"Calm yourself. They are well cared for. They are at home in their own
house, where no one can harm them."

He looked at her, in doubt as to her meaning. Zenobia handed him her
weapons.

"Here, take these," she commanded. "You may need them. I have no further
use for them." Thus, disarmed and in Manasseh's power, she stood calmly
before him. "Now be quiet and listen to me," she went on.

The cannon thundered on the Szekler Stone in one continuous roar, while
fiery rockets shot from Hidas Peak in a wide curve and fell into the
valley below, hastening the mad flight of routed and panic-stricken men,
who fled as if for their lives to Gyertyamos, Kapolna, and Bedelloe, to
the woods, and into the mountain defiles. The burning village of St.
George no longer offered them an asylum, and its streets were by this
time nearly deserted.

"That is over," said the Wallachian girl, calmly, and she led Manasseh
into the empty house. "Aaron might as well stop now," she murmured to
herself; "for there are no more to frighten." Then to Manasseh: "You
know it takes two to get up a scare,--one to do the frightening and the
other to be frightened. If I had but said to our men, 'Stop running
away! Those are not the brass cannon of the national guard, but only
Aaron Adorjan's holes in the side of the rock, where he is harmlessly
exploding gunpowder; and that roll of drums that you hear on the Csegez
road does not mean an approaching brigade of Hungarians, but is only the
idle rub-a-dub of a band of school children,'--if I had said that,
Toroczko would now lie in ashes. But I held my tongue and let the panic
do its work. With this day's rout all is ended, and in an hour's time
you can safely return home. When you meet your wife and sister, tell
them you saw me this evening, and let them know that the Wallachian girl
has forgotten nothing--do you hear me?--nothing. They wrote me a
beautiful letter, both of them on one sheet of paper, a letter full of
love and kindness. They called me sister and invited me to your wedding,
promising me that Jonathan should be there, too, and making me promise
to come. And when they had written the letter they even coaxed the
stiff-necked Aaron, who hates us Wallachians like poison, to add his
signature to it, though I could see in the very way he wrote his name
how he disliked to do it. I promised to come, and I kept my word. And
Jonathan came with me--I brought him. That night I told your wife and
your sis