Vendel anxiously.

"Hiai! my friend, you had better ask no questions--you never saw such
things! if we had not retreated, there would not have been a man of us
left! they have a peculiar way of holding their muskets, and never
miss a shot!"

"Why did you not hold yours the same way?" asked Vendel simply.

"Why, you see, Providence was against us; there is no firing against
that! Come, let us make a hole somewhere, and hide these arms; for if
they find out that I have come from the camp, I shall be taken
prisoner, and brought back again."

The two patriots hastened to gain that underground which stretches
from Cs---- to the Danube, in which they concealed themselves for a
whole day and a half, enduring all the glories and privations of war,
and encouraging one another through all their difficulties and
dangers. On the evening of the second day, however, our heroes were as
hungry as wolves, and had began to turn their thoughts to the
procuring food. Slowly and stealthily they left the wood, and, not far
from the outskirts, they descried a waggon lying overturned in one of
the cross roads.

Matyas, seeing that nobody was near it, broke a willow sapling from
the roadside, and, desiring Vendel to lie down on the ground and shut
his eyes, he rushed towards the deserted waggon, and attacked it with
great fury.

"Defend yourselves!--surrender! Who dares resist?" he cried, beating
the waggon with his wand; while Vendel, who lay with his face buried
in the grass, firmly believed that his friend had put to flight at
least three hundred Frenchmen! "The day is ours!" exclaimed Matyas at
last, returning flushed and triumphant from the strife; "let us seize
the spoil!"

If Vendel had hitherto any doubts as to the enemy's capacity for
digesting iron, they were entirely removed on his trying to bite the
bread taken from the waggon. They were obliged to steep it for two
days in the Danube; but they ate it for all that, and Vendel thought
he had never eaten anything with so good an appetite before.

At last, Heaven delivered our country from its scourge. When Napoleon
had seen the Miskolcz bread, the Debreczen honeycakes, the Vasvar
csakany,[75] the Kecskemet kulacs,[76] the Ugocsa horned-owls, and the
Comorn figs--without having obtained the chief object of his
enterprise in the person of Vendel-gazda--he returned home again with
his army; or, in other words, we drove them out of the country--which
is sacred truth, although en