nce Sandor was able to grasp the hand of his son, and murmur in the
ear of this hero of sixteen:

"Remember! Love and defend the fatherland!"

Then, as the Austrians were close at hand, it was necessary to bury the
Prince in a trench dug in the snow, at the foot of a clump of fir-trees.

Some Hungarian 'honveds, bourgeois' militia, and Varhely's hussars held
at the edge of the black opening resinous torches, which the wintry wind
shook like scarlet plumes, and which stained the snow with great red
spots of light. Erect, at the head of the ditch, his fingers grasping
the hand of Yanski Varhely, young Prince Andras gazed upon the earthy
bed, where, in his hussar's uniform, lay Prince Sandor, his long blond
moustache falling over his closed mouth, his blood-stained hands crossed
upon his black embroidered vest, his right hand still clutching the
handle of his sabre, and on his forehead, like a star, the round mark of
the bit of lead that had killed him.

Above, the whitened branches of the firs looked like spectres, and upon
the upturned face of the dead soldier fell flakes of snow like congealed
tears. Under the flickering of the torch-flames, blown about by the
north wind, the hero seemed at times to move again, and a wild desire
came to Andras to leap down into the grave and snatch away the body. He
was an orphan now, his mother having died when he was an infant, and he
was alone in the world, with only the stanch friendship of Varhely and
his duty to his country to sustain him.

"I will avenge you, father," he whispered to the patriot, who could no
longer hear his words.

The hussars and honveds had advanced, ready to fire a final salvo over
the grave of the Prince, when, suddenly, gliding between the ranks of
the soldiers, appeared a band of Tzigani, who began to play the March of
Rakoczy, the Hungarian Marseillaise, the stirring melody pealing forth
in the night-air, and lending a certain mysteriously touching element
to the sad scene. A quick shudder ran through the ranks of the soldiers,
ready to become avengers.

The national hymn rang out like a song of glory over the resting-place
of the vanquished. The soul of the dead seemed to speak in the voice of
the heroic music, recalling to the harassed contestants for liberty the
great days of the revolts of the fatherland, the old memories of the
struggles against the Turks, the furious charges of the cavaliers across
the free puszta, the vast Hungarian plain.