e way," he muttered, "when you let a woman into a
secret!"

They soothed and caressed him, but only laughed the more as they did so.

"I wish you to understand that this is no trifling matter," he declared,
"and that I had good reason to send those stones after that prying spy."

This allusion checked the young women's merriment at once, and a shudder
ran over them at the remembrance of what had passed. "Did we both have
the same thought?" whispered Blanka to Anna.

"Yes," returned the latter, with a sigh.

That night, before she lay down to sleep, Anna veiled the little
portrait that hung in her room, as if to prevent her seeing it in her
dreams.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE HAND OF FATE.

Through the main street of Abrudbanya rode two men, one of them wearing
an overcoat with silver buttons over his Wallachian dress, and a tuft of
heron's feathers in his cap, while at his side hung a curved sword,
pistols protruded from his holsters, and a rifle lay across his
saddle-bow. His face had nothing of the Wallachian peasant in its
features or expression. The other horseman, however, who rode at some
paces' distance in the rear, was manifestly of the peasant class.

The horses' hoofs awoke the echoes of the vacant street. Silence and
desolation reigned supreme. Half-burned houses and smoke-blackened walls
greeted the riders on every side. High up on the door-post of a church
appeared the bloody imprint of a child's hand. How had it come there?
Grass and weeds were growing in the marketplace, and a millstone covered
the village well. Here and there a lean and hungry dog crept forth at
the horsemen's approach, howled dismally, and then retreated among the
ruins.

After this scene of devastation was passed, the highway led the riders
along the bank of a stream, on both sides of which smelting works had
been erected, as this region is rich in gold-producing ore; but nothing
except charred ruins was now left of the buildings. At intervals a
deserted mill was passed, its wheel still turning idly under the impulse
of the tireless stream. Leaving this mining district behind, the two
riders came to a settlement of a different sort, which had not been
given over entirely to destruction. Only occasionally a house showed
windows or doors lacking, while many were wholly unharmed. Among the
latter was one building in whose front wall a well-preserved Roman
gravestone was set, its carving in high relief being still clearly
outl