Frequently, on popular festivals, you might notice on his index-finger a rude iron ring (the handiwork of a blacksmith rather than of a jeweller, from the look of it), the seal of which was engraved with the three letters: U. S. S. On such occasions, anyone observing him closely could have remarked that he carried his head higher than usual, and whenever he was asked what these initial letters signified, he would simply shrug his shoulders and say that he had got the ring from a comrade in his student days, and really did not know _what_ the letters meant. During vacation time he would regularly undertake long journeys on foot into distant parts of the land, traversing no end of mountains and valleys, and always returning home more surlily disposed towards the lord of the manor than ever, at the same time dropping mysterious hints in the presence of his confidants, and talking darkly of old expectations being realised, of extraordinary forthcoming events, and of important changes in the general order of things here below. Nowadays people will scarcely believe that there are men whose whole course of life is determined by such baseless and centrifugal ideas. Such a species of human ambition is certainly a great rarity. It resembles that cryptogram which goes by the name of "star-ashes," whose tremulous spray-like masses only appear in rare seasons and odd places after the warm summer rains. No ordinary soil is good enough for them. At any rate, Mr. Thomas Bodza would have acted more wisely if he had endeavoured to inoculate the minds of the faithful committed to his charge with a little reading, a little writing, and some slight knowledge of geography, ethnology, natural history, and fruit cultivation, instead of assembling round him all the loafers of the district in the pot-house, the meeting-house, at the hut of the forest rangers, or in some underground cellar outside the village, and there putting into their heads ideas which, interpreted by their ignorant fanaticism, could only be productive of infinite mischief. He had in all the villages round about personal acquaintances, whom he was wont to visit successively in the course of every year, and whose fantastic aspirations he constantly did his best to keep alive. And at last the opportunity had presented itself for beginning his great work. Being a very well-read man himself, he had been the first to learn from the newspapers of the approach of that dangerous contagious sickness, the antidotes against which were still unknown. Suddenly a mysterious rumour began to spread through the villages that a powerful foreign nation was about to invade the kingdom for the purpose of reconquering for the descendants of the Quadi and the Marahanas the Pannonian provinces that they had held centuries before.