CHAPTER II.
A little hamlet lay, like an eagle's nest, high on the southern slopeof the Balkan mountains. The half dozen huts of which it consistedwere made of rough stones, daubed within and without thick with clay.The roofs were of logs, overlaid with mats of brushwood woven togetherby flexible withes, and plastered heavily. The inhabitants weregoatherds. Their lives were simple. If they were denied indulgence inluxuries, they were also removed from that contact with them whichexcites desire, and so were contented. They seldom saw the faces ofany from the great world, upon so large a portion of which they lookeddown. Their absorbing occupation was in summer to watch the flockswhich strolled far away among the cliffs, and in winter to keep themclose to the hamlet, for then terrific storms swept the mountains andfilled the ravines with impassable snow.
Milosch and his good wife, Helena--Maika Helena, good Mother Helena,all the hamlet called her--were blessed with two boys. Their faceswere as bright as the sky in which, from their lofty lodgings, theymight be said to have made their morning ablutions for the eleven andtwelve years of their respective lives. Yet they were not children ofthe cherubic type; rather tough little knots of humanity, with bigbullet-heads thatched over with heavy growths of hair, which wouldhave been red, had it not been bleached to a light yellow by sunshineand cloud-mists. Instead of the toys and indolent pastimes of thenursery they had only the steep rocks, the thick copse, the gnarledtrees, and the wild game of the mountains for their play-things. Theythus developed compactly knit muscles, depth of lung and thickness offrame, which gave agility and endurance. At the same time, theassociations of their daily lives, the precipitous cliff, thetrembling edge of the avalanche, the caves of strange beasts, the wildroaring of the winds, the awful grandeur of the storms, the impressivesolitude which filled the intervals of their play like untranslatablebut mighty whispers from the unknown world taking the place of theprattle of this,--these fostered intrepidity, self-reliance, andbalance of disposition, if not of character. For religious disciplinethey had the occasional ministrations of a Greek priest or missionarymonk from the Rilo Monastir, many leagues to the west of them. Theyknew the Creed of Nicaea, the names of some of the saints; but of trulydivine things they had only such impressions as they caught from thegreat vault of the universal temple above them, and from thesuggestions of living nature at their feet.
By the side of Milosch's house ran--or rather climbed and tumbled, sosteep was it--that road over the Balkans, through the Pass of Slatiza,by which Alexander the Great, nearly two thousand years before, hadburst upon the Moesians. Again, within their father's memory, Bajazet,the "Turkish Lightning" as he was called because of the celerity ofhis movements, had flashed his arms through this Pass, and sent thebolts of death down upon Wallachia, and poured terror even to thedistant gates of Vienna. Often had Milosch rehearsed the story of theterrible days when he himself had been a soldier in the army of theWallachian Prince Myrtche; and showed the scar of the cut he hadreceived from the cimeter of a Turkish Janizary, whom he slew not farfrom the site of their home.
Their neighbor, Kabilovitsch, a man well weighted with years, not onlylistened to these tales, but added marvellous ones of his own;sometimes relating to the wars of King Sigismund of Hungary, who,after Prince Myrtche, had tried to regain this country from the cruelrule of the Moslems; more frequently, however, his stories were ofexploits of anonymous heroes. These were told with so much enthusiasmas to create the belief that the narrator had himself been the actorin most of them. For Kabilovitsch was a strange character in thelittle settlement; though not the less confided in because of themystery of his previous life. He had come to this out-of-the-wayplace, as he said, to escape with his little daughter the incessantraids and counter-raids of Turks and Christians, which kept theadjacent country in alarm.
Good Uncle Kabilovitsch--as all the children of the hamlet calledhim--named his daughter, a lass of ten summers, Morsinia, after thefamous peasant beauty, Elizabeth Morsiney, who had so fascinated KingSigismund.
Morsinia often braided her hair, and sat beneath her canopy ofblossoming laurel, while Constantine, the younger of Milosch's boys,dismounted from the back of his trained goat at the mimic threshold,and wooed her on bended knee, as the good king wooed the beautifulpeasant. Michael, the elder boy, was not less ardent, though lesspoetic, in the display of his passion for Morsinia. A necklace ofbear's claws cut with his own hand from a monster beast his father hadkilled; a crown made of porcupine quills which he had picked up amongthe rocks; anklets of striped snake skin--these were the pledges ofhis love, which he declared he would one day redeem with those made ofgems and gold--that is, when he should have become a princely warrior.
To Constantine, however, the little maiden was most gracious. It was acustom in the Balkan villages for the young people, on the Mondayafter Easter, to twist together bunches of evergreens, and for eachyoung swain to kiss through the loops the maid he loved the best. Withadults this was regarded as a probationary agreement to marry. If theaffection were mutually as full flamed the following Easter, the kissthrough the loop was the formal betrothal. Constantine's impatiencewreathed the evergreens almost daily, and, as every kiss stood for ayear, there was awaiting them--if the good fairies would only make ittrue--some centuries of nuptial bliss.
The little lover had built for himself a booth against the steeprocks. Into this Morsinia would enter with bread and water, andplacing them upon the stone which answered for a table, say, inimitation of older maidens assuming the care of husbands, "So will Ialways and faithfully provide for thee." Then she would touch thesides of the miniature house with a twig, which she called herdistaff, saying, "I will weave for thee, my lord, goodly garments andgay." She would also sit down and undress and redress her doll, whichConstantine had carved from wood, and which they said would do for thereal baby that the bride was expected to array, in the ceremony bywhich she acknowledged the obligations of wifehood.[11]
But Michael was not at all disconsolate at this preference shown hisbrother; for he knew that Morsinia would prefer him to all the worldwhen she heard what a great soldier he had become. Indeed, on somedays Michael was lord of the little booth; and more than once the fairenchantress put the evergreen loop around both the boys in as sincereindecision as has sometimes vexed older hearts than hers.
FOOTNOTE:
[11] These are still Servian customs.
The Captain of the Janizaries Page 2
