New hands are to be engaged, and ever so much is to be done all over again.

How can you think of leaving us in the lurch?
There will be no one but you to manage things; you alone can direct the works and put bread into our poor people's mouths." "Ah, me!" sighed the distressed wife; "and must I live perhaps a whole year without seeing Manasseh--a whole autumn, winter, spring, and summer ?" Anna's eyes filled with tears and a sigh escaped her lips.

How many a season had she seen pass, without hope and without complaint! Blanka knew the meaning of those tears, and she hastened to kiss them away.
And so it came about that the Toroczko young men, and Manasseh with them, were sent off to Lombardy.

Thence every month came a letter to Toroczko, to Blanka Adorjan, from her devoted husband.

The very first one told her how he had risen from private to corporal and then from corporal to sergeant.