child, were you in the garden? Did you see a wolf? Were you
afraid of it? Shoo! Shoo!'"[86]

[Footnote 86: A favorite child-verse in Hungary.]

Farao was impatiently pawing the scorched grass.

"You too are looking for what is no more, Farao," the robber said,
patting his horse's neck. "Don't grieve. To-morrow you shall stand up to
your knees in provender, and then you shall carry your master on your
back. Don't grieve, Farao."

The robbers had completed their disguises.

"Now take up the boats."

Hidden among the reeds lay two skiffs, light affairs, each cut out of a
piece of tree trunk: just such as would hold two men, and such as two
men could carry on their shoulders over dry ground.

The robber-band put the skiffs into the water and started one after the
other on their way; they went down until they reached the stream leading
to the great dyke, by which they could punt down to the park of
Lankadomb, just where the shooting-box was.

It was about midnight when they reached it.

On the right of Lankadomb the dogs were baying restlessly, but the
hounds of the castle watchman did not answer them. They were sleeping.
Some vagrant gypsy woman had fed them well that evening on poisoned
swine-flesh.

The robbers reached the castle courtyard noiselessly, unnoticed, and
each one at once took the place allotted to him, as Kandur had directed.

The silence of deep sleep reigned in the house.

When everyone was in his place, Kandur crept on his stomach among the
bushes, which formed a grove under Czipra's window that looked on to the
garden, and putting an acacia leaf into his mouth, began to imitate the
song of the nightingale.

It was an artistic masterpiece which the wild son of the plains had,
with the aid of a leaf, stolen from the mouth of the sweetest of
song-birds.

All those fairy warblings, those plaintive challenging tones, those
enchanting trills, which no one has ever written down, he could imitate
so faithfully, so naturally, that he deceived even his lurking comrades.

"Cursed bird," they muttered, "it too has turned to whistling."

* * * * *

Czipra was sleeping peacefully.

That invisible hand, which she had sought, had closed her eyes and sent
sweet dreams to her heart. Perhaps, had she been able to sleep that
sleep through undisturbed, she would have awakened to a happy day.

The nightingale was warbling under her window.

The nightingale! The song-bird