s himself against
hurricanes and snow-storms, yes, and against the wild beasts of the
forest, the bears and wolves--nobody troubles his head about all that.

"Such a goatherd is that same Juon whom your ladyship has learnt to
know. Perhaps we shall hear something more about him some other time,
for his life has been very romantic; now, however, I will only tell you
of a single episode therein:

"There once lived near here in the district of Vlaskutza, a rich
_pakular_[25] who had scraped together a lot of gold out of a mining
venture at Verespatak, and therefore went by the name of wealthy Misule.

[Footnote 25: Roguish speculator.]

"He had an only daughter, Mariora by name,--and has your ladyship any
idea of what Roumanian beauties are? A sculptor could not devise a
nobler model. So beautiful was she that her fame had spread through the
Hungarian plain as far as Arad, and whenever great folks from foreign
lands came to see Gyenstar and Brivadia they would make a long circuit
and come to Vlaskucza in order to rest at the house of old Misule, where
the finest prospect of all was a look into the eyes of Mariora.

"This wonderously beautiful maiden loved the poor goatherd Juon, who
possessed nothing in the world but his sheepskin pelisse and his
alpenstock; him she loved and him alone. Wealthy old Misule would
naturally have nothing to say to such a match; he had in his eye an
influential friend of his, a gentleman and village elder in the county
of Fehervar, one Gligor Tobicza,--to him he meant to give his daughter.
Reports were spread that Juon was a wizard. It was Misule's wife who
fastened this suspicion upon him, because he had succeeded in bewitching
her daughter. She said among other things, that he understood the
language of the brute beasts, that he had often been seen speaking with
wolves and bears, and that when he spread out his shaggy sheepskin, he
sat down at one end of it and a bear at the other. There was this much
of truth in the tale, that once when he was tending his flocks Juon
heard a painful groaning in the hollow of a rock, and, venturing in,
perceived lying in one corner a she-bear who, mortally injured in some
distant hunt, had contrived to drag its lacerated body hither to die.
Beside the old she-bear lay a little suckling cub. The mother dying
before his very eyes, Juon had compassion on the desolate cub, took it
under his protection, and carried it to a milch-goat, who suckled it.
The litt