"Don't bother your head about me any more," continued the Turk calmly. "I am an Hungarian renegade who was once in the service of Emerich Balassa. I had a hand in the capture and poisoning of Corsar Beg, and when the Hungarians began to persecute me on that account, I turned Turk. If the Prophet befriend me, I may yet rise to be Kapudan Pasha. Pray don't imagine you can bamboozle a wily old fox like me." Clement, completely disconcerted, could only scratch his head, proceeded with his escort from village to village, and after accomplishing his regular official business, proclaimed the fresh imposition of a farthing per head, which the people everywhere received most favourably, in many cases even paying it down at once to his Tartar comrade. But no one knew anything about the panther. Indeed, but for the respect inspired by his gallooned green boots, the Patrol-officer would have been laughed out of countenance. Only one little Wallachian village up in the mountains, called Marisel, was yet to be visited, and beyond that place began the domains of Baron Banfi, where the jurisdiction of the Patrol-officer terminated. Thither also the renegade followed him. CHAPTER II. SANGE MOARTE.[29] The Patrol-officer and his companion had already been travelling for half the day across the Batrina moor on their way to Marisel. Clement kept on asking every living soul he met where the village was, and always received the same answer--"Further on!" [Footnote 29: _Sange moarte._ Dead blood (Roumanian).] From time to time they met a Wallachian peasant reviling the team of sluggish oxen spanned to his huge wagon, and vainly endeavouring to make them quicken their pace; then there were ponds to be waded, where half-naked gipsy bands, in picturesque rags, were washing gold-dust out of the sand, and stared at the Tartar as if he were a wild beast; here and there, in the mossy hollow of a wayside tree, stood an icon, the pale, weather-worn gilding of which being all that remained of its once gorgeous colouring; in the worm-eaten niche stood the _pomana_,[30] a pitcher of pure spring water which the traditional piety of the young Wallachian maidens had placed there for the refreshment of thirsty travellers. [Footnote 30: _Pomana_, or _pomena_. An alms, a voluntary free succour. The etymology is obscure. Some opine that it is a corruption of _per_ and _manus_.] The road now went up hill and down dale; for the greater part of the way they had to lead their horses. All around stood the ever-changing wilderness; lofty, perpendicular beeches, terebinthine oaks, with an occasional dark-green pine. At last they reached a point where the road divided. One branch of it ran right down into the valley, the other wound obliquely up to the summit of a bald bleak hill, from which a projecting rock hung down so precipitately that it seemed ready to fall every moment.