The soldiers!--oh, not one of _them_ would betray him; and all snares were laid in vain. With the officers he never meddled. The private soldiers were his men. With them he felt himself secure from treachery. And the seed he scattered abroad produced an abundant harvest. The dejection of the troops became daily more striking. The soldiers grew wild and intractable. No longer, when riding their horses to water, did they sing, as had been their wont, joyous ditties in praise of wine and women. Their songs were now sad and strange-sounding; mournful words to yet more dismal tunes. They sang of their country, of their dear native land, and of strife and bloodshed, in dirge-like strains; and the burden of every couplet was "_Eljen Magyar!_" Like the last accents of a dying man were the tones they uttered, sinking deeper and deeper, and ending in piteous long-protracted cadences. Still are such songs to be heard in Hungary's forests, and around her villages, in the silent night-time. Now, more than ever, do they sound like funeral dirges, and their long sad notes like wailings from the grave. * * * * * In a small Gallician town was quartered a division of hussars--splendid fellows, for whom the heart of many a Polish maiden beat quicker than its wont. The most beautiful woman in all the neighbourhood loved the best blade amongst the hussars--the Captain. Countess Anna K--nsky, the lovely Polish widow, had been for six months betrothed to the bold hussar officer, and the wedding-day was near at hand. A single night intervened. On the eve of the happy day, the bridegroom went to visit his bride. He was a tall slender man, with the bloom of youth still upon his face; but his high forehead was already bald;--"Sun and moon together," as the Hungarian proverb says. The bride was a fair and delicate lady, with abundant black locks, a pale nervous countenance, and blue eyes of that unusual lustre which one finds only in Polish blue eyes. At sight of her lover, her alabaster cheek was overspread with the roses of love's spring-time, and her eyes beamed like the rising sun. The bridegroom would fain have appeared cheerful; but it is hard to deceive the gaze of love, which reads the beloved one's trouble in each fold of the brow, in each absent glance of the eye. Tenderly she approached him, smoothed his forehead's wrinkles with her hand, and imprinted a kiss in their place. But again they returned. "What ails thee, dearest? How is this? Sad on the eve of our wedding-day?" "I? Nothing ails me. But I am annoyed at an incident--a casualty--which I cannot postpone. The court-martial has condemned a man to death. I have just now signed the sentence. The man is to be shot to-morrow: just on our bridal-day! I would it were otherwise!" "The man is doubtless a criminal?"