Aranka, and gave it to the
child with generous gallantry. The little maid reached for the costly
present timidly, without the slightest suspicion of either its
material or moral worth; but when once the trinket was in her hand she
would not have let it go for anything in the world. The parents
suddenly became silent. True, their expression was a smiling one, but
their eyes were serious.

CHAPTER VI

THE BATTLE OF NAGY-SZOeLLOeS

Meanwhile Michael Apafi assured by Ali Pasha that help would come to
him in a short time, advanced on Schassburg and there awaited the
change of fortune. John Kemeny came against him with a great army of
German and Hungarian troops in imposing numbers, and he himself was a
bold general in time of action. Michael Apafi could make but slight
opposition. He had a few hundred stiff-necked Szeklers incapable of
discipline, together with the blue janissaries who had stayed behind
as bodyguard for him; in all not the tenth of Kemeny's force in point
of strength. By the advice of Stephen Apafi the Prince determined to
stay in Schassburg on the defensive until he could be joined by the
auxiliaries from his Turkish patron. This decision was pleasing to the
Saxon burghers, for behind the walls of their own town they knew how
to defend themselves, but in open field they were never quite
comfortable. With the Szeklers it was just the opposite. It was
Nalaczy's mission to keep them in a warlike frame of mind. One evening
he brought them to such a state of excitement at the inn that with the
dawn they went noisily to the windows of the Prince and swore roundly
that the gate must be opened to them for they were determined to
attack Kemeny and fight it out to the death. The Prince and his
advisers came down in terror and strove in every way to make them
understand that Kemeny's troops were more numerous than they; that the
half of his army was made up of musketeers while on their side none
but the Saxons knew how to use firearms; that if they should make a
sally by one gate the enemy would rush in by the other and all would
be confusion. But the man who thinks he can clear a Szekler's mind of
an idea once gained is much mistaken.

"We are either going to be led against the enemy or we are going
home," they shouted. "We positively will not consent to stay here ten
years like the Trojans, for we are needed at home. Portion out to
every man the number of the enemy that falls to his share, these he
sh