d his comrade, in great embarrassment.

"You do not know?--go and look again." His friend hesitated.

"Let me go--I must know," said Imre impatiently, as the young man
endeavored to detain him.

"O stay, Imre, you cannot look on them; they are all headless!"

"My God!" exclaimed the young man, covering his face with both hands,
and, bursting into tears he threw himself down with his face upon the
earth.

His comrades questioned the Wallachian closely as to what he knew
about the young girl. First he returned no answer, pretending to be
drunk and not to understand:

But on their promising to spare his life, on the sole condition that
he would speak the truth, he confessed that she had been carried away
to the mountains, where the band were to cast lots for her.

"I must go!" said Imre, starting as if in a trance.

"Whither?" inquired his comrades.

"To seek her! Take off your dress," he continued, turning to the
Wallachian, "you may have mine in exchange," and, hastily putting on
the tunic, he concealed his pistols in the girdle beneath it.

"We will follow you," said his comrades, taking up their arms; "we
will seek her from village to village."

"No, no, I must go alone! I shall find her more easily alone. If I do
not return, avenge this for me," he said, pointing to the moat; then,
turning to the Wallachian, he added sternly: "I have found beneath
your girdle a gold medallion, which my grandmother wore suspended from
her neck, and by which I know you to be one of her murderers, and, had
I not promised to spare your life, you should now receive the
punishment that you deserve. Keep him here," he said to his comrades,
"until I have crossed the hills, and then let him go."

And taking leave of his friends, he cast one glance at the eleven
heaps, and at the burning castle of his ancestors, and hastened toward
the mountains.

The hoary autumn nights had dyed the leaves of the forest. The whole
country looked as if it had been washed in blood.

Deep amidst the wildest forest the path suddenly descends into a
narrow valley, surrounded by steep rocks at the foot of which lies a
little village half concealed among the trees.

It seemed as if the settlers there had only cleared sufficient ground
to build their dwellings, leaving all the rest a dense forest. Apart
from the rest, on the top of a rock, stood a cottage, which, unlike
others, was constructed entirely of large blocks of stone, and only
approachable