his rock palace, which, like
the Palazzo Cagliari, consisted of two wings, from the second of which a
low and narrow passage led upward to the mountain spring whence the
thoughtful host had procured fresh water for their table. The previous
occupants of this abode seemed to have been provided with not a few
conveniences.

Returning to the fireside, Blanka was easily persuaded to try the couch
that had been spread for her. The three planks, laid on some flat stones
and heaped with sheepskins and rugs, made a very comfortable
resting-place even for a lady. Blanka demanded nothing further, except a
glass of water, and then begged Aaron to tell her some more stories, to
which she listened with her chin resting in her hand and her eyelids now
and then drooping with drowsiness, despite the interest she took in the
narrator's ingenious farrago of fact and fiction, of romance and
reality.

He told her how Balyika, the last lord of this castle, had held it for
years against the imperial troops; even after Francis Rakoczy's
surrender he had refused to lay down his arms, but had maintained his
position with a sturdy band of a hundred mountaineers. With this little
company he waged bitter warfare against his foes, losing his followers
one after another in the unequal contest, until he alone was left. Even
then he refused to yield himself, but outwitted all who strove to kill
or capture him. Finally he met the fate of many another brave man,--he
was betrayed by the woman he loved. He had been smitten with a passion
for the daughter of the Torda baker, the beautiful Rosalie; but her
affections were already bespoken by the butcher's apprentice, Marczi by
name, a youth of courage and activity. However, she deigned to receive
the outlawed chieftain's attentions, her sole purpose being to entrap
him and deliver him up to his foes. One evening, when she went to keep
an appointment with Balyika, she notified the village magistrate and the
captain of the yeomen. These two took an armed force and surrounded the
lovers' rendezvous, thinking thus at last to capture their man. But he
cut his way through the soldiery, and, fleeing over the mountain, made
straight for his cave in the Torda Gap, outstripping the pursuit of both
horse and foot--with the single exception of the injured lover, Marczi,
whom he could not shake off. The young man clung to his heels and chased
him to the very entrance of his retreat, where, just as the robber chief
was