"There is no hope save with God!" cried Ali in despair, for his terrified people at the sight of this prodigy had dragged him along with them against his will.
"Ladislaus! Ladislaus! My darling!" resounded from above. The youth was fighting with the strength of ten men; three horses had already been shot under him, and a third sword was flashing in his hand. Already he was standing on the drawbridge; his sweetheart threw down a white handkerchief to him, and he was already waving it above his head in triumph, when a well-directed bullet pierced the young hero's heart, and he collapsed a corpse on the very threshold of his success, in the very gate of the captured fortress at the feet of his beloved.
At that same instant a heart-rending shriek resounded, and from the top of the tower a white shape fell down upon the bridge; the beautiful bride, from a height of thirty feet, had cast herself down on the dead body of her beloved, and died at the same instant as he, mingling their blood together; and if their arms did not, at least their souls could, embrace each other.
This spectacle so stupefied the besiegers, that Ali Pasha had just time enough swiftly to raise the drawbridge and save the fortress and a fragment of his host. Of those who remained outside, not a single soul survived. Kökényesdi massacred without mercy everything which distantly resembled a Turk, together with the camels and mules, sparing nothing but the horses, and when every house had been well plundered, he set the town on fire in twelve places, so that the flames in half an hour consumed everything, and the whole city blazed away like a gigantic bonfire, the rising wind whirling the smoke and flame over the ditch towards the fortress.
"Ali Pasha may put that in his pipe and smoke it," said Kökényesdi, rejoicing at the magnificent conflagration.
But the bodies of Ladislaus Rákóczy and his sweetheart they bore away, and buried them side by side in the family vault at Rákás.
CHAPTER VI.
THE MONK OF THE HOLY SPRING.
About a day's journey from Klausenburg there used to be a famous monastery, whose ruined tower remains to this day.