It was strange that at such a moment I could hear the hissing of the damp wood in the fireplace and could see that Alback’s little old portrait was hanging crooked on the wall. I got up and put it straight. Out of doors the mist was drifting. Drops condensed on the window and trickled slowly down. The mist was noiselessly shedding tears over miles and miles. When I left my mother’s room I met my brother Béla in the hall. He stood with his back to me, staring fixedly out into the mist. His sword with the belt twisted round it and his officer’s cap lay on the table. The cockade of the cap was still in its place. I looked at him silently for some moments, and a deep pity filled me. He too was one of the hundreds of thousands. For him it was even worse than for us.... As a lieutenant of reserve he joined his regiment of lancers on the first of August, 1914. Since then he had served with many branches of the service, often in the infantry, till at last, after long years of war, he was invalided home gravely ill from under Jamiano. On the banks of the Drava, in Przemysl, the battle of Lemberg, the wintry Carpathians, Besarabia, and that hell of rocks the Carso—the road of many Hungarian deaths, of much Hungarian honour. He had traversed it from end to end. And now he stood here, like an old man, looking into the fog, with his sword lying idle. Only when I called him by name did he notice that I was in the room, and as he turned I noticed that his coat dangled as if it were hanging on a skeleton. [Illustration: COUNT MICHAEL KÁROLYI. (_To face p. 26._)] On his drawn face deep lines extended to the corners of his mouth. He seemed highly strung and started to say one thing, then stopped and said something else. “I started for town but could not stand the walk so I came back.” While he spoke I felt that he was thinking of something else all the time. Suddenly he collapsed into a chair, his elbows on the table. “There, in Pest, deserters and demagogues. They have suspended me, and shirking defeatists are the leaders and laugh at us. The new government glorifies cowardice and dishonour. We have come to this. Why, then, what was the good of it all?” Through his voice spoke the voice of four years’ suffering, and a tear trickled down his pallid cheeks. Suddenly he stretched out his thin hand for his cap, and looked eagerly with bent head at the cockade on it. “They won’t tear mine off.” He stopped abruptly and looked up to me: “You have heard what happened yesterday in Hermina road?” “I know.” He got up and returned to the garden door, and motionless stared out into the fog.