ightly
of stables; soon after, Margit appeared, fresh and serene, but Rozsi did
not come.

"Where is your sister?" Swithin said. Rozsi, it seemed, was tired. "It
will do her good to eat," said Swithin. And Boleskey, murmuring, "She
must drink to our country," went out to summon her, Margit followed him,
while Swithin cut up a chicken. They came back without her. She had "a
megrim of the spirit."

Swithin's face fell. "Look here!" he said, "I'll go and try. Don't wait
for me."

"Yes," answered Boleskey, sinking mournfully into a chair; "try, brother,
try-by all means, try."

Swithin walked down the corridor with an odd, sweet, sinking sensation in
his chest; and tapped on Rozsi's door. In a minute, she peeped forth,
with her hair loose, and wondering eyes.

"Rozsi," he stammered, "what makes you afraid of me, now?"

She stared at him, but did not answer.

"Why won't you come?"

Still she did not speak, but suddenly stretched out to him her bare arm.
Swithin pressed his face to it. With a shiver, she whispered above him,
"I will come," and gently shut the door.

Swithin stealthily retraced his steps, and paused a minute outside the
sitting-room to regain his self-control.

The sight of Boleskey with a bottle in his hand steadied him.

"She is coming," he said. And very soon she did come, her thick hair
roughly twisted in a plait.

Swithin sat between the girls; but did not talk, for he was really
hungry. Boleskey too was silent, plunged in gloom; Rozsi was dumb;
Margit alone chattered.

"You will come to our Father-town? We shall have things to show you.
Rozsi, what things we will show him!" Rozsi, with a little appealing
movement of her hands, repeated, "What things we will show you!" She
seemed suddenly to find her voice, and with glowing cheeks, mouths full,
and eyes bright as squirrels', they chattered reminiscences of the "dear
Father-town," of "dear friends," of the "dear home."

'A poor place!' Swithin could not help thinking. This enthusiasm seemed
to him common; but he was careful to assume a look of interest, feeding
on the glances flashed at him from Rozsi's restless eyes.

As the wine waned Boleskey grew more and more gloomy, but now and then a
sort of gleaming flicker passed over his face. He rose to his feet at
last.

"Let us not forget," he said, "that we go perhaps to ruin, to death; in
the face of all this we go, because our country needs--in this there is
no credit, n