The spot where the fiercest fighting had occurred was already cleared when Katharina arrived upon it. She shuddered with horror, and staggered like one who walks in his sleep as she moved about the desert place.
Suddenly she came upon a large wild-rose bush covered with bloom. Close by it lay a horse with the hilt of a sword protruding from his breast. Near the dead animal lay a metal helmet ornamented with the gilded imperial eagle, and a little farther on lay a mud-stained form in a uniform of coarse gray cloth, with a gaping wound in his head; his left hand clutched the rushes among which he had fallen. As Katharina, in her peasant gown, moved timidly across the open space, she heard a voice say faintly in Hungarian:
"For God's sake, good woman, give me a drink of water."
Without stopping to question whether he was friend or foe, Katharina caught up the metal helmet to fetch the water.
There was water everywhere about her, but it was the filthy water of the morass.
Katharina remembered having heard that the shepherds of the Hansag, when they were thirsty, cut a reed and thrust it deep into the swampy earth, when clear, drinkable water would rise from the lower soil. She therefore thrust a long cane into the moist earth, then put her lips to it, and sucked up the water. On removing her lips a clear stream shot upward from the cane. She held the helmet under this improvised fountain until it was full, then returned with it to the rose-bush.
The wounded man was lying on his back, his bloodstained face upturned toward the sky. Katharina knelt by his side, and held the helmet to his lips.
"Themire!" gasped the wounded man.
At sound of the name a sudden fury seemed to seize the woman.
"De Fervlans!" she cried, in a hoarse voice. "You! you, the accursed destroyer of my daughter! May God refuse to forgive you for making of me the wretched creature I am!"