rmastered boar, feeling the pressure of hand and knee lightened,
with his remaining strength threw the knight off and dealt one last
blow with his tusk. This blow was fatal--it tore the man's throat.

The guests and relations hurrying to him, found the hero dying beside
the dead boar. With cries of sorrow they strove to bind his terrible
wound.

"It is nothing, my children, nothing," said the knight, even then
dying, and he was gone.

"Poor knight!" said the bystanders.

"My poor fatherland," cried Helen, raising to heaven her eyes heavy
with tears.

The day of rejoicing was changed to one of mourning; the hunt to a
funeral feast. In sorrow the guests attended the corpse of their best
friend back to Csakathurm. Only the bald head took another direction.

"That is just what I said," he muttered to himself, "one needs his
life for something more. Well, what matters it? there are still people
elsewhere; I'll go to the next country."

* * * * *

So died Nicholas Zrinyi, the younger, the greatest writer and the
bravest fighter of his fatherland. So died the man, who had been the
favorite of fortune, the darling of his country, its protection and
its glory. In vain would you look now for the hunting-lodge or the
castle;--all is gone--the name, the family of the hero, even his
memory. The general and the statesman have fallen into oblivion; one
part only of the man is left, one part only lives forever,--the
writer.

CHAPTER II

THE HOUSE IN EBESFALVA

We now move forward one country;--one country forward, and four years
backward. We are in Transylvania in the year 1662. Before us is a
dwelling, plain but of the nobility, at the lower end of Ebesfalva,
almost the last house in the place. The building was planned more for
convenience than for fancy; on both sides are stables for horses and
for sheep, built partly of stone, partly of plaster and partly of
wood; sheds for wagons, poultry-yards, open barns, high-gabled sheep
pens covered with straw; in the rear is a fruit garden where one
catches sight of the arched top of a beehive, and finally, in the
middle of the courtyard stands the whitewashed dwelling of one wing,
with shady nut-trees under which is a round table improvised out of a
mill-stone. A stone wall separates the court of the dwelling from the
threshing floor, where are to be seen piles of hay and great heaps of
grain, from the top of which a peacock utters his di