at
distant tanya.

The tiny lizard in his comfortable position on the summit of a gigantic
pumpkin can continue his matutinal sleep in peace; the stork can
continue undisturbed his preparations for his impending long voyage over
seas. Man has not yet thought to break by travail or by song the
peaceful silence of the plain.

And yet the village lies not very far away, close to the Maros; the
small, low, hemp-thatched houses scarcely peep above the sea of
tall-stemmed maize, only the white-washed tower of the church with its
red-painted roof stands out clear and abrupt against the sky.

And now the sharp, cracked sound of the Elevation bell breaks the
silence of the summer's morning. The good Pater Bonifacius is saying
Mass; he, at any rate, is astir and busy with his day's work and
obligations. Surely it is strange that at so late an hour in
mid-September, with the maize waiting to be gathered in, the population
of Marosfalva should still be absent from the fields.

Hej! But stranger, what would you! Such a day is this fourteenth of
September.

What? You did not know it? The fourteenth of September, the ugliest,
blackest, most God-forsaken day in the whole year!

You did not know? You cannot guess? Then what kind of a stranger are you
if you do not know that on this hideous fourteenth of September all the
finest lads of Marosfalva and the villages around are taken away by the
abominable government? Away for three years to be made into soldiers, to
drill and to march, to carry guns and bayonets, to obey words of command
that they don't understand, to be packed off from place to place--from
Arad to Bistricz, from Kecskemet to Nagyvarad, aye? and as far as Bosnia
too--wherever that may be!

Yes, kind Sir! the lads of Marosfalva and of Fekete, of Kender and of
Gorcz, are taken away just like that, in batches every year, packed into
one of those detestable railways like so many heads of cattle and
separated from their mothers, their sisters, their sweethearts, all
because a hateful government for which the people of Marosfalva do not
care one brass filler, has so decreed it.

Mind you, it is the same in all the other villages, and in every town in
Hungary--so at least we have been given to understand--but we have
nothing to do with other villages or with the towns: they do just as the
good God wills them to do. It is our lads--the lads of Marosfalva and
Kender and Fekete and Gorcz--who have to be packed off in train