will endure hunger,
fatigue--everything, but I will earn the money.'

"And then she began to put her promise into execution.

"Oh, sir! you do not know what a great sum two hundred florins is for
a poor peasant, who has to earn it all by hard and honest labour, the
work of his hands and the sweat of his brow, and to collect it penny
by penny.

"From this day forward, the good girl was scarcely ever seen away from
her work. All through the winter, she sat for ever at her wheel,
spinning a yarn like silk, which she wove herself; there was no linen
like hers in the village, as I have heard the old folks say. She
looked after the poultry in the morning, and carried the fowls and
eggs herself to market. There was a little bit of a garden behind the
house, where she kept flowers and vegetables; and earned more by it
than many who had four times as much ground. In summer she joined the
reapers, and all that she got for her work she turned into
money--fruit, or poultry, or little sucking pigs. Throughout that
blessed year, sir, nobody ever saw smoke arise from her chimney: a bit
of dry bread was all her daily sustenance; and yet the Lord took such
good care of her, that not only her beauty did not diminish, but she
looked as healthy and as rosy as if she were living on milk and
butter. Love kept the spirit in her, poor girl!

"My brother was not allowed to go to her, but I was the messenger
between them. Often, in the fine summer evenings, when I was down at
the mill with my brother, he would take his flute and play those
beautiful melodies, which none could do better than he; and the girls
on the other side, who were filling their pitchers in the stream, or
standing with their white feet in the water, washing linen, would hear
the air, and join in the chorus. But my brother only heard one voice,
and that was the sweetest and the saddest I ever listened to, and
brought tears into the eyes of every one who heard it: you could have
recognised her voice among a thousand.

"Sometimes his master gave my brother leave of absence for an hour or
two, and those were happy days for Joska: he would send me to bid
Marcsa come down in the evening toward the Willow Island. This was a
little sandbank covered with willow-trees, about three or four fathoms
from the shore. Hither would my brother also come in his little boat,
while his true-love sat opposite to him upon the shore, and there
would they converse till morning across the stre