s together from place to place. Between
various groups of the volunteers were regular lines of _pandurs_ who had
to thoroughly scour all the forests they came to. The encircling network
of this gigantic army of beaters grew narrower and narrower day by day
and was to converge towards a fixed point which Squire Gerzson said he
would more definitely indicate later on.

Moreover there was a flying column admitted to the full confidence of
its leader, whose duty it was to appear suddenly and unexpectedly in all
parts of the closely environed region, in order to head off anything
like a definite plan of defence on the part of the adventurers and track
them down more easily. The leadership of this special corps was
entrusted to young Szilard Vamhidy, upon whose ingenuity, determination
and ability Squire Gerzson professed to place the utmost reliance.

As soon as he had received this important charge, Szilard took horse
and set off at the head of his four and twenty _pandurs_. First of all
he went in the direction of the Alps of Bihar and along a narrow
mountain path and through a melancholy, uncanny, region with not a
living plant by the wayside and not a morsel of moss on the naked rock.
No sound is to be heard there but the eternal sighing of the wind, and
in the dizzy depths below the traveller sees nothing but dense, dreary
forests crowding one upon another with the Alpine eagles circling and
screaming above them.

It was just the place for a hunted band of robbers to turn upon their
pursuers for a last life and death struggle,--here where even the bodies
of the slain would never be found. For not once in two years does a
wanderer chance to come this way, and long before that time the wolves
and the vultures will have dispersed the bones of the fallen.

Yet this time the robber bands did not fall in with their pursuers, a
sufficient proof that Szilard's plan was skilfully laid and
unanticipated. For had Fatia Negra had any idea of his design, it is
absolutely inconceivable that he would not have laid in wait for him on
this spectre-haunted path, where ten resolute men could have held a
whole army at bay.

For hours Szilard's long troop of horsemen pursued their way along
without meeting a soul. Late in the afternoon they came upon the first
shepherd's hut. The herdsman himself was out in the forest with his
flocks; there was nobody at home but a lame dog which barked at them.

In the evening they met a mounted coun