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farther end of the town, where the family owned a villa which they used
whenever occasion called them from Toroczko to Kolozsvar. Adjoining the
house lay a garden which was now rented to a market-woman, who made
haste to prepare supper for the travellers. Blanka went into the
kitchen and helped her, but not before the woman had been instructed in
what was going on and warned not to breathe a word to the young mistress
of the dangers that encompassed them all in those troublous times. It
was Manasseh's desire to lead his bride home without giving her cause
for one moment of disquiet on the way.

"Can you sleep in a carriage?" the market-woman asked her, without
pausing in her baking and boiling. "Now as for me, many's the time I've
slept every night for two weeks in my cart when I was taking apples to
market. One gets used to that sort of thing. The gentlemen propose to
set out for Torda this very night, because to-morrow is the great
market-day in Kolozsvar, and there'll be troops of peddlers and dealers
of all sorts coming into town, and farmers driving their cattle and
sheep and swine, so that you couldn't possibly make head against them if
you should wait till morning."

Blanka readily gave her consent to any plan that seemed best to her
conductors.

Aaron meanwhile had brought out three good horses from the stable and
harnessed them to a travelling carriage. "Water behind us, fire before
us," he remarked to Manasseh as he buckled the last strap.

Wallachian troops were holding the mountain passes about Torda, and had
even threatened Toroczko; but thus far the inhabitants had not allowed
themselves to be frightened. Now, however, there was a report that
General Kalliani was approaching from Hermannstadt with a brigade of
imperial soldiery. Consequently it was to be feared that a general
flight from Torda to Kolozsvar would soon follow; and, when once the
stream of fugitives began, it would be impossible to make one's way in
an opposite direction. Therefore our travellers had not a moment to
lose.

Blanka was by this time well used to travelling by night, and she
entered cheerfully and without question into the proposed plan. A
longing to reach "home," and perhaps a vague suspicion of the perils
that threatened her party, made her the more willing to push forward.
When danger braces to action, a high-bred woman's power of endurance is
almost without limit.

Aaron drove, Manasseh sat beside him, and thus the