Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 423, January 1851

"Weep thou shalt, and 'tis I will make thee. Know that it is I who seduced your wife, and for whom she betrayed you."

"That is thy shame, not mine."

"All thy kinsmen are slain."

"Better they should lie dead in the street than breathe the same air with thee."

"Thy property is annihilated."

"May God destroy those who did it."

"Truly, thou art a cool fellow. But – you had a daughter, – a fair and innocent child."

George looked at his tormentor, and shuddered.

"Lina, I think, was her name," continued the Serb, drawling out his words with a refinement of cruelty.

"What – what mean you?" asked the trembling father.

"A comely maiden, by my word. Fair to look upon, is she not?"

"The devil seize thee! What next?"

"So young and delicate, and yet – six husbands. Hard to choose. Your wife could not decide to which she should belong. I stepped in, and settled the matter. I married her – to all six – " He burst into fiendish laughter.

Mute and giddy with horror, the father raised himself from the ground.

"I am sorry," continued the Serb, "that you were not here for the wedding."

"May God's justice fall upon you!" shrieked the wretched father, stifling his tears. But the parent's heart overpowered the pride of the man. He fell with his face upon the ground, and wept – tears of blood.

"Lift him up," said Basil, "that we may see him weep for the first time in his life. Weep a little, George; and you, sot, tune up your pipes, that he may have accompaniment to his tears."

And thereupon the drunken band began to dance round their victim with shouts of laughter and scoffing gestures, striking and kicking him as they passed. Now, however, he wept no longer. He closed his eyes and kept silence, enduring their ill-treatment without sign or sound of complaint.

"Away with him!" cried Basil. "Throw him into the garret, and put a sentry over him. To-day we have celebrated his daughter's wedding; to-morrow we will drink at his funeral. Good-night, friend George."

He was dragged up to the garret, and locked in. Where they threw him, there he lay, motionless upon the floor, as though all sensation had departed from both body and soul, awaiting the hour of death, and rejoicing that it was near at hand. For a while the dancing and singing continued; then the Serbs departed to sleep, and all was still. His eyes were unvisited by slumber. Yet a little while, he thought to himself, and eternal repose will be mine.

He lay with his senses thus benumbed, thinking neither of the past nor the future, when he heard a rustle at the garret window. Through the darkness he saw a white figure pass through the small opening, and grope its way towards him. Was it a dream? or a reality? The figure's steps were noiseless. But presently it spoke – in a scarcely audible whisper.

"Father! father!" it said.

"Lina!"

He looked up, seeking to discern the features of his visitor. She hurried to him, kissed him, and cut the ropes that bound his hands.

"My child!" murmured George, and clasped his daughter's tottering knees. "My dear, my only child!"

"Let us fly!" said the maiden, in faint and suffering tones. "The ladder is at the window. Quick, father – quick!"

George clasped his panting child in his arms, and bore her through the opening in the garret roof, and down the ladder, resting her head upon his shoulder and covering her cold cheek with his kisses. Near the ladder-foot, he stumbled over something. "What is that? A spade. We will take it with us."

"For a weapon!" said the father.

"To dig a grave!" said the daughter.

On the other side of the house was heard a heavy monotonous step. It was a Serb on sentry.

"Stay here! Keep close to the wall," said George to his daughter. He grasped the spade, and crept noiselessly to the corner of the house. The steps came nearer and nearer. George raised the spade. The Serb turned the corner, and – lay the next moment upon the ground, with his skull split. He had not time for a single cry.

George took the dead man's clothes and weapons, took his daughter in his arms, and left the town. The morning star glittered in the brightening sky. Towards daybreak, and without having exchanged a word, father and daughter reached the nearest village. George had many acquaintances there, and with one of them, he thought, he could leave his daughter. He found but a poor reception. Nowhere was he suffered to cross the threshold. None offered him so much as a crust of bread. All closed their doors, and implored him to depart, lest he should bring destruction on their heads. The villagers were neither hard-hearted nor cowardly; but they feared that if the Serbs of St Thomas heard of their sheltering a fugitive, they also would be murdered or plundered. With anguish in his soul, the wretched man again took his child in his arms, and resumed his journey.

For six days he walked on, over stubble and fallow, through storm and cold by night and parching heat by day – his child, his beloved child, on his arm. He asked not what ailed her; and she uttered no complaint.

On the sixth day the maiden died, of hunger, misery, and grief.

The father felt his burthen heavier; the arms that clasped his neck slackened their hold, and the pale cheek that nestled on his shoulder was chill and cold!

But the spires of Szegedin now glittered in the distance. George hurried on, and at last, exhausted by his speed, he reached at noonday the large and populous city. In front of it, on the vast plain, a great multitude was assembled: more than twenty thousand souls were gathered together, listening to the words of a popular orator, exalted upon a scaffolding in their midst. George made his way into the throng; the speaker was relating the incredible atrocities of the Raitzen. Several of his hearers noticed the weary, wild-looking, travel-stained man, carrying in his arms a pale girl with closed eyes, who stood amongst them like a fugitive from a mad-house.

"Whence come you?" they asked him.

"From St Thomas."

"Ha! Up! up with him on the scaffold!" cried those who heard his reply.

"A man is here from St Thomas. Up with him, and let him speak to the people!"

The crowd opened a passage, and George was hurried to the scaffold. When, from this elevation, his emaciated and ghastly countenance, furrowed by suffering and despair, his failing limbs, and the faded and ashy pale features of the child upon his shoulder, became visible to the assembled multitude, a deep shuddering murmur ran through its masses, like that the Platten Lake gives forth when tempest nears its shores. At sight and sound of the heaving throng, a hectic flush flamed upon George's cheek, an unwonted fire burned in his bosom; he felt the spirit of revenge descend upon his head like a forked and fiery tongue.

"Magyars!" he exclaimed in loud and manly tones, "I come from St Thomas, the sole survivor of all who there prayed to God in the Magyar tongue. My goods are plundered, my kinsmen slain. Have any of you friends there? – prepare your mourning, for of a surety they are dead. Of all I possessed I have saved but one treasure – my unhappy child. Approach! ye that are fathers, think of your virgin daughters, and behold what they have made of mine!"

As he spoke, he lifted his child from his shoulder; and then only did he perceive that she was dead. Until that moment, he had thought she was only faint and silent, as she had constantly been for six days past.

"Dead!" shrieked the despairing man, and clasped the corpse to his heart. "She is dead!" he repeated. The words died away upon his lips, and he fell, like one thunderstruck, headlong to the ground.

This tragical incident raised to a climax the excitement of the multitude.

"Revenge! – a bloody revenge!" thundered a voice; and the tumult that now arose was like the howling of the storm.

"To arms! To arms! all who are men!" was shouted on every side, and the people thronged through the streets and lanes of the city. "To arms! – to arms!" was re-echoed from house to house, and in an hour's time ten thousand furious men stood armed and equipped, and ready to set out for St Thomas.

Then there got abroad a sullen apprehension, speedily succeeded by a fierce resolve. Some one chanced to say: —

"But what if, when we march away, the Raitzen rise up and murder our children?"

The words passed from mouth to mouth.