few weeping mothers
and sweethearts in Marosfalva or Kender or Gorcz, just as there is
everywhere else: the lads have to go and do their military service as
soon as they come of age.

And then others come back about this time, those who have completed
their three years, and they must be made welcome with dancing and
music--the things which a Hungarian peasant loves best in all the world.

And as the days are still long and the evenings warm there are the
strolls hand-in-hand, arm-in-arm--after the dancing--up the village
street as far as the slowly-flowing Maros. One or two of the lads who
have come home after three years have found their sweethearts waiting
for them--but only one or two. Three years is a long, long time! Girls
cannot afford to wait for husbands while their youth and good looks fly
away so quickly. And the lads, too, are fickle; some of them have
apparently forgotten amongst the more showy, more lively beauties of
garrison towns, the doe-eyed girl to whom they had promised faith. They
are ready, as soon as they come back, for new courtships, fresh
love-making, another girl--with blue eyes this time, and fair hair
instead of brown.

Then, of course, there are those who never will come back. That awful,
mysterious place called Bosnia has swallowed them up. There was
fighting, it seems, in Bosnia, and many were killed: two lads from
Marosfalva, one from Fekete and two from Kender.

Bosnia must belong to the Crown of Hungary--whatever that may mean--the
politicians say so, anyhow, and in order that the Crown of Hungary
should have what rightly belongs to it the lads from our villages have
to fight and get killed.

"Is that just, I ask you?" so the mothers argue.

The sweethearts weep for awhile and then cast about for fresh fish out
of the waters of Life. Sometimes there are mistakes: lads who have been
reported killed turn up at the village on the appointed day, either hale
and hearty or maimed and crippled. In either case they are welcome. But
at times the mistake is the other way: no black report has come; the
mothers, the fathers, the sweethearts, expect the young soldier home--he
does not come. The others return on a given day--they arrive by
train--Laczi or Benko or Pal is not amongst them. Where is he? Well!
they were not all in the same regiment; they have seen little or
nothing of one another during these three years.

The anxious mothers rush to Barna Jeno--the mayor--and he drafts a
let