ou
have done this day!"

Out of the burning tree a pair of owls fluttered, blinded and
panic-stricken, a family of squirrels scampered off to a place of
safety, and a nest of serpents squirmed and wriggled away from that
blazing horror. Yet neither owls nor squirrels nor serpents fled with
more headlong haste than did our travellers. Zenobia galloped back the
way she had come, while the two men took Blanka between them and
clattered down the rocky bed of the now nearly dry mountain torrent.

Of all this Blanka could understand nothing. What great harm, she
wondered, could come from the burning of an old beech-tree?

Toward evening the travellers found themselves on a height commanding a
wide view of the surrounding country. To the north rose the cliff where
they had lunched at noon, and where they could still see black smoke
ascending in a column from the smouldering beech as from a factory
chimney. To the southeast another column of smoke was visible, and
toward the same quarter Torda Gap opened before them in the distance.

Aaron said they must halt here and rest their horses, whereupon all
three dismounted and Manasseh spread a sheepskin for Blanka to sit on;
but she chose rather to go in quest of wild flowers.

"Your Blanka is a jewel of a woman!" exclaimed Aaron to his brother.
"From early dawn she sits in the saddle, bears all the hardships of the
journey, and utters not a sigh of weariness or complaint. With that
filigree body of hers, she endures fatigues that might well make a
strong man's bones ache, and keeps up her good cheer through them all.
Nothing daunted by danger ahead, she makes merry over it when it is
passed. Yet once or twice I thought she was going to lose heart, but she
looked into your face and immediately regained her courage. But the
hardest part of the journey is still to come. Turn your field-glass
toward Monastery Heights, yonder, where you see the smoke. Do you find
any tents there?"

"Yes, and on the edge of the woods I see the gleam of bayonets."

"That is the camp of Moga's insurgents, and it lies between us and the
Szekler Stone. Every road leading thither is now unsafe for us. But hear
my plan. The insurgents hold Monastery Heights, and we must ride past
them, through the Torda Gap. The millers of the two mills that stand one
at each end of the Gap are my friends. The Hungarian miller at Peterd
has shut off Hesdad Brook to-day, to clear out the mill-race. He does it
once in so