The rising sun answered the question. Shooting its beams from behind a cloud at that moment, it lighted up a banner fluttering in the advancing bayonet-hedge. The flag bore the national colours of Hungary. "_Éljen a haza!_" resounded from the third terrace, and the relief party plunged down the scarp like an avalanche. The Austrians, thus overwhelmed by their opponents, were forced to surrender. Yonder blue-coated figure which had come with this succour like a rescuing angel, just at the moment when aid was most sorely needed, was Ödön Baradlay. The two brothers fell into each other's arms. "I am very angry with you," cried Richard, as he folded his brother in a warm embrace. * * * * * It was six o'clock in the morning. From every turret and pinnacle in Buda the tricolour waved in the breeze, and all the streets of Pest rang with loud huzzas. Turning his back, however, on these scenes of rejoicing, Richard Baradlay, refreshed by a cold bath and a soldier's breakfast, made his way to a neighbouring village, to fulfil the promise so solemnly pledged to poor Otto Palvicz. CHAPTER XXIV. ZEBULON'S BRIGHT IDEA. Three thousand six hundred feet above the sea-level, on a height of the Carpathian mountain range, a convivial party, consisting mostly of army officers, was enjoying itself with wine and music. A splendid view lay spread out before the merrymakers,--a wide-reaching landscape lighted by the slanting beams of the western sun as it sank in golden radiance beneath the horizon. "Look there," Rideghváry was saying, as he named, one after another, the cities and villages that lay before them; "yonder lies the way to Constantinople." His words were greeted with a shout: "Hurrah! Long live the Czar!" Glasses clinked, and the company struck up the Russian national anthem. Rideghváry joined in, and all uncovered during the singing. "Don't you sing with us, Zebulon?" asked Rideghváry, turning to his friend, who sat silent and melancholy. "No more voice than a peacock," was Zebulon's curt reply. The crags about them gave back the tuneful notes, while far below the long line of Russian cavalry regiments, on their march from the north, caught up the song. "See there!" cried Rideghváry to Zebulon, pointing to the troops as they wound their way southward toward the heart of Hungary; "now comes our triumph; now we shall tread our foes under our feet. No power on earth can withstand our might." His face beamed with exultation as he spoke.