For six days he walked on, over stubble and fallow, through storm and cold by night and parching heat by day--his child, his beloved child, on his arm. He asked not what ailed her; and she uttered no complaint. On the sixth day the maiden died, of hunger, misery, and grief. The father felt his burthen heavier; the arms that clasped his neck slackened their hold, and the pale cheek that nestled on his shoulder was chill and cold! But the spires of Szegedin now glittered in the distance. George hurried on, and at last, exhausted by his speed, he reached at noonday the large and populous city. In front of it, on the vast plain, a great multitude was assembled: more than twenty thousand souls were gathered together, listening to the words of a popular orator, exalted upon a scaffolding in their midst. George made his way into the throng; the speaker was relating the incredible atrocities of the Raitzen. Several of his hearers noticed the weary, wild-looking, travel-stained man, carrying in his arms a pale girl with closed eyes, who stood amongst them like a fugitive from a mad-house. "Whence come you?" they asked him. "From St Thomas." "Ha! Up! up with him on the scaffold!" cried those who heard his reply. "A man is here from St Thomas. Up with him, and let him speak to the people!" The crowd opened a passage, and George was hurried to the scaffold. When, from this elevation, his emaciated and ghastly countenance, furrowed by suffering and despair, his failing limbs, and the faded and ashy pale features of the child upon his shoulder, became visible to the assembled multitude, a deep shuddering murmur ran through its masses, like that the Platten Lake gives forth when tempest nears its shores. At sight and sound of the heaving throng, a hectic flush flamed upon George's cheek, an unwonted fire burned in his bosom; he felt the spirit of revenge descend upon his head like a forked and fiery tongue. "Magyars!" he exclaimed in loud and manly tones, "I come from St Thomas, the sole survivor of all who there prayed to God in the Magyar tongue. My goods are plundered, my kinsmen slain. Have any of you friends there?--prepare your mourning, for of a surety they are dead. Of all I possessed I have saved but one treasure--my unhappy child. Approach! ye that are fathers, think of your virgin daughters, and behold what they have made of mine!" As he spoke, he lifted his child from his shoulder; and then only did he perceive that she was dead. Until that moment, he had thought she was only faint and silent, as she had constantly been for six days past. "Dead!" shrieked the despairing man, and clasped the corpse to his heart. "She is dead!" he repeated. The words died away upon his lips, and he fell, like one thunderstruck, headlong to the ground. This tragical incident raised to a climax the excitement of the multitude. "Revenge!--a bloody revenge!" thundered a voice; and the tumult that now arose was like the howling of the storm.