The cowboy trotted towards the herd, and soon the hills of ZÁm, 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 HortobÁgy river. He was on his way to the rose-bush where the yellow roses grew.

For on the whole HortobÁgy 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:

"KlÁri! 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 csikÓs on the whole puszta—SÁndor Decsi.

"SÁndor!" screamed the girl when she saw him, and clapping her hands, "SÁndor! 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."

"SÁndor!" 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 csikÓs 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.

"SÁndor," 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!" KlÁri laughed outright. "You gave them to me yourself, only I had them gilded by the jeweller in ÚjvÁros."

Then the csikÓs caught hold of both her hands, and spoke his mind slowly and earnestly. "Dearest KlÁri," 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 HortobÁgy 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 csikÓs' to the military stud at MezÖhegyes. 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, SÁndor, 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-ÚjvÁros!"

"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 csikÓs, 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.""SÁndor, SÁndor," 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 MezÖhegyes. 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 csikÓs, 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 KlÁri.

"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 ZÁm 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 ZÁm Herd."

"Only it seems funny to me," remarked the csikÓs, "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 csikÓs 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 ZÁm. 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 ÚjvÁros 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.

"SÁndor! SÁndor! 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:—

"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."

"SÁndor! 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? SÁndor 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 SÁndor 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:—

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 csikÓs 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 KlÁri sung the last note before SÁndor 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 csikÓs 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?

"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 csikÓs 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, KlÁri "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 HortobÁgy fish, called "KÁrÁsz," 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:

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 "betyÁrs'," the puszta robbers', life contained in the words:

As soon as the fish was browned enough, the girl brought it to the csikÓs. 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 KlÁri went on singing:

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 'betyÁr,' and have nothing to do with thieves. Gendarmes are honest men, and do their duty. As for a good-for-nothing 'betyÁr,' 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 csÁrdÁs, 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 SÁndor 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!

KlÁri'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?