one
was either too much absorbed in the business of the morning, or too much
accustomed to these final scenes of farewell and tenderness ere the lads
went off for their three years' service, to throw more than a cursory
glance on these two.

"I love you, Elsa, my dove, my rose," Andor reiterated over and over
again; "you will wait for my return, will you not?"

"I will wait, Andor," replied the girl through her sobs.

"The thought of you will lighten my nights, and bring sunshine to my
dreary days. Every morning and every evening when I say my prayers, I
shall ask my guardian angel to fly over to yours, and to tell him to
whisper in your ear that I love you beyond all else on earth."

"We must part now, Andor," she said earnestly, "the second bell has gone
long ago."

"Not yet, Elsa, not yet," he pleaded; "just walk as far as that next
acacia tree. There no one will see us, and I want one more kiss before I
go."

She never thought to resist him, since her own heart was at one with his
wish, and he was going away so soon and for so long. So they walked as
far as the next acacia tree, and there he took her in his arms and
kissed her on the cheeks, the eyes, the lips.

"God alone knows, Elsa," he said, and now his own voice was choked with
sobs, "what it means to me to leave you. You are the one woman in the
world for me, and I will thank the good God on my knees every day of my
life for the priceless blessing of your love."

After that they walked back hand in hand. They had wandered far, and in
a quarter of an hour the train would be starting. It meant a week in
prison in Arad for any recruit to miss the train, and Andor did mean to
be brave and straight, and to avoid prison during the three years.

The gipsy musicians had carried their instruments over to the railway
station; here they had ensconced themselves in full view of the train
and were playing one after the other the favourite songs of those who
were going away.

When Andor and Elsa reached the station the crowd in and around it was
dense, noisy and full of animation and colour. A large batch of recruits
who had come by the same train from more distant villages had alighted
at Marosfalva and joined in the bustle and the singing. They had got
over the pang of departure from home half an hour or an hour ago; they
had already left the weeping mothers and sweethearts behind, so now they
set to with a will in true Hungarian fashion to drown regrets and s