n Mrs. Muskulyi's
garden. He had the greatest difficulty in getting so many together, but
a bird-fancier in Transylvania had undertaken to send them to him. The
beautiful young woman, as she turned on her pillows, was surprised to
hear how delightfully the birds were singing in her garden that night.

He had no success with the young married women either, and was beginning
to get thoroughly sick of life, when the war broke out. They would not
take him for a soldier either, they said he was too small and thin, he
would not be able to stand the fatigues of war. But he wanted to do
something at any cost.

The recruiting sergeant, who was an old friend of his, gave him the
following advice:

"I don't mind taking you if you particularly wish to work with us, but
you must look out for some occupation with no danger attached to it. The
campaign is fatiguing; we'll give you something in the writing
business."

Gregorics was wounded in his pride.

"I intend accepting only the most dangerous employment," he said; "now
which do you consider the most dangerous?"

"Why, that of a spy," was the answer.

"Then I will be a spy."

And he kept his word. He dressed himself as one of those vagrants of
whom so many were seen at that time, and went from one camp to the
other, carrying information and letters. Old soldiers remember and still
talk of the little old man with the red umbrella, who always managed to
pass through the enemy's camp, his gaze as vacant as though he were
unable to count up to ten. With his thin, bird-like face, his ragged
trousers, his battered top-hat, and his red umbrella, he was seen
everywhere. If you once saw him it was not easy to forget him, and there
was no one who did not see him, though few guessed at his business. Some
one once wrote about him: "The little man with the red umbrella is the
devil himself, but he belongs to the better side of the family."

In the peaceful time that succeeded the war, he returned to
Besztercebanya, and became a misanthrope. He never moved out of his
ugly, old stone house, and thought no more of making a position for
himself, nor of marrying. And like most old bachelors he fell in love
with his cook. His theory now was to simplify matters. He needed a woman
to cook for him and to wait on him, and he needed a woman to love; that
means two women in the house. Why should he not simplify matters and
make those two women one? Anna Wibra was a big stout woman, somewhere
fr