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"No, I am armed with the peace treaty which our foes concluded with me, swearing not to attack Toroczko. That is my weapon, and with it I will win a bloodless victory."
The petition was, in fact, taken under early advisement, and three days after Manasseh's return to Toroczko he was summoned to Karlsburg to learn the issue. "Your memorial has reached us from Vienna with a refusal," was the chilling announcement that greeted him. "Impossible!" cried Manasseh, in astonishment. "I was promised a favourable answer."
Our defences are abundantly able to withstand your soldiers, who, you know well enough, are tired of fighting and have no love for storming ramparts. Kill me, if you wish, but there will be only one man the less against you; and all the satisfaction you and your men will get from Toroczko will be broken heads. Not one stone will you disturb in all the town."
"Come, let us be going," said Aaron, and he led the way toward the farther end of the town, where the family owned a villa which they used whenever occasion called them from Toroczko to Kolozsvar. Adjoining the house lay a garden which was now rented to a market-woman, who made haste to prepare supper for the travellers.
With the first ripening of the fruit in the Toroczko orchards, Manasseh and his comrades were at home. Blanka came to meet her husband as far as Kolozsvar, bringing her little daughter Ilonka with her. Bela could not come, as he had just then a school examination. At the Borev bridge a splendid reception awaited the home-comers. A handsome little lad headed the receiving party, waving a flag.
There the scythe and the ploughshare were being fashioned, and all the implements wherewith the hand of man subdued to his use those rugged hillsides. "If I could only paint that picture!" sighed Manasseh. "You succeeded with the Colosseum," was Blanka's encouraging rejoinder. "That was Rome, this is Toroczko. I could hit my sweetheart's likeness; my mother's is beyond me."
So you may make as much rumpus as you please, it won't do any good. I am taking you to Toroczko, and as our two brothers are as good as lost to us, you must take the command of the Toroczko forces. You have seen the barricade fighting in Vienna and Rome, and you understand such things. So, then, not another word! I won't hear it."
Graves for the dead in Toroczko are hewn out of the solid rock, and the side of some bare cliff serves the people for a cemetery. Here each family has a vault, which, as years pass, penetrates more and more deeply into the mountainside, until in many cases it becomes a veritable tunnel.
Aaron, with forty other men, clambered up the steep slope of the Szekler Stone to repulse the enemy from this commanding height, forty men against as many hundred. They would have laughed at their own folly had they but stopped to think. Toward noon the sturdy little band of defenders was increased by the coming of fugitives from St. George. For these, too, there were arms enough in Toroczko.
And just so I will strike down the traitor who leads a foe against Toroczko, if he once comes within my reach." "What traitor do you mean?" "The one that the girl spoke of yesterday when she said, 'If a traitor rises up from amidst your own people, then tremble! I know whom she meant now: with the insurgents is a man, lately come into notice, who surpasses all his fellows in cruelty.
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