The cowboy trotted towards the herd, and soon the hills of Zam, the
little acacia wood, and the three tall well poles began to peep above
the horizon. But it is a good ride there! Presently he took the
tell-tale rose from his cap, folded it in his scarlet handkerchief, and
pushed it up the knotted sleeve of his coat.
The horse-herd meanwhile spurred his horse in the opposite direction,
where a low lying line of bluish mist marked the course of the Hortobagy
river. He was on his way to the rose-bush where the yellow roses grew.
For on the whole Hortobagy there was but one yellow rose, and that
bloomed in the innkeeper's garden.
Some foreigner had brought it from Belgium, they said; and its
wonderful yellow flowers blossomed the whole summer through, from
Whitsuntide to Advent, when there were still buds on the branches;
yellow as pure gold they were, though their scent was more like muscatel
wine than roses. Many a man had felt that scent rise to his head! And
the girl who used to gather these roses, though not for herself, they
called "The Yellow Rose" also.
It was quite a mystery where the old innkeeper had picked up this
maiden, for wife he had none. Some stranger had evidently forgotten her
there, and the old man had kept her till she grew into a delicate,
slender flower. Her cheeks were not rosy like those of other girls, but
a clear, creamy colour, not the tint of sickness, for the life glowed
beneath, and, when she smiled, seemed to dazzle and shine like a fire
within. Her mouth, with its turned-up corners, was made for laughter,
and suited the darkness of her eyes, eyes so dark that none could tell
whether they were black or blue, because if once a man looked into them
he forgot all else in the world. Her hair was black, twisted into a
plait, with yellow ribbon. Other girls damp their hair with quince juice
to make it curly, but hers waved and curled of itself.
And the songs she knew! How sweetly she could sing when she liked! If
happy she sang, if sad she sang, for there is a song for everything,
and, without singing, a peasant maiden cannot live. Nothing makes the
work so easy, the time pass so quickly, and the way so short. Early in
the morning, when the sky was pink at sunrise, she might be heard
singing as she weeded in the garden.
The old innkeeper did not concern himself with business, but had given
the whole management of the inn into the girl's hands. She served out
the wine, cooked, did the accounts. He meanwhile looked after his
beehives, and was busy now, for the bees were swarming.
Suddenly a horse's hoofs resounded from the yard, the dogs barked in the
joyous tone with which they were wont to greet an old friend, and the
old man called out:
"Klari! go in! Don't you hear the dogs barking; a customer must be here.
See to him!"
The girl dropped her striped gown, tucked up for weeding, put on her
buckled shoes, washed her hands from the watering can, and dried them
with her apron, which she then threw aside, for, under it, she wore
another very wide and clean, and with the household keys dangling from
her waistband. She untied her gay-coloured kerchief, and smoothed her
hair with her moistened palms. Then she broke off a rose from the
rose-bush, and stuck it in her hair at one side.
"Picking a rose again!" grumbled the old man. "Maybe only for a
gendarme!"
"Why only? Why mayn't a gendarme wear a rose in his shako as well as
another fellow? Perhaps you don't think him good enough? That depends on
the gendarme."
But after all it was no gendarme whom the girl found sitting at one end
of the long table, but the smartest csikos on the whole puszta--Sandor
Decsi.
"Sandor!" screamed the girl when she saw him, and clapping her hands,
"Sandor! you have come back, my darling."
He was standing there, drumming on the table with the empty glasses, and
only looked up to call out in a most sullen fashion, "Bring wine."
"Sandor!" cried the girl.
But the lad only growled, "I told you to bring wine," and let his head
fall back on his hands.
"That is a nice 'good morning' after such a long absence!" exclaimed the
girl, at which the herdsman came somewhat to his senses, for he knew how
to be polite. Removing his cap and laying it on the table, "Good
morning, miss," he said.
"Whew!" The girl pointed the rosy tip of her tongue at him, and
shrugging her shoulders angrily, stamped off to the bar, shaking her
shoes as she went. When she had brought the wine, however, she asked in
an unaltered voice:
"Why do you call me 'miss'?"
"Because . . . . you are 'miss.'"
"I always was, but you never used to say so."
"That was another time, it was different then."
"Well, here is the wine anyway. Do you want anything else?"
"Thank you," said the man, "not now. Later perhaps."
The girl responded by a clicking noise with her tongue, and then sat
down near him, at the end of the long bench.
The csikos raised the bottle to his lips, drained it dry, and flung it
on the floor, where it smashed into a thousand fragments.
"Why have you broken the bottle?" she asked softly.
"That no one else may drink out of it." Next he tossed three ten kreuzer
notes on the table--"dog tongues" the country people call them--two
being for the red wine, one for the bottle. The girl meanwhile had
seized a broom, and was diligently sweeping up the broken glass. Then,
knowing the rule, she dived behind the wooden lattice railing off the
bar, and brought out a fresh bottle. How she longed to look in his eyes!
But he, evidently guessing it, pulled his hat lower over his face than
before. Finally, she did manage to get possession of his cap, and then
tried to transfer the yellow rose in her hair to the silk ribbon
decorating its brim. But the herdsman saw, and snatched it out of her
hands.
"Keep your roses for some worthier person," he said shortly.
"Sandor," began the girl at last, "do you wish to make me cry?"
"That would be false, as your words are false. Did not Ferko Lacza leave
you this morning with one of your roses in his cap?"
She did not turn red at this, only so much the paler.
"God knows I----"
But a hand laid across her mouth stopped all further speech.
"Do not take God's name in vain!" cried the herdsman; "and how did those
golden ear-rings get into your ears, I wonder?"
"You donkey!" Klari laughed outright. "You gave them to me yourself,
only I had them gilded by the jeweller in Ujvaros."
Then the csikos caught hold of both her hands, and spoke his mind slowly
and earnestly. "Dearest Klari," he said, "I won't call you 'miss' any
more--I beg you from the bottom of my heart not to lie to me. Nothing is
so detestable as lying. They say, 'lying dog,' though dogs never lie;
for a dog has a different bark when he smells a thief round the farm, or
scents danger, or hears his master coming, and his bark never misleads.
A dog is honest enough, it is men who know how to lie, and theirs is the
true yelping. As for me, it never came into my mind to lie, my tongue is
not fashioned that way. Lying ill-suits a moustache, and it's a bad
business when bearded lips speak lying words like a coward who fears a
beating. Now, see, when the conscription was here last autumn, they
summoned us all from the puszta. But the townspeople wanted to keep us,
for, without herdsmen the cattle and horses would fare badly. So, first
they took care to cross the palms of the committee with silver, and then
the doctors whispered to us what sort of bodily defect we could feign,
so as to be discharged as unfit. Ferko Lacza took to the trick! He swore
he was as deaf as a door-post, could not hear a trumpet even; he, who
has such good ears that if a beast lows in the blackest midnight, he can
tell whether it is a stray one wandered in among the herd or a cow
calling her lost calf. My eyes nearly fell out of my head! Eh, he knew
how to lie, the scoundrel! When my turn came to be inspected they made
out that my heart beat irregularly. 'Well, if it beats irregularly,'
said I, 'it is not my heart that's in fault, but the Yellow Rose yonder,
at the Hortobagy inn.' The gentlemen all nudged me to trust to the
doctor, who said I had enlargement of the heart! 'Why, it's just big
enough to hold one little bit of a girl, and nothing else. There is
nothing in the world the matter with me!' So they took me for a soldier,
but respected me. They never even cut my hair, but sent me to be
'soldier csikos' to the military stud at Mezohegyes. And before half a
year was over the Town Council put down the thousand florins ransom to
buy me off, and send me back to the horses again. But I will work out
those thousand florins with my two hands, though not with a lying
tongue--that is another matter!"
The girl attempted to get her hands free, and to turn off the affair as
a joke.
"My word, Sandor, did you learn to preach when you were eating the
Emperor's bread? Really, you're so eloquent you ought to go as
probationer every Sunday to Balmaz-Ujvaros!"
"Now, now, do not jest," said the man. "I know what is in your little
head. You are thinking that maids are but a feeble folk, and have no
other weapon but lying, otherwise they would be overmatched. The swift
feet for the hare, the wings for the bird, and for the girl--her lying
lips! But, sweetheart, I am a man who has never hurt the weaker. The
hare can bide in the cover, and the bird on her nest for me, I would
never disturb them. Neither would I harm the girl who speaks the truth
with as much as a hard word or look. But if you lie to me, why, then I
must judge you as hardly as if those pretty cheeks of yours were smeared
with Vienna rouge! Look at the rose in your hand, it has hardly opened,
but if I blow on it with my hot breath, one after another all the petals
will unfold. Be such a rose, then, my darling, and open your heart and
your soul to me. I will not be angry whatever you confess, and I will
forgive you, even if it breaks my heart."
"And then what will you give me?"
"As much of it as you have left me," said the man.
The girl, knowing the herdsmen's custom of eating bacon, paprika (the
red pepper), and white bread with their morning wine, rose, and set this
before him, and was glad to see it was not scorned. Indeed, the csikos,
drawing out his long knife with its inlaid handle from his top boot, cut
off a slice of bread and bacon, and fell to work heartily.
Meanwhile, through the open door appeared the watch-dog, wagging his
tail, and going to the herdsman, he rubbed his nose against his legs,
and then lay down near him, yawning with great affability.
"Even Bodri knows you," said the girl.
"Yes, dogs are faithful. It is only girls who forget."
"Sandor, Sandor," she cried. "What a pity it was you could not tell that
one little lie when it was so needful! Then they would not have taken
you as a soldier to Mezohegyes. It is not wise to leave a girl to
herself. It is not wise to let a lilac-bush in blossom overhang the
paling, because then every passer-by who chooses can break off a piece!"
At these words the very morsel of bread fell from the herdsman's mouth,
and he cast it to the dog.
"Is this truth that you are saying?"
"Truth? Don't you know the song about 'When the girl's out in the storm,
under his cloak the boy keeps her warm'?"
"Yes, and how it goes on too. 'The maid keeps near to the lad in the
showers, his cloak being worked with silken flowers.' Get away, dog!
Even you only wag your tail when there is a question of bacon!"
Just then the horse in the yard outside began to neigh, and the girl
went out, reappearing in a few minutes.
"Where have you been?" asked the man.
"Tying up your horse in the stable."
"Who bid you tie him up?"
"I always did so till now."
"Now it is different; I am off directly!"
"What? You won't take a bite? Isn't bread and bacon good enough? Maybe
you got better from the Emperor? But stop, I can bring you something
nicer."
She went to the cupboard in the wall and brought out a plate of fried
fowl, or "Back Hendli"--for fowl fried in bread-crumbs, and then left
cold, was a favourite tit-bit of the herdsman's.
"Whose remains are these?" he demanded suspiciously.
"Well, first think a little! All sorts of people come to an inn, and
anyone who pays can have 'Back Hendli.'"
"Then you had grand folks here last night?"
"Certainly," said the girl. "Two gentlemen from Vienna, and two from
Debreczin. They stayed up till two o'clock and then went on. If you
don't believe me, I can show you their names in the guest book."
"Oh! I believe you."
The great tabby Tom, who had been washing his face by the stove, rose at
this moment, stretched himself, arched his back, jumped down, and going
to the csikos, measured his claws on his boots, showing how high the
snow would lie next winter.
Then he sprang into his friend's arms, rubbing and pushing his head
against his hand, and slowly licking every one of the five fingers. At
last he lay down and began purring.
"Look how the cat is trying to coax you," said Klari.
"I am not going to ask him whose arms he purred in yesterday. How much
do I pay for the 'Back Hendli'?"
"_You!_ Nothing, of course, somebody else did that. But where are you
off to in such a terrible hurry?"
"To the vet, on the Mata puszta--I am taking him a letter."
"You won't find him at home, for he passed here at three this morning,
looking for those gentlemen. When he heard they had gone, he went
jogging on in his gig to the Zam puszta. One gentleman was the steward
of a Moravian Count, who wants to buy some of our cattle to breed on his
estate; the other German was an artist. He drew me in his little book,
and the cowherd also."
"So the cowherd was here also?"
"Of course he was here, since he was sent to show the gentlemen across
the puszta to the Zam Herd."
"Only it seems funny to me," remarked the csikos, "that the cowboy left
an hour later than the gentlemen he was meant to guide."
"Dear me! You can cross-examine like the district judge! Well, he came
to bid me good-bye. He is going far away, and we will never see him any
more."
As if to prove the truth of her words, a real shining tear dropped from
the girl's eyes, though she tried her best to hide it. Not that the
csikos minded that, for it was an honest tear, at any rate, and he
preferred to turn his head aside when she dried her eyes with her apron.
Then he stuck his short clay pipe in his mouth. A pipe in the mouth
signifies no kisses.
"And what takes the cowboy so far away?" he inquired.
"He is going to Moravia as head herdsman to the cattle which they are
buying at Zam. He is to get a stone house, so much corn, and six hundred
florins as wages. He'll be quite the gentleman! And they will respect
him there, because only a Hungarian herdsman can manage a Hungarian
herd."
"And you? Aren't you going to Moravia as head herdsman's wife?"
"You rascal!" said the girl. "You know I'm not. You know, quite well, I
love no one but you. I might if I weren't chained fast to you and to
this puszta. Why, I am your slave."
"Not exactly," said the man. "You know it is not like that; but whoever
you have bewitched with those eyes of yours must come back from the ends
of the earth to you. You give him a charm to drink that compels him to
think of you. Or you sew one of your hairs in his shirt sleeve, that you
may draw him back, even from beyond the stars. It's just the same with
me! Since I looked into your eyes I have been made a fool of."
"And have I not been fool enough?" she asked. "Haven't I often wondered
what would become of me! Whom did I ask to melt lead with me on
Christmas Eve? Whose kerchief did I wear, though he never said it was a
betrothal gift? Did I ever go spying after you when you danced with
other girls and giddy young wives at Ujvaros Fair?"
"If only you had not put the rose in his cap!"
"Well, give me yours, and here is a match to it, which is easily stuck
in!"
"No," said the lad. "I want _that_ rose which you gave to the cowherd,
and I will never rest till I have it in my hands."
At that the girl clasped her hands imploringly.
"Sandor! Sandor! Don't talk like that. You two must not fight about
me--_about a yellow rose_!"
"It must be. Either he kills me, or I him, but one of us must fall."
"And that is what _you_ call telling the truth!" cried the girl. "You
who have just promised not to be angry with me any more?"
"With you, yes. A girl can't help forgetting, but a man should bear in
mind."
"God knows, I never forgot you."
"Perhaps not; like in the song:--
"'Whome'er within my arms I pressed,
Yet in my heart I loved thee best.'
"No, dearest, I am not a hard man, and I did not come to quarrel with
you, but only to show you that I am alive, and not dead, though I know
how happy you would be if I were."
"Sandor! Then you want me to go and buy matches?"
"Matches, is it?" said the man. "That's the way with you girls. If you
fall into the ditch, then it's three boxes of matches from the Jew, a
cup of hot coffee, and it is all over. But surely the wiser plan would
be to avoid the ditches altogether!"
"Don't speak about it. Do you remember," the girl asked, "how, when
first we met, we were playing that game, 'I fell into the well. Who
pulled you out? Sandor Decsi!' And you did pull me out!"
"But if I had thought it was for someone else . . . !"
"Heigho!" sighed the herdsman, "that was long ago. Before ever the
Dorozsma Mill was sung about."
"Is that something new?" The girl stooped over the bench closer to the
lad. "Sing it first, and then I will learn it."
So Sandor Decsi set his back against the wall, put one hand to his cap
and the other on the table and commenced the tune, the sad air suiting
the sadness of its words:--
"Dorozsma's mill, Dorozsma's mill,
The wind has dropped, 'tis standing still.
Ah! faithless thou hast flown, my dove!
Another claims thy life, thy love,
This is the reason, if you will,
Why turns no more Dorozsma's mill."
Such a song it was as is born on the plains and blown hither and thither
like the thistledown scattered by the wind. The girl tried the air after
him, and where she failed the csikos helped her, and so it went on till
they both knew it, and sang it together perfectly. And then, at the
finish, they kissed each other. This was the end of the song.
But hardly had Klari sung the last note before Sandor Decsi had stuck
the short clay pipe in his mouth again.
"There you go, putting that horrid pipe in your mouth!" she exclaimed
sulkily.
"Well, it matches me, I'm horrid too," said the lad.
"You are, just a horrid rascal! A lad like you is good for nothing else
but to be turned into a distaff, and stuck up behind the door!"
So saying she gave him a shove with her elbow.
"Now what are you coming round me for?" he asked.
"I coming round you? Do I want you! If lads like you were sold by the
dozen, never a one would I buy. I was blind and cracked for sure to have
loved you? Why, I could have ten such lads as you for every one of my
ten fingers!"
She stormed in so genuine a manner that at last even Bodri was
deceived, and believing that his mistress was offended with this horrid
man, jumped up and began growling at him. It made the girl laugh
heartily, but the csikos neither caught her merriment nor saw any cause
for laughter. He just sat there, moody and silent, holding his pipe
between his teeth. The pipe was not alight, for indeed it was empty.
Then the girl tried teasing him.
"Well, dear! You are quite aware of your own good looks!" she said, "You
wouldn't laugh for the world, would you? Why it would squeeze up your
two black eyes, and make your two red lips quite crooked, and all your
beauty would be spoiled!"
"Debreczin town does not pay me for being beautiful."
"But I do. Wasn't my payment big enough for you?"
"It was. There was even enough for another person left over."
"Are you beginning again? All about that one yellow rose? Are you so
jealous of your comrade then, your own close companion? How could he
help himself, poor fellow? If a gallant of the town feels his heart
aching for a rose, why he has the whole flower garden to choose from,
full of all sorts and shades of roses--red, pink, yellow, and cream! But
how does the song go?
"'Only the peasant maid can still
The peasant's heart in good and ill!'"
"So you take his part?"
"Well, whose fault is it? The girl's who sings, 'An' he knew he could,
An' he knew it still he would,' or the man's who listens and
understands?"
"Do you take the blame then?"
"You said you would forgive me everything."
"I will keep my word."
"And love me again?"
"Later."
"Ah! it's a big word that 'later,'" said the girl.
"I love you now."
"As you have shown me."
The csikos rose from the table, stuck the short pipe into the wide brim
of his hat, and going to the girl, put his arms round her, gazing, as he
spoke, into her large dark eyes.
"My darling, you know there are two kinds of fever--the hot and the
cold. The hot is more violent, but the cold lasts longer; the one passes
quickly, the other returns again and again. But I will just speak
plainly, and not mince matters. Mine was the fault, for if I had not
breathed on my yellow rosebud, it would not have opened, and others
would not have found out the sweet scent which has brought all the wasps
and moths. I do love you indeed, but differently now, with the constancy
of the cold sort of fever. I will deal as truly by you as thine own
mother, and as soon as I am made head herdsman we will go to the priest
and live faithfully together ever afterwards. But if I find anyone else
fluttering around, then God help me, for were he my father's own son, I
will crack his head for him. Here's my hand on it." He stretched out his
hand to the girl, and she, in answer, pulled out her golden ear-rings,
placing them in his open palm.
"But, dearest, wear them," he insisted, "if as you say they are my
silver ones gilded, and I must believe you!"
So she put them back in her ears, and in so doing she put something back
in her heart that had lain hidden there till now. Somehow this sort of
love, likened to the shivering stage of fever, was not altogether to her
taste. She understood the burning fit better.
Next the girl, after reflecting, slipped the cloak from the herdsman's
neck and hung it up behind the lattice of the bar, as she was accustomed
to take the coats of customers in pledge, who could not pay their
reckoning.
"Don't hurry," she said, "there is time. The Vet can't possibly be back
at the Mata Farm before noon, because he must examine all the cattle
that are sold, and write a certificate for each. You will only find his
old housekeeper, and here you are safe and dry. Neither the storm can
drench you, nor your sweetheart's tears. Look how glad your last words
have made me! They will be in my head all day long."
"And see how far away I thought of those last words, since I have
brought you a present. It is in my cloak sleeve yonder, go and fetch it
out."
Many things were in that sleeve--steel, flint, and tinder, tobacco
pouch, money bag, and among it all the girl discovered a new packet,
done up in silver paper. When it was unfolded, and she beheld a comb of
yellow tortoise-shell, her face beamed with happiness.
"This is for _me_?"
"Whom _else_?"
Now when a peasant maid twists her plait of hair round a comb, it means
she is betrothed, has a lover of her own, and is "ours" no longer. Nor
can she any more sing the song about "I know not whose darling am I."
Standing before the mirror, Klari "did up" her hair in a knot round the
comb, and then she looked prettier than ever.
"Now you shall kiss me," she said. She offered the kiss herself in
fact, stretching out her arms, but the man held her back.
"Not yet," he said, "I will be hot presently, but I am still shivering."
It was a rebuff, and the girl drew her brows together, for she felt
shamed, and besides something burned in her heart. However, she only
tried harder to be loving and gentle, love and anger meanwhile striving
madly together in her heart--anger just because of the love.
"Shall I sing your favourite song," she asked, "while the fish is
roasting?"
"If you like."
She went to the fireplace, took a fish out of a big barrel full of the
Hortobagy fish, called "Karasz," slashed it with a kitchen knife on both
sides, sprinkled it well with salt and pepper, and sticking a skewer
through it, placed it beside the red hot embers. Then she sang in her
sweet, clear voice:
"Ho! good dame of the Puszta Inn,
Bake me fish, bring lemon and wine,
Set your wench on the watch without,
Bid her tell what she sees in time."
The song has a fascination of its own, bringing visions of the endless
puszta with the mirage overhanging its horizon, and echoes, too, of the
lone shepherd's pipe, and the sad sounding horn of the herdsman.
Besides, is not the whole romance of the "betyars'," the puszta
robbers', life contained in the words:
"Set your wench on the watch without,
Bid her tell what she sees in time"?
As soon as the fish was browned enough, the girl brought it to the
csikos. Never is this dish eaten otherwise than by holding the end of
the spit in the fingers, and picking off the fish with a pocket knife.
It tastes best like that, and a girl cannot show her love for her
sweetheart more distinctly than by roasting him a fish on the spit. Then
what a delight it is to watch him enjoying the work of her hands!
Meanwhile Klari went on singing:
"'Nine gendarmes and their weapons flash!'
Cries the girl in her frightened haste;
But the betyar gallops his swift bay steed
Where the mirage plays o'er the boundless waste."
Once, when they sang this together, at the line "gallops his swift bay
steed," the herdsman would throw up his cap to the rafters, and bring
down his fist with a crash on the table.
But now he did not heed it.
"Don't you care for the song nowadays?" asked the girl. "Even that
doesn't please you?"
"Why should it? I'm no 'betyar,' and have nothing to do with thieves.
Gendarmes are honest men, and do their duty. As for a good-for-nothing
'betyar,' he sets a girl to watch outside, and as soon as he sees so
much as the tip of a gendarme's helmet, he is off and away, 'O'er the
boundless waste,' leaving fish and wine and all behind him. And he
shouts it out in his own praise too! The cowardly thief!"
"Well, you _have_ changed since you ate the Emperor's bread!"
"I've not changed, but the times. You can turn a coat inside out if you
like. After all it is only a coat. A bunda--fur-lined cloak--is always a
bunda."
"And do you know," said the girl, "the greatest insult a man can pay
his sweetheart is to quote a worn-out old saw like that----"
"But if I know none better! Perhaps the gentlemen from Moravia, who were
here last night, had newer jokes to amuse you with?"
"Better jokes!" said the girl. "Anyway they didn't sit here looking like
stuck pigs. The painter especially was a very proper young fellow. If he
had only been a hair's breadth taller! As it was he just came up to my
chin!"
"Did you measure yourselves then?"
"Rather! Why I taught him to dance csardas, and he jumped about like a
two months old kid on the barn floor!"
"And the cowherd?" asked the man, "did he see you dancing with the
German artist, and yet not wring his neck?"
"Wring his neck! Why they drank eternal friendship together!"
"Well, it is not my business. Get me some more wine, but better stuff
than this vinegar. I shall have to come out with another old saying,
'The fish is unhappy in the third water,' for the third water should be
wine."
"That's a double insult to call my wine--water."
"Never mind," said the herdsman, "just get me a sealed bottle!"
Now it was the undoing of Sandor Decsi that he asked for a sealed
bottle, one brought from the town, sealed with green wax, with a pink or
blue label pasted on one side, covered with golden letters. Such wine is
only fit for gentlefolk, or perhaps for people in the Emperor's pay!
Klari's heart beat loud and fast as she went into the cellar to fetch a
bottle of this gentlefolk's wine.
For, suddenly, the girl remembered about a gipsy woman, who had once
told her fortune for some old clothes, and, out of pure gratitude, had
said this to her as well, "Should your lover's heart grow cold, my dear,
and you wish to make it flame again, that is easily managed, give him
wine mixed with lemon juice, and drop a bit of this root called 'fat
mannikin' into it. Then his love will blaze up again, till he would
break down walls to reach you!"
It flashed across the girl's mind that now was the very moment to test
the charm, and the roots, stumpy and black, like little round-headed,
fat-legged mannikins, were lying safe in a drawer of her chest. In the
olden days much was believed of this magic plant, how it shrieked when
pulled from the ground, and that those who heard it died. How, at last,
they took dogs to uproot it, tying them to it by the tail! How Circe
bewitched Ulysses and his comrades with it. The chemist, who has another
use for it, calls it "atropa mandragora." But how could the girl know
that it was poisonous?