d you right," cried another. "None but a German would have
offered him such a rudeness."

"Not but he's too ready with his heavy whip," muttered an old
soldier-like fellow. "He might chance to strike where no words would
efface the welt."

Stories of Hunyadi's extravagance and eccentricity now poured in on all
sides. How he had sold an estate to pay the cost of an imperial visit
that lasted a week; how he had driven a team of four across the Danube
on the second day of the frost, when a heavy man could have smashed the
ice by a stamp of his foot; how he had killed a boar in single combat,
though it cost him three fingers of his left hand, and an awful flesh
wound in the side; and numberless other feats of daring and recklessness
were recorded by admiring narrators, who finished by a loud _Elyen_ to
his health.

I am not sure that I went away to my bed feeling much encouraged at the
success of my mission, or very hopeful of what I should do with this
magnate of Hungary.

By daybreak I was again on the road. The journey led through a wild
mountain pass, and was eminently interesting and picturesque; but I was
no longer so open to enjoyment as before, and serious thoughts of my
mission now oppressed me, and I grew more nervous and afraid of failure.
If this haughty Graf were the man they represented him, it was just
as likely he would refuse to listen to me at all; nor was the fact a
cheering one that my client was a Jew, since nowhere is the race less
held in honor than in Hungary.

As day began to decline, we issued forth upon a vast plain into which
a mountain spur projected like a bold promontory beside the sea. At the
very extremity of this, a large mass, which might be rock, seemed
to stand out against the sky. "There,--yonder," said the postilion,
pointing towards it with his whip; "that is Schloss Hunyadi. There's
three hours' good gallop yet before us."

A cold snowdrift borne on a wind that at times brought us to a
standstill, or even drove us to seek shelter by the wayside, now set in,
and I was fain to roll myself in my furs and lie snugly down on the hay
in the _wagen_, where I soon fell asleep; and though we had a change of
horses, and I must have managed somehow to settle with the postilion and
hand him his _trink-geld_, I was conscious of nothing till awakened by
the clanking sound of a great bell, when I started up and saw we had
driven into a spacious courtyard in which, at an immense fire, a
numb