meal, and then followed the most promising
looking of the party, for the purpose of holding
a short conversation with him. He was
a pleasant open-faced little fellow when you
got close to him, and of the same healthy
brown colour as most wild animals. His
conversation had a fine game flavour in it,
too, which I liked amazingly. For a dress,
he appeared simply to have cut off the legs
of a sheep, and to have got into its skin. His
primitive garment was tied at the throat
with thongs of roughly-knotted hide.

"I am fourteen years old," says the wild
little man (he was, probably, eight-and-thirty),
"and I am, of course, a private in one of the
Austro-Wallachian frontier regiments. There
are eighty thousand of us altogether employed
in this service. We serve on military duty
one week in four, and we each receive a florin
a month for pay. The rest of our time we
devote to our own affairs. I am married. I
have eight children, ten pigs, and two cows. I
and my friend" (a long man of the same species,
who sat smoking on a sack of Indian corn)
"have also some sheep between us. We have no
money. We do not like soldiering, but we
must like it." Here he grins slyly, and I take
the opportunity of observing that his legs
are bound up with dingy twisted woollen
rags, about the size and colour of haybands.
Lowering still further the glance of observation,
I become aware that his feet are shod
with undressed sheepskin, a kind of sandal.
While my new acquaintance was reposing
smilingly after this brief discourse, a woman
came out of a neighbouring hovel and strode
with a firm free step towards us. She was a
splendid gipsy-faced dame, with bright black
eyes, deep set and full of meaning; they
glowed with a far-away and mystic fire quite
bewildering. Her hair, the glossy blue-
black of the raven's-wing, shaded a
complexion rich with the warm hues of health
and exercise. There was something striking
in her beauty, and her carriage was graceful
and stately as a stag's. Nature seemed to
have created her a huntress queen—fate had
made her a peasant girl. The wild little man
told me with a familiar nod of intelligence
that she was the wife of his long friend on
the corn sack; and, emboldened by this
introduction, I tried to engage her in conversation,
mustering all my Wallachian for the
occasion; but she only showed a dazzling set
of teeth, and squeezed my hand in a half-shy
and remonstrative, half-patronising way.
Then, mounting a little springless waggon, to
which two wiry ponies were already
harnessed, she struck her husband laughingly
over the head with a pig-whip, and called
out with a short, good-humoured, but imperious
exclamation of command to his partner.
Both grinned from ear to ear. My little
acquaintance cast a sort of apologetic glance at
me, as much as to say, " You see there is no
resisting this bewitching vixen; " and I am
bound in candour to confess that he was
right. So they climbed up into the waggon,
and stuck their wooden pipes, about a foot
long, to repose in safety, in the bandages
round the calves of their legs. The short
man seized a pair of rope reins, and away
they rattled. The dame kept the pig-whip,
and, by a smart use of it, judiciously distributed
among the ponies and the swains, the
little waggon was soon whirling away at a
brisk gallop. It was quite surprising to see
how the small horses were tugged and pushed
about by it, for every wheel seemed to act
like the members of an experimental government,
in perfect independence of the rest. I
watched it appearing and disappearing among
ruts and hillocks, like a boat in a wintry sea,
and I was sorry when a turn in the road hid
it finally from my view.

Wandering onwards, I soon came to the
Austrian corps-de-garde. The officer on
duty was an intelligent, gentlemanly young
man. He said he was very busy (how, I did
not inquire), and that he had neither time
nor inclination to go after the game in the
neighbourhood, though it abounded with
wild boar and waterfowl, and there were
even some deer. His dinner, he told me—a
simple meal—cost him two shillings a-day.
It was prepared at the village inn. He
might have had a better in London for half
the price. So much for cheap living in these
countries.

As we were talking, a cart, with a decent,
orderly company of country-folk in holiday-
clothes, came slowly along. They were a
wedding-party—bride, bridegroom, and the
old folk on both sides. The Austrian
officer, who was at liberty to go where
he pleased, followed them home, and he was
so obliging as to permit me to accompany him.

The bride was a stout square-built country
lass, with a short neck, splay feet and
broad hands. Her complexion was pale
and sodden. Her eyes were small and dull;
moreover, they turned slightly inwards.
Her mouth was fat and white; yet the
local peculiarities of race were as marked
and evident in her, as in the gay, dashing,
gipsy termagant who had just flaunted by;
only this poor bride was probably reared
in some damp, unwholesome, marshy
district, and bore the traces of it in every
shapeless and passionless feature. For a
bridal costume she wore a red handkerchief
folded into a narrow band, and encircling
her head like a coronet. Her hair (of a
rusty brown) had a few flowers stuck
awkwardly into it, and they drooped as if
ashamed to be there. She had on a short
sheepskin jacket, with the wool turned
inwards. It was embroidered with a rude
device in coloured wool. A girdle of
untanned leather was round her waist, and to
this was suspended a pouch, which hung
down behind, like the sabretash of a huzzar.
It was bordered with a long parti-coloured
woollen fringe. The petticoat and chemise