which went right through the young, slender body and the look that shot
through the quickly-veiled blue eyes.

He was only a peasant, a rough son of the soil, whose temperament was
hot with passion and whose temper had never known a curb. He had never
realized until this moment how beautiful Elsa was, and how madly he
loved her. For he called the jealous rage within by the sacred name of
love, and love to a Magyar peasant is his whole existence, the pivot
round which he frames his life, his thoughts of the present, his dreams
of the future.

The soil and the woman!--they are his passions, his desires, his
religion--to own a bit of land--of Hungarian land--and the woman whom he
loves. Those two possessions will satisfy him--beyond these there is
nothing worth having--a plough, of course--a hut wherein to sleep--an ox
or two, perhaps--a cow--a horse.

But the soil and the woman on whom he has fixed his love--we'll call it
love . . . he certainly calls it so--those two possessions make the
Hungarian peasant more contented than any king or millionaire of Western
civilization.

Eros Bela had the land. His father left him a dozen kataszter (land
measure about two and three-quarter acres) or so; Elsa was the woman
whom he loved, and the only question was who--he or Andor--would be
strong enough to gain the object of his desire.

CHAPTER III

"You will wait for me?"

But now it is all over, the final bar of the csardas has been played,
the last measure trodden. From the railway station far away the sharp
clang of a bell has announced the doleful fact that in half an hour the
train will start for Arad, thence to Brasso, where the recruits will be
enrolled, ticketed, docketed like so many heads of cattle--mostly
unwilling--made to do service for their country.

In half an hour the train starts, and there is so much still to say that
has been left unsaid, so many kisses to exchange, so many promises,
protestations, oaths.

The mothers, fearful and fussy, look for their sons in among the crowd
like hens in search of their chicks; their wizened faces are hard and
wrinkled like winter apples, they carry huge baskets on their arms,
over-filled with the last delicacies which their fond, toil-worn hands
will prepare for the beloved son for the next three years:--a piece of
smoked bacon, a loaf of rye bread, a cake of maize-flour.

The lads themselves--excited after the dance, and not quite as
clear-headed as they