You are after no good thing. You love a woman who has already got a husband. Don't deny it! I see by your sudden change of color that I've hit the mark. Valentine, you are walking in evil ways! Bethink you what is in store for you—here on earth the sword of the headsman, and in the next world the fires of hell! You know that in matters of morality our laws don't jest! I have seen with my own eyes many a head, quite as comely as yours, roll in the sand—the sole offense of these poor sinners was presuming to cast sheep's eyes at women who had no business to have lovers at all. But I pray God that he'll place an obstacle in your path at the very outset, which will make it impossible for you to go any further on the way where shame, death, and damnation await you. God will hear me!"
But Valentine reflected that he too had recommended his affairs to God. Had he not said that if he returned safe and sound from the battle, it should be a sign that his intention of seeking out his beloved in her misery was right and pious? And, lo! the blessing of God had followed hard upon his footsteps; he had not only returned home safe and sound, but had brought back with him a captive whose ransom would enable him to face all manner of unknown perils with far more courage than if he only had an empty purse. Therefore he impatiently waited for the kinsfolk of his prisoner Achmed to send him the ransom from Grosswardein. But it was just at this time that Dame Sarah was moving heaven and earth to convert the Turk. Every day she read to him extracts from the Gospels, and taught him to sing hymns. He had even got so far as to renounce those articles of his creed which prohibited the drinking of wine and the eating of ham, when he one day put to Dame Sarah the ticklish question, whether a converted Turk might not keep all four of his wives? The worthy dame smote her hands together in horror.
"What! you have four wives, you d——d Turk? Well, then, you may remain in your heathenish faith for all I care. Go with your four wives to your Turkish hell, but don't contaminate ours." And with that she washed her hands of him altogether.
A few days later the Turk's ransom reached the hands of Captain Hommonai, who paid over the money to Valentine, and Achmed was sent off to Grosswardein.
So Valentine had at last enough money to carry out what he had so long been brooding over.
His first step was to beg Captain Hommonai for a short furlough for himself and his comrade Simplex, which furlough he very easily obtained, inasmuch as my lord count was just then in the middle of his honeymoon, and therefore ill disposed to engage in martial feats for some time to come. The Turks also were keeping very quiet in that part of the country.
The two hundred ducats Valentine already had in his pocket. All that he now required for his journey was a good cloth mantle, a stout ax, a flask, and a knapsack.
It was also of no small assistance to our two honest comrades that the general ordered the squadron of cavalry to which they belonged to proceed to Onod (which was half-way to Zeb), for Valentine was thereby able to conceal from his mother the fact that he had obtained leave of absence. So they reached Onod safely, and thence made their way across country to seek Michal.
Yet the prayers of Dame Sarah were more efficacious than the resolutions of the two friends, for as they were passing through the Onod forest, out of the bushes sprang twelve of those miscreants who then pursued the accursed trade of kidnaping Christian men and women in order to sell them to the Turks. Valentine indeed made a good fight for it, and broke no end of jaws and noses; but at last he was overpowered by numbers. Then the robbers gagged him, and tied him with his comrade to a tree, and naturally left him very little of the two hundred ducats which they found upon his person. Then they separated to seek fresh booty. In the evening they returned with a woman and a young girl, and at dusk they tied the captives to their saddles and haled them away.
Thus Dame Sarah's pious wish that her son Valentine might light upon an obstacle which should hinder him at the very outset from pursuing his evil way, was exactly fulfilled.