between him and them. His eyes glowed and
his face was distorted with a horrid expression, more brutal than human.
His appearance might well have made the boldest recoil. Anna planted
herself before her companion, as if to shelter her, while Blanka felt
only a mad desire to run and throw herself over the precipice. But
suddenly, when the man was only a few steps from them, he halted and
drew back as if some one had smitten him in the face, his knees
trembled, and an inarticulate cry escaped his lips. He seemed to have
encountered something from which he drew back in dismay, as the leopard,
when pursuing a deer, turns tail at sight of a lion. Blanka and Anna
gave a backward glance and then started to run. Fear now left them, and
as they ran they called aloud, in the glad assurance of help near at
hand, "Manasseh! Manasseh!"--until they reached him and threw themselves
into his arms.

Meanwhile the strange man, looking over his shoulder and seeing Aaron
descending upon him with bold leaps and bounds, did not pause long to
consider, but dropped his scythe and ran for his life, down the steep
side of the gorge, over rubble-stones and slippery boulders.

"What are you so frightened at?" asked Manasseh, taking the matter
lightly and kissing back the roses into the ladies' pale cheeks.

Panting and gasping for breath, they could hardly stammer out the cause
of their alarm, but managed to explain that a "terrible man" had
suddenly come upon them and chased them. Yet neither Blanka nor Anna
went on to say of whom this strange figure had reminded her.

"You little geese!" cried Manasseh, laughing, "it was only a hay-thief.
Grass grows on Hidas Peak, and ever since the days of King Matthias the
Szeklers on the Aranyos have quarrelled with their neighbours over the
cutting of it. The man who is on hand first with his scythe carries it
off. So that bugaboo of yours was merely a harmless peasant in quest of
fodder for his cow, and he took fright at sight of us and ran away.
Look there, will you, he has dropped his scythe in his eagerness to
escape."

The two young women, still clinging to Manasseh, went with him to
examine the Wallachian's scythe.

"A tool of our own make!" he cried, lifting it up and inspecting it. "It
has our trade-mark. The snath is full of notches--probably the owner's
record of work done and of his share in the harvest."

The said owner was by this time far down the steep path. Aaron now
joined his comp