father's memory, Bajazet, the "Turkish Lightning" as he was called because of the celerity of his movements, had flashed his arms through this Pass, and sent the bolts of death down upon Wallachia, and poured terror even to the distant gates of Vienna. Often had Milosch rehearsed the story of the terrible days when he himself had been a soldier in the army of the Wallachian Prince Myrtche; and showed the scar of the cut he had received from the cimeter of a Turkish Janizary, whom he slew not far from the site of their home.

Their neighbor, Kabilovitsch, a man well weighted with years, not only listened to these tales, but added marvellous ones of his own; sometimes relating to the wars of King Sigismund of Hungary, who, after Prince Myrtche, had tried to regain this country from the cruel rule of the Moslems; more frequently, however, his stories were of exploits of anonymous heroes. These were told with so much enthusiasm as to create the belief that the narrator had himself been the actor in most of them. For Kabilovitsch was a strange character in the little settlement; though not the less confided in because of the mystery of his previous life. He had come to this out-of-the-way place, as he said, to escape with his little daughter the incessant raids and counter-raids of Turks and Christians, which kept the adjacent country in alarm.

Good Uncle Kabilovitsch—as all the children of the hamlet called him—named his daughter, a lass of ten summers, Morsinia, after the famous peasant beauty, Elizabeth Morsiney, who had so fascinated King Sigismund.

Morsinia often braided her hair, and sat beneath her canopy of blossoming laurel, while Constantine, the younger of Milosch's boys, dismounted from the back of his trained goat at the mimic threshold, and wooed her on bended knee, as the good king wooed the beautiful peasant. Michael, the elder boy, was not less ardent, though less poetic, in the display of his passion for Morsinia. A necklace of bear's claws cut with his own hand from a monster beast his father had killed; a crown made of porcupine quills which he had picked up among the rocks; anklets of striped snake skin—these were the pledges of his love, which he declared he would one day redeem with those made of gems and gold—that is, when he should have become a princely warrior.

To Constantine, however, the little maiden was most gracious. It was a custom in the Balkan villages for the young people, on the Monday after Easter, to twist together bunches of evergreens, and for each young swain to kiss through the loops the maid he loved the best. With adults this was regarded as a probationary agreement to marry. If the affection were mutually as full flamed the following Easter, the kiss through the loop was the formal betrothal. Constantine's impatience wreathed the evergreens almost daily, and, as every kiss stood for a year, there was awaiting them—if the good fairies would only make it true—some centuries of nuptial bliss.

The little lover had built for himself a booth against the steep rocks. Into this Morsinia would enter with bread and water, and placing them upon the stone which answered for a table, say, in imitation of older maidens assuming the care of husbands, "So will I always and faithfully provide for thee." Then she would touch the sides of the miniature house with a twig, which she called her distaff, saying, "I will weave for thee, my lord, goodly garments and gay." She would also sit down and undress and redress her doll, which Constantine had carved from wood, and which they said would do for the real baby that the bride was expected to array, in the ceremony by which she acknowledged the obligations of wifehood.[11]

But Michael was not at all disconsolate at this preference shown his brother; for he knew that Morsinia would prefer him to all the world when she heard what a great soldier he had become. Indeed, on some days Michael was lord of the little booth; and more than once the fair enchantress put the evergreen loop around both the boys in as sincere indecision as has sometimes vexed older hearts than hers.

CHAPTER III.

In the winter of 1443—a few months subsequent to the events with which our story begins—the Pass of Slatiza echoed other sounds than the cry of the eagle, the bleating of the flocks, and the songs and halloos of the mountaineers. Distant bugle calls floated between the cliffs. At night a fire would flash from a peak, and be suddenly extinguished, as another gleamed from a peak beyond. Strange men had gone up and down the road. With one of these Uncle Kabilovitsch had wandered off, and been absent several days. Great was the excitement of the little folks when Milosch told them that a real army was not far off, coming from the Christian country to the north of them, and that its general was no other than the great Hunyades, the White Knight of Wallachia—called so because he wore white armor—the son of that same King Sigismund and the fair Elizabeth Morsiney. How little Morsinia's cheeks paled, while those of the boys burned, and their eyes flashed, as their father told them, by the fire-light in the centre of their cabin, that the White Knight had already conquered the Turks at Hermanstadt and at Vasag and on the banks of the Morava, and was—if the story which Milosch had heard from some scouts were true—preparing to burst through the Balkan mountains, and descend upon the homes of the Turk on the southern plains. Little did they sleep at night, in the excitement of the belief that, at any day, they might see the soldiers—real soldiers, just like those of Alexander, and those of Bajazet—tramping through the Pass. The tremor of the earth, occasioned by some distant landslide, in their excited imagination was thought to be due to the tramp of a myriad feet. The hoot of the owl became the trumpet call for the onset: and the sharp whistle of the wind, between leafless trees and along the ice-covered rocks, seemed like the whizzing flight of the souls of the slain.

Once, just as the gray dawn appeared, Kabilovitsch, who had been absent for several days, came hurriedly with the alarming news that the Turks, steadily retiring before the Christians, would soon occupy the Pass. They were already coming up the defiles, as the mists rise along the sides of the mountains, in dense masses, hoping to gain such vantage ground that they could hurl the troops of Hunyades down the almost perpendicular slopes before they could effect a secure lodgment on the summit. The children and women must leave herds and homes, and fly instantly. The only safe retreat was the great cave, which the mountaineers knew of, lying off towards the other Pass, that of Soulourderbend.

The fugitives were scarcely gone when the mountain swarmed with Moslems. The mighty mass of humanity crowded the cliffs like bees preparing to swarm. They fringed the breastworks of native rock with abattis made of huge trunks of trees. During the day the Turks had diverted a mountain stream, so that, leaving its bed, it poured a thin sheet of water over the steepest part of the road the Christians were to ascend. This, freezing during the night, made a wall of ice. The Christians were thus forced to leave the highway and attempt to scale the crags far and near; a movement which the Turks met by spreading themselves everywhere above them. Upon ledges and into crevices which had never before felt the pressure of human feet clambered the contestants. Every rock was empurpled with gore. Turkish turban and Hungarian helmet were caught