Yet neither their names nor faces were known to Ráby.
For the rest, his two guardians showed themselves full of consideration for their patient. They procured him warm clothing, caused light invalid food to be prepared for him, and begged him not to be too anxious to try his strength with the journey. When Ráby had sufficiently rested, the coachman received orders to drive slowly, so that it might not exhaust the traveller, and they set out again, not without many misgivings from the fugitive as to whether they could not be overtaken and their flight intercepted.
One of his companions, who told him his name was Kurovics, besought him to make his mind easy on this score. He pointed out how they would get the start of the authorities before these could mobilise their forces. Then no one knew of the disguise in which Ráby had escaped; from the description which the Pesth court would issue for his recovery, no one would recognise him, so he had no cause for fear.
They only made two stages a day, so that the journey to Pozsony (which was their goal,) lasted eight days, through resting at the inns on the road. His companions gave themselves out as pig-dealers, and said Ráby was their cousin. The third day they fell in with a party of armed heydukes who were searching for their charge. They stopped the cavalcade, and told them of their quest. At each wayside inn Ráby could read the notice which posted him up as a criminal and outlaw, for whose identification a reward of two hundred ducats was offered. To his relief, the description of him corresponded to the appearance he had presented in prison, with an over-grown beard, tangled hair, and pale face, wearing a faded silk coat. Little did his pursuers imagine that in the shy Serb maiden, with her cheeks painted red, who understood nothing but her native tongue, that the fugitive they sought stood before them. More than once it even happened that Ráby and his pursuers slept under the same roof.
Meantime, he became more and more attached to his two friends, whose worth he began to realise increasingly.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
The fugitives had only one more station to accomplish before they reached the Austrian frontier, where the Hungarian jurisdiction ceased. Was there trouble at the frontier over Ráby's identification, at least it meant that he would be taken to Vienna to prove it, and not back to Pesth.
They heard from travellers they met on the way that the Emperor was back in the capital, owing to the army being in winter quarters, and hostilities against the Turks being suspended for the time being. Ráby, thereupon grew more anxious than ever as to his possible reception by the Kaiser, whose concurrence he still doubted in his forcible rescue, though, by this, the Emperor had doubtless seen that his formal orders availed nothing, and he probably thought it impolitic to use military force to free his representative.
It was revolving such thoughts in his mind, that Ráby and his guides came to the wayside inn where they were to pass their last night on Magyar territory. It was a poor little "csárda," as such hostelries are called in Hungary, between Pozsony and Hainburg, wherein only now and again travellers passed the night, driven thereto by stress of weather. The accommodation left much to be desired, and its reputation was none of the best. It was whispered, indeed, that travellers had been murdered and waylaid there, and even now the host was serving his term in the Pozsony prison, where he was a frequent inmate. In his absence, his wife looked after the inn.