In the yard and round about it the dogs woke up, and with terrible yelping ran towards the pantry, where the roaring of the bear grew ever wilder and more powerful.  The rattling of the chain and the cries of the girl mingled with Ibrahim’s growling.  The neighbors began to wake up.  Human voices, confused questionings, were heard.  The inn-keeper and his servants appeared on the scene in their night clothes, but, hearing the terrible roaring, fled again into security.  The Captain’s cries for help became weaker and weaker.  And now Joco took his iron stake, which he always kept by him, opened the door, and at one bound was at the side of the wild beast.  His voice sounded again like thunder, and the iron stick fell with a thud on the bear’s back.  Ibrahim had smelt blood.  Beneath his paws a man’s mangled body was writhing.  The beast could hardly be made to let go his prey.  In the light that came through the small window, Joco soon found the chain from which not long before he had freed Ibrahim, and with a swift turn he put the muzzle over the beast’s jaws.  It was done in a twinkling.  During this time Zorka had been running up and down the empty yard, crying in vain for help.  Nobody had dared come near.

The following day Captain Fritz Winter, Ritter von Wallishausen, was lying between burning wax candles upon his bier.  Nobody could be made responsible for the terrible accident.  Why did he go to the bears when he was not sober?

But that very day the siren of Bosnia danced her wild dance again in the next village, and with her sweet, melodious voice urged the light-colored little bear:  “Mariska, jump, jump!”

ARTHUR ELCK

THE TOWER ROOM

There were many wonderful things that aroused our childish fantasy, when Balint Orzo and I were boys, but none so much as the old tower that stands a few feet from the castle, shadowy and mysterious.  It is an old, curious, square tower, and at the brink of its notched edge there is a shingled helmet which was erected by one of the late Orzos.

There is many and many a legend told about this old tower.  A rumor exists that it has a secret chamber into which none is permitted to enter, except the head of the family.  Some great secret is concealed in the tower-room, and when the first-born son of the Orzo family becomes of age his father takes him there and reveals it.  And the effect of the revelation is such that every young man who enters that room comes out with gray hair.

As to what the secret might be, there was much conjecturing.  One legend had it that once some Orzo imprisoned his enemies in the tower and starved them until the unfortunates ate each other in their crazed suffering.

According to another story Kelemen Orzo ordered his faithless wife Krisztina Olaszi to be plastered into the wall of the room.  Every night since, sobbing is heard from the tower.