me?--but I will pray to God night and day that He may
not take away your love from me. I am going to America,
dear heart, with an English gentleman who has been very
kind to me. He was the English Consul at Cettinje, and
when there were so many of us--Hungarian lads--lying
sick of that awful cholera in the hospital at
Slovnitza, his wife, a sweet, kind lady, used to come
and visit us and cheer us up. She was very ugly and had
big teeth and no waist, but she was an angel of
goodness. She took some interest in me, and once when I
was still very weak and ill I told her about you, about
our love and what little hope I had of ever winning
you, seeing that I was penniless. She was greatly
interested, and when I was finally allowed to leave the
hospital, she told me to come and see her husband, the
English Consul. Well! dear heart, this kind gentleman
is sending me out to a farm which he possesses in a
place called Australia--I think that it is somewhere in
America, but I am not sure. When I get there I shall
receive more wage in one week than our alfold labourers
get in three months, and it will all be good money, of
which I can save every filler, because my food and
housing will be given to me free, and the kind English
lady--may the Virgin protect her, despite her large
teeth and flat chest--gave me a whole lot of clothes to
take with me. So every filler which I earn I can save,
and I reckon that in two years I shall have saved two
thousand florins" (about L160) "and then I shall come
home. If I still find you free, my dove--which I pray
to God I may do--we can get married at once. Then we'll
rent the Lepke farm from Pali bacsi, as I shall have
plenty of money for the necessary security, and if we
cannot make that pay and become rich folk within three
years, then I am not the man whom I believe myself to
be.

"But, my darling love, do not think for a moment that I
want to bind you to me against your will. God only
knows how deeply I love you; during the last three
years the thought of you has been the sunshine of my
days, the light of my nights. If, when you have
received and pondered over this letter, you send me a
reply to say that you still love me, that you will be
true to me and will wait for my return,