Gentle Father Roger sighed too, but without any satisfaction, as he thought of the youth, with whom he had lived under the same roof, and to whom, as he was fond of insisting, he and his servant owed their lives. But when he heard all that Talabor could tell him, he was as indignant as even Orsolya could have wished; for he understood Master Peter, and saw at once what had puzzled so many, the reason why he had left Dora at home instead of sending her to the Queen, out of harm's way. CHAPTER XX. LIKE THE PHOENIX. It seemed too good to be true! But it was a fact that the Mongols were really gone--gone as they had come, like one of the plagues of Egypt, for there "remained not one" in all Hungary. As soon as King Béla knew that the unexpected had come to pass, and that the land was clear of the enemy, he hastened home. But what a home he found! It had been one of the fairest and richest in Europe; and now he rode for whole days without seeing so much as a single human being, and his followers had to do battle with the wild beasts, which had multiplied to an alarming degree. Go which way he would, he found the land uncultivated and overgrown with thorns and weeds; and when he did come across an inhabited district, the men he encountered were not men, but spectres. The many unburied corpses, together with the sometimes altogether indescribable kinds of food upon which the people had had to subsist, had produced pestilence of divers kinds, which carried off many of those who had escaped the Mongols. It was only a year or so since the first irruption of the Mongols, but the land was a chaos. How the King laboured with might and main to restore the "years which the locust had eaten," and how he succeeded are matters which belong to history. Very gradually and cautiously the people ventured forth from the dens in which they had concealed themselves. At first they came only one or two at a time, to reconnoitre; but when they were convinced that the enemy had utterly withdrawn himself, the joyful news was quickly conveyed to those who were still in hiding, and they flocked back to the ruined towns and villages, which began at once to rise from their ashes. One by one the bells pealed forth again from the church-towers, and many, many a cross was put up in the graveyards to the memory of those who returned no more; not only of those known to be dead, but of those who had simply disappeared, no one could say how, but whose bodies were never found, and who might therefore have been carried away to a living death as slaves. Few indeed of the captives were ever seen again. Many a hamlet and small village of the plains had been wiped out as completely as if it had never existed, and some of these were never rebuilt, though their names live in the neighbourhood to the present day. Many a young man who had been but a "poor relation" before the flood, now found himself the heir to large estates and great wealth.