y estate loomed darkly before him, and by the time they
reached a ramshackle old wooden bridge, the visitor perceived what he
sought.

"Those are pine-trees, are they not?" he inquired of the coachman.

"Yes, young sir; one can recognize them from a distance, for they are
still green when the others have shed their leaves."

They were the only trees of the sort in the whole region. They had all
been planted in Squire John's time.

"Here we will stop, old comrade. You return to the wayside _csarda_; I
will take a turn about here alone. I shall not be longer than an hour
away."

"It would be as well were I to accompany you, young sir, if you mean to
take a stroll, for wolves are wont to wander hither."

"It is not necessary, my good friend, I am not afraid."

And with that the stranger dismounted from the sledge, and, taking his
axe in his hand, directed his way through the snowy field to the spot
where the pines stood out darkly against the snow-white plain.

What was beneath those pines?

The family vault of the Karpathys, and he who came to visit it at that
hour was Alexander Boltay.

The young artisan had heard from Teresa on her return home that Fanny
was dead. The great lady had been lowered into her tomb for the worms
just as the wife of the poorest artisan might have been, and her tomb
was perhaps still more neglected than the tomb of the artisan's wife
would have been.

Then Alexander opened his heart to the old people. He meant, he said, to
make a pilgrimage to the tomb of the dead dear one whom he worshipped
both in life and in death, and to whom, now that she was under the
ground, he might confess his love, he had as much right now to her
death-cold heart as anybody else in the world. The two old people did
not attempt to dissuade him; let him go, they thought; let him take his
sorrow there and bury it; perchance he will be lighter of heart when he
has wept himself out there.

In the ice-bound season the young man set out, and from the description
which Teresa gave him, he recognized the funereal pine-grove which John
Karpathy had had planted round the family vault, in order that there it
might be green when everything else was white and dead.

He quitted the sledge, and cut across the plain, while the driver
returned to the wayside _csarda_.

Meanwhile a pair of horsemen might have been seen slowly approaching
from the opposite direction. One of them was a little in the rear of the
other, an