--he chopped off one of his toes--thinking that would get him
off those hated three years of service; but it seems there is a new
decree by which the lads need not be possessed of all ten toes in order
to serve the hateful government.

No, no! It is no use trying to get out of it. They measure you, and
bang your chest and your back, they look at your eyes and make you open
your mouth to look at your teeth, but anyhow they take you away for
three years.

They make you swear that you will faithfully serve your country and your
King during that time, that you will obey your superiors, and follow
your leader wherever he may command, over land and by water. By water! I
ask you! When there was Albert and Jeno who could not bear even the
sight of water; they would not have gone in a boat on the Maros if you
had offered them a gold piece each! How could they swear that they would
follow some fool of a German officer on water?

They could not swear that. They knew they could not do it. But they were
clapped in prison like common malefactors and treated like brigands and
thieves until they did swear. And after that--well! they had once to
cross the Theiss in a ferry-boat--they were made to do it!

Oh, no! Nothing happened to them then, but Albert came back after his
three years' service, with two of his front teeth gone, and we all know
that Jeno now is little better than an idiot.

So now you know, stranger, why we at Marosfalva call the fourteenth day
of September the very blackest in the whole calendar, and why at eight
o'clock in the morning nobody is at work in the fields.

For the fourteenth day being such a black one, we must all make the most
of the few hours that come before it. At nine o'clock of that miserable
morning the packing of our lads into the train will commence, but until
then they are making merry, bless them! They are true Hungarians, you
know! They will dance, and they will sing, they will listen to gipsy
music and kiss the girls so long as there is breath in their body, so
long as they are free to do it.

At nine o'clock to-day they cease to be free men, they are under the
orders of corporals and sergeants and officers who will command them to
go "Vorwaerts" and "Rechts" and "Links" and all that God-forsaken
gibberish, and put them in irons and on bread and water if they do not
obey. But yesterday, on the thirteenth of September that is, they were
still free to do as they liked: they could dance and