AN OUTLAW’S DIARY _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ Crown 8vo. 6s. net. each THE OLD HOUSE: A Novel STONECROP: A Novel Published by PHILIP ALLAN & CO. [Illustration: THE AUTHOR IN HER STUDY. (_Frontispiece._)] AN OUTLAW’S DIARY: REVOLUTION By CECILE TORMAY WITH A FOREWORD BY THE DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND [Illustration] LONDON: PHILIP ALLAN & CO. QUALITY COURT _First published in 1923_ PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY W. JOLLY AND SONS, LTD., ABERDEEN. TO A GENTLE VICTIM OF THE REVOLUTION MY UNFORGETTABLE MOTHER I DEDICATE THIS BOOK PREFACE It was fate that dubbed this book _An Outlaw’s Diary_, for it was itself outlawed at a time when threat of death was hanging over every voice that gave expression to the sufferings of Hungary. It was in hiding constantly, fleeing from its parental roof to lonely castles, to provincial villas, to rustic hovels. It was in hiding in fragments, between the pages of books, under the eaves of strange houses, up chimneys, in the recesses of cellars, behind furniture, buried in the ground. The hands of searching detectives, the boots of Red soldiers, have passed over it. It has escaped miraculously, to stand as a memento when the graves of the victims it describes have fallen in, when grass has grown over the pits of its gallows, when the writings in blood and bullets have disappeared from the walls of its torture chambers. And now that I am able to send the book forth in print, I am constrained to omit many facts and many details which as yet cannot stand the light of day, because they are the secrets of living men. The time will come when that which is dumb to-day will be at liberty to raise its voice. And as some time has now passed since I recorded, from day to day, these events, much that was obscure and incomprehensible has been cleared up. Yet I will leave the pages unrevised, I will leave the pulsations of those hours untouched. If I have been in the wrong, I pray the reader’s indulgence. My very errors will mirror the errors of those days.