ere! Live or die, but forget us."

The youth looked in his mother's face with an imploring expression,
and then at the women who surrounded her; but he encountered no
glance--no trace of sympathy--his eyes sought his bride, his heart's
brightest hopes, the blue-eyed maiden; but she had fallen on her knees
at his mother's feet, hiding her face in Judith's dress, to conceal
her sobs.

The youth still hesitated--still waited to see if any one would bid
him stay; and when he saw that none spoke, not even his bride, he
raised himself slowly and silently from the earth, still holding his
hand across his breast, and, with tottering steps, turned once more to
the trackless plain, and wandered into the woods beyond, where he sank
never to rise again.

One or two of the Szekely youths returned afterwards from the lost
field, but the women refused them admittance.

"Seek another home," they said, "than the one you could not defend!"

And the few who survived wandered into distant countries, for none
dared return who had outlived his country's ruin.

* * * * *

Bitter were the sounds of weeping and lamentation in the churchyard of
Kezdi-Vasarhely--the cry of the Szekely women rose to heaven.

The old man at the crypt-door asked, in a feeble voice, the cause of
the weeping.

"Szekely-land is lost!" they cried; "your son and your grandsons have
fallen on the field with their leader, and Gabor Aron; and all their
cannon is taken!"

The old man raised his hands and sightless eyes to heaven. "My God!"
he exclaimed, and, sinking to the earth, he ceased to be blind; for
the light of eternity had risen on his spirit.

The old man was dead.

The Szekely women surrounded the body with deep reverence, and bore it
in their arms into the town.

The cripple followed slowly on his crutches, repeating bitterly to
himself, "Why could not I have been there too? why could not I have
fallen among them?"

In all Kezdi-Vasarhely there was not a man to be seen; the brave had
fallen, the deserters had been turned away, and the last man they were
now placing in his coffin, and he was an old man past eighty, and
blind.

Only women and children now remained--widows and orphans--who wept
bitterly round the old man's bier, but not for the dead.

The cripple knelt unheeded at the foot of the coffin; and hid his face
in his hands, as he heard them say that the _last_ man was dead; they
did not consider him as