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Orders, therefore, were given by the Palatine of Hungary on the one side and by the Prince of Transylvania on the other for the banderia of Zemplin and Alany to turn out immediately, unite with the Zipsers at Onod, and fall upon the Turks whenever and wherever they might meet them.

As for the imprisoned butcher, he proposed to exchange him for the field-trumpeter, Simplex. By this noble deed Valentine so completely won the hearts of the brave warriors of Onod, that they made him a corporal on the spot.

Then he donned the Turk's kaftan, turban, and girdle, compelling him to put on his own slave's clothes; and when it grew dusk, he threw a rope round his neck, and said to him: "Now we are going to Onod, and if you dare to utter a word by the way, I'll break your own ax to pieces over your bald pate!"

The Turks also were keeping very quiet in that part of the country. The two hundred ducats Valentine already had in his pocket. All that he now required for his journey was a good cloth mantle, a stout ax, a flask, and a knapsack. So they reached Onod safely, and thence made their way across country to seek Michal.

The Commandant of Onod thereupon fetched out of prison the six and twenty Turks who were in captivity there, and made them address a solemn memorial to the Kaimakan of Eger, whom they piteously besought not to bastinado the Christian captives, as in such a case they, the Turkish captives, would be visited with still more grievous torments.

They gave him a horse, a wolf skin, and three Polish guldens by way of enlistment-money, and kept fast hold of him, for the troops were to set out for the camp at Onod at a moment's notice.

"Now, my son," said the Kaimakan, when Simplex had finished, "now write that I have this day regaled you with pilaf instead of bamboo, and address your letter to your dear comrade, the honorable, noble, and valiant Valentine Kalondai, that accursed, unbelieving dog who has not only freed himself from captivity without a ransom, but has taken his master, the sheep butcher, along with him to Onod, and now he offers him in exchange for you, and threatens to requite his prisoner good or evil, according as you are treated here."

It might quietly conform to the will of Prince George Rakoczy, and consent to be transferred to Ferdinand of Austria, the first consequence of which would be that the troops of the Prince of Transylvania would quit the town in order to garrison the fortress of Onod, while a Walloon regiment, under the command of General Löffelholz, would take their place; in which case the Jesuits would have their cloisters restored to them, and would reënter the town behind the Walloons.

But the ransom of the prisoners did not go off so smoothly after all. The Kaimakan of Eger wrote to the Commandant of Onod that he did not consider the Eger butcher worth four hundred gulden, the amount of the trumpeter's ransom. There were still two and thirty butchers at Eger, and therefore he would not give more than two hundred gulden for this particular butcher.

There Valentine hired from the Christian magistrate a four-horse wagon, and drove with his captive master to Onod, where he arrived early next morning safe and sound. In which is a very circumstantial, if not very pleasant, description of all the conditions to be observed in the exchange and purchase of slaves.