am--thus satisfying
their own hearts, and obeying my mother's orders. They met, and yet
were separated.

"On this footing things remained until the vintage. Marcsa was
considered not only the prettiest, but the best girl in the village.
The new wine was not yet clear, when one morning the good girl came
into my mother's, and counted out two hundred florins on the large oak
table--all in good huszasok,[35] not one small piece was wanting--and
begged my mother to take them with her to the reverend gentlemen, who
gave a sealed receipt for the amount. None but ourselves ever knew
that it was all our pretty Marcsa's hard earnings.

[Footnote 35: _Huszas_--a silver piece containing twenty kreutzers,
worth eightpence.]

"On returning, my mother took Marcsa home with her, and plaited her
long hair with pretty rainbow-coloured ribbons, put a string of
garnets round her neck, and a pair of fine shoes on her little feet;
and all gaily dressed, she took her--none of us knew whither.

"I followed them, however, to the Theiss, when my mother bade me go
and ask the ferryman to take us across to the mill, where my brother
was serving; and we all three sat down in the boat.

"Even now I think I see the beautiful girl: it seems as it were but
yesterday that she sat in the boat before me by my mother's side,
blushing modestly, her sparkling eyes cast down. Her heart told her
whither we were going.

"My brother recognised us from a distance, and seeing that we were
rowing towards him, and his beloved sitting by his mother's side and
on her right hand, he rushed joyfully down to his boat, and pushing it
off, leaped in and rowed to meet us.

"When he came up to us, and he and his bride raised their eyes towards
each other, the poor things scarcely knew what they were about for
joy--they looked as if they could have flown, to rush the sooner into
one another's arms. Joska guided his boat alongside of ours that we
might step in, and coming to the bow, he stretched out his arms to
Marcsa, who trembled like the delibab[36] with joy and emotion.

[Footnote 36: The mirage, or _Fata Morgana_, frequently seen on the
puszta, and which sometimes appears to tremble like a reflection in a
troubled stream. The traveller is sometimes deceived by seeing a
village or castle before him, which trembles and vanishes by degrees
as he approaches.]

"At that moment the boat overbalanced, and my brother suddenly fell
between the two boats, and disappea