CHAPTER XVI.

The ruins of Gnadeck might well listen in amazement to the strange noise which had resounded through their crumbling walls from the first peep of dawn. It was not the familiar sound of destruction caused by furious storms, or the melting of the snow when spring appeared. Then the water softly excavated little gutters between the stones, and lifted from its niche, without any other warning, one block of granite after another, that, the instant before its final downfall, looked proudly and threateningly down upon the world; for its overthrow had been planned more secretly than that of a royal favourite or an unpopular ministry. And then a violent storm would arise some midnight,--a mighty crash would come, and the rays of the rising sun would wander for the first time over walls and floors that they had never touched before. There would be a huge pile of masonry heaped upon the pavement, and all through the day, with every gentle breeze, broken bits of mortar and little rills of sand would trickle down from the wound; but before long, tender grass would sprout from the jagged edges, and years, long years, would again ensue before the mischievous water beneath the green garment would prepare a new victim for the tempest. It was a slow, scarcely perceptible decline. The ruins might be as easy as the invalid whose disease, though incurable, may permit him to rival the Old Testament patriarchs in length of days.

It was human hands to-day that were effecting the work of destruction. With incredible speed and activity they dislodged stone after stone. The old jutty, which had advanced so boldly for years, like a valiant sentinel keeping watch before this wing of the castle, presented a most deplorable appearance. It had already been shorn of much of its height; its ivy mantle was torn, and dark window niches and mossy masonry came to light, which, perhaps, once were rich in stone carving. The workmen were very diligent. It interested them greatly, hazardous as was their task, to obtain a glimpse down into the dark nooks and corners of the old pile, that popular superstition had peopled with countless ghastly apparitions.

In the afternoon, Frau Ferber was sitting upon the shady rampart with Miss Mertens and Elizabeth, when Reinhard, who, always made his appearance at a certain hour of the day, interrupted their reading. He announced that Linke's body had been committed to the earth as privately as possible that morning, and that Fraeulein von Walde had learned, through the carelessness of a servant, of the attempt upon her brother's life. But he remarked, with some bitterness, that Herr von Walde's anxiety, lest his sister's fright upon hearing of the assault should have disastrous consequences, had been wholly unnecessary, since the lady had heard of it with entire composure, and even the terrible accident that had befallen Herr von Hartwig, whose wife was one of her friends, had apparently produced very little impression upon her. "But if the life of her fair-haired favourite had been in danger," he declared angrily, "she would most certainly have torn her chestnut curls. That Herr von Hollfeld is utterly odious to me! He has been walking about the house to-day, looking as if he would like to poison us all. I'll wager that this charming mood of his is the cause of Fraeulein von Walde's red and swollen eyes, which she tried to conceal from me when I met her in the garden just now."

At the mention of the hated name, Elizabeth bent low over her work. The blood rushed to her face at the thought of Hollfeld's insolence the day before, of which she had not yet told her mother, for fear that it might cause a return of her headache; and perhaps there were other reasons for her silence; but she would not acknowledge to herself how much she dreaded lest her parents, upon learning of Hollfeld's rudeness, should prohibit her from going to Lindhof again, in which case all chance of seeing Herr von Walde would be at an end.

In the mean time, the destruction of the jutty was going on uninterruptedly. After awhile Ferber entered the garden. He had been to the Lodge, and had brought the forester home with him to take coffee. Ernst came running to them in a great state of excitement. The child had obediently forborne to transgress the bounds which his father had set for him, that he might not be exposed to danger; but he had been looking on from his post of observation, following the progress of the workmen with the greatest interest.

"Papa! papa!" he cried, "the mason wants to speak to you,--come right away; he says he has found something!"

And in fact one of the workmen made signs to the brothers to come nearer.

"We have come to what seems to be a small chamber," the man called down to them, "and, as well as I can see, there is a coffin in it. Will you not examine into the matter, Herr Ferber, before we proceed? You can come up here with entire safety; we have firm foothold."

Reinhard had heard the call and came hastily down the terrace steps. A concealed apartment, containing a coffin!--the words were music to his antiquarian ears.

The three men cautiously ascended the ladder.

The workmen were standing just where the huge jutty sprang forth from the main building, and they pointed down to a tolerably large opening at their feet. Until now they had come upon no room that had been closed; the roof of the main building was partly gone, and standing upon this spot, you could look in all directions through a labyrinth of open rooms, half ruinous passages, and through great gaps in the floors down into the castle chapel. The old ruins did not seem half so desolate from within as from without; the blue heavens peeped in everywhere, and the fresh breeze swept through as often as it would. But now a space suddenly appeared at their feet surrounded by firm walls, and covered by a tolerably well-preserved ceiling. As well as they could judge from where they stood, the room lay like a wedge between the chapel and the space behind. At all events, there must be a window somewhere at the extreme corner formed by the wall of the jutty and that of the main building, for from that direction a weak reflection streamed in through coloured glass, and flickered upon the object which was dimly visible, and which the masons took for a coffin.

Immediately a ladder of greater length was procured, as the room was quite a high one, and one by one all went down in a state of highly-wrought expectation. In descending, there was within reach a wainscoted wall almost black with age. The profusion of strange, rich carving that adorned it startled the eye. Close to the ceiling a plain strip of wood, of much more modern date, had been nailed, upon which were still hanging some rags of black cloth; while the rest of what had once been the mourning drapery of the apartment lay in mouldering, shapeless heaps upon the floor.

Doubtless concealment had been the purpose of the room from the beginning, for there had been no heed paid to symmetry of form in its construction. It represented an irregular triangle, and in one somewhat rounded corner was the very small window whose existence they had suspected. It lay so close to the chapel that Reinhard's supposition that in old Catholic times the church treasures had been secreted here seemed most probable; all the more so as on one side five or six worn stone steps led down to a door in the chapel wall, which had been walled up from within. The window was just behind the evergreen oak, which pressed its thick branches against it, and the ivy had twined a tender lattice-work across the panes; but nevertheless the sun stole through the coloured glass in the graceful, delicate stone rosette, which was in a state of perfect preservation.

It was in fact a coffin,--a small, narrow, leaden coffin,--standing out in strong contrast with the black velvet covering of its pedestal, which was thus found lonely and forgotten within these three walls. At its head was a huge candelabrum, in the branches of which were still to be seen the remains of wax candles; but at its foot was a footstool, upon which lay a mandolin, its strings all broken. It had been an old instrument in the hands of its last possessor, for the black colour of its neck was worn away in spots, and the sounding-board was slightly hollowed where the player had pressed her little fingers. At the approach of the intruders the last fragments of the withered heap of flowers fluttered down from the coffin, upon whose lid in gilt letters was inscribed the name "Lila."

Set in the thick wall of the most extensive side of the apartment was a kind of press, of dark oak, which Reinhard at first supposed had been appropriated to the safe-keeping of the priestly robes and ornaments. He opened the doors, which stood ajar; as they shook in opening there was a rustle within, and little clouds of dust flew forth from a quantity of female garments hanging inside. They formed a strange, fantastic wardrobe,--gay, and most coquettish in fashion, they contrasted oddly enough with the grave solemnity of their surroundings.

She who had worn these garments must have been a wonderfully small and delicate creature, for the silk skirts,--most of them bordered with embroidery in gold thread,--were as short as though made for a child; and the shape of the black and violet velvet bodices, with their silken ribbons and tinsel trimmings, must have fitted an exquisite, pliant, maiden waist. Many, many years must have elapsed since a human being had breathed within these walls,--since any hand warm with life had touched these hidden objects. The hooks in the press had, in some cases, pierced the mouldering stuffs; and the threads, which had once confined the pearls and spangles of the trimming, hung loose and broken.

Against one wall was placed a little table with a stone top. Its legs, grown weak with age, appeared scarcely able to sustain it, and it leaned forward, endangering the safety of a casket that stood upon it. This casket was a master-piece of workmanship in ivory and gold. The cover did not seem to be locked; it looked rather as if it had been lightly closed, in order to preserve a broad parchment which projected from the box and had obviously been arranged with the view of attracting attention. It was yellow with age and covered deep,--as was all else,--with dust; but the large, stiff, black characters upon it were distinctly visible, and the name, "Jost von Gnadewitz," was perfectly legible.

"Good Heavens! what have we here?" cried the forester, whose speech almost failed him with amazement "Jost von Gnadewitz!--the hero of Sabina's tale of her great-grandmother!"

Ferber approached the table, and carefully raised the cover of the casket. Within, upon a dark velvet cushion, lay ornaments of antique workmanship, bracelets, brooches, a necklace of gold coins, and several strings of costly pearls.

The parchment had fallen to the ground. Reinhard picked it up, and offered to read the contents aloud. It was, even for the time when it had been composed,--about two hundred years before,--very clumsily written, and very badly spelled. The writer had evidently understood how to wield the hunting-spear better than the pen,--nevertheless an air of poesy breathed through the lines. They ran thus:

"Whoever you may be who are the first to enter this room, by all that is sacred to you, by everything that you love or that has a home in your heart, do not disturb her repose. She lies there sleeping like a child. The sweet face beneath the dark curls smiles again now that death has touched it. Once more, whoever you are, whether noble or beggar, descendant of hers or not, let my eyes be the last to rest upon her!

"I could not lay her in the dark, cold ground. Here the golden light will play around her, and birds will alight upon the branches of the tree outside with the breath of the forest ruffling their feathers, while the songs that hushed her in her cradle gush from their throats.

"The golden sunlight was quivering in the forest, and the birds were singing in the trees, when the graceful roe parted the bushes, and gazed with shy, startled eyes at the young huntsman who was lying in the shade. His heart beat quickly and wildly at sight of her; he threw his weapons from him, and pursued the maiden-form that fled before him. She, the child of the forest, a daughter of that people which the curse of God pursues making them wanderers upon the face of the earth, with no home for their weary feet, not a foot of land that they can call their own whereon to lay their dying heads,--she had vanquished the heart of the proud, fierce huntsman. Suing for her love, he haunted the camp of her tribe, day and night; he followed her footsteps like a dog, and entreated her passionately until she was touched, to leave her people and fly with him in secret. In the silence of night he bore her away to his castle, and, alas! became her murderer. He did not heed her prayers, when she was suddenly seized by the uncontrollable longing for her forest liberty. As the prisoned bird flutters wildly about its cage, beating its delicate wings against the confining wires, so she wandered in despair through the halls which had once resounded to her intoxicating song and the delicious music of her lute, but which now only echoed to her sighs and complaints. He saw her cheeks grow pale, saw her eyes averted from him in hate; his heart died a thousand deaths when she thrust him from her, and shuddered at his touch; despair possessed him, but he doubly bolted every door, and guarded them in deadly terror, for he knew that she was lost to him forever if once again her foot should press the woodland turf. And then there came a time when she grew less restless,--'tis true she glided past him as though he were a shadow, a nothing,--she never lifted her eyes when he approached her and addressed her in the tenderest tones of entreaty,--it was long since she had spoken to him, and still no words passed her lips; but she no longer beat her tiny hands against the window-bars, tearing her hair, and calling with shrill shrieks upon those who passed through the forest without, enjoying all the sweets of liberty. She no longer fled madly, like some hunted thing, through halls and corridors, nor mounted the castle wall to throw her fair body into the gloomy waters of the moat. She sat beneath the evergreen oak with a sad, patient look upon her lily-white face; she knew of the life within her own,--she was about to become a mother. And when night came, and the huntsman bore her up the broad stairway in his arms,--she did not resist, but she turned her face from him, that his breath might not touch her cheek, that no glance of his loving eyes might fall upon her.

"And one day the pastor of Lindhof came to the castle. The people declared that Jost, a lamb of his flock, had dealings with the devil, and he came to rescue the lost soul. He was admitted, and saw the creature for whose sake the wild huntsman had renounced his merry life in the forest, and heaven itself. Her beauty and purity touched him. He spoke to her in gentle tones, and her heart, paralyzed with suffering, melted at his addresses. For the sake of the child that was to come, she was baptized, and the unholy tie that had bound her to her lover was hallowed by the sanction of the church. And when her dark hour of pain had passed, she pressed her cold lips upon the brow of her child, and, with that kiss, her spirit burst its bonds,--she was free, free! The triumph of that moment transfigured the earthly tenement from which the soul had departed. The wretched man saw those glorious eyes darken in death; he writhed at her feet in an agony of remorse and despair, and implored her in vain for only one last glance of love.

"The boy was christened, and received his father's name,--my baptismal name. I gazed with a shudder into his eyes,--they are my eyes. Together we have murdered her. My old servant, Simon, has taken the boy away. I cannot live for him. Simon says, and the pastor also, that no woman can be found willing to nourish my child at her breast, for, in the eyes of the people I am lost,--doomed eternally to hell-torments. The wife of my forester, Ferber, has adopted the child without knowing whence it comes----"

Here the reader paused, and looked up over the parchment at the brothers. The forester, who, until now, had been leaning against the opposite wall listening with the greatest attention, suddenly stood by his side, and clutched his arm convulsively. The colour left his sun-burnt cheeks for one moment. It seemed as if his heart ceased to beat, so great was his agitation. And Ferber also drew near, testifying in his face and gestures extreme surprise.

"Go on, go on!" cried the forester at last, in stifled accents.

"Simon laid him upon the threshold of the forest lodge," Reinhard read further, "and to-day he saw Ferber's wife kissing and tending him like her own little girl. By the laws of my family, he has no claim upon the Gnadewitz estate, but my maternal inheritance will preserve him from want. My directions I have confided, in a sealed packet, deposited in the town-house at L----, to the public authorities. They will substantiate his claim to be my son and heir. May he, as Hans Jost von Gnadewitz, found a new race. The Almighty will provide kind hearts to protect his youth,--I cannot.

"Everything which adorned that lovely form in happier days shall surround it in death, and yield to the same decay. Her child has a claim upon her jewels, but my heart revolts at the thought that what has rested upon her dazzling brow, her pure neck, may perhaps be torn asunder and desecrated by faithless hands. Better to leave all here to fade and fall to ruin.

"Once more I implore you, whom chance may lead to this sanctuary, after the lapse of centuries perhaps,--honour the dead, and pray for me,

"JOST VON GNADEWITZ."

The two brothers clasped each other's hands, and, without a word, approached the coffin. In their veins flowed the blood of that strange being who had once kindled to a flame the heart of the fierce, proud lord of the castle,--of that woman whose ardent soul, thirsting for freedom, exultingly fled from the idolized body which had crumbled to a little heap of ashes here in its narrow leaden tomb. Two tall figures stood there, descendants of him who, with his dying mother's consecrating kiss upon his brow, was borne out into the forest, and laid upon the low threshold of a servant, while his nobly-born father, despair in his heart, rushed madly to death.

"She was the mother of our race," Ferber said at last, with much emotion, to Reinhard. "We are the descendants of the foundling whose parentage has been a mystery until this hour, for the papers which would have established him in his rights were destroyed when the townhouse at L---- was burned down. We must suspend work here for a few days," he said, turning to one of the masons, who, prompted by a pardonable curiosity, had descended the ladder half way, and, from this post of observation, had listened in speechless amazement to the unfolding of a tale which would afford a subject for winter evenings in the large, peasant spinning-rooms, for a long time to come.

"Instead, you must prepare a grave to-morrow in the church-yard at Lindhof," the forester called up to him; "I will speak to the pastor about it afterwards."

He went again to the press, and looked at the garments that had once enveloped the delicate limbs of the gypsy maiden, and had evidently been adjusted with great care, that they might recall the times when they had been seen upon the beautiful Lila by the enraptured eyes of her lover. Upon the floor of the press were ranged shoes. The forester took up a pair of them; they were scarcely longer than the width of his broad hand,--only Cinderella's feet could ever have worn them.

"I will take these to Elsie," he said, smiling, holding them carefully between his forefinger and thumb, "she will be surprised to find what a Liliputian her ancestress was."

Meanwhile Ferber, after brushing the dust from the mandolin, took it carefully under his arm, while Reinhard closed the jewel-box and lifted it from the table by the exquisitely wrought handle on the lid. Thus the three men ascended the ladder again. Arrived at the top, all the boards that they could procure were placed over the opening, so as to afford a temporary protection from wind and rain, and then they descended from their perilous position upon the summit of the ruin.

Below, the ladies had been awaiting them for some time, in a state of great expectation, and were not a little surprised at the strange procession that descended the ladder. But not one word did they learn of what had been seen or heard, until the whole party were once more seated beneath the linden. Then Reinhard placed the casket upon the table, described minutely the hidden apartment and its contents, and, at last producing the parchment, read again what we have already learned; of course with far greater fluency than before.

In breathless silence the ladies listened to these outpourings of a passionate, burning heart. Elizabeth sat pale and still; but when Reinhard came to the words that suddenly threw such a glare of light upon the dim past of her family, she started up, and her eyes rested in speechless surprise upon the smiling face of her uncle, who was observing her narrowly. Even Frau Ferber sat for awhile after the reader had finished, fairly dumb with amazement. To her clear, calm mind, accustomed to reason carefully, this romantic solution of family questions, which had been unanswered for centuries, was almost incomprehensible. But Miss Mertens, to whom the whole bearing of the discovery was explained by Ferber, as she did not even know the story of the foundling, clapped her hands above her head at such a revelation.

"And does not this parchment give you a claim to your inheritance?" she asked quickly and eagerly.

"Undoubtedly," replied Ferber, "but how can we tell in what that maternal inheritance consisted? The family has died out, the very name of Gnadewitz is extinct. Everything has passed into strange hands; who can tell to what we may lay claim?"

"No, let all that rest," said the forester with decision; "such matters cost money, and in the end we might come into possession of only a few thalers. Oh no! let it go! We have not starved yet."

Elizabeth musingly took up the shoes which her uncle had placed before her. The faded silk of which they were made was torn here and there, and showed perfectly the shape of the foot. They had been much worn, but not apparently upon the soil of the forest; the soles showed no traces of such contact; probably they had covered the restless feet at the time of her imprisonment, "when she fled madly through halls and corridors like some hunted thing."

"Aha! Elsie, now we know where you got your slender waist and those feet that trip over the sward, scarcely bending the blades of grass," said her uncle. "You are just such a forest-butterfly as your ancestress, and would flutter just so against the bars of your cage if you were shut up within locked doors; there is gypsy blood in your veins were you ten times Gold Elsie and though your skin is like a snowdrift. There, put on those things, you will find that you can dance in them easily."

"Oh no, uncle," cried Elizabeth deprecatingly, "they seem to me like sacred relics; I could not put them on without fearing that Jost's fiery black eyes might suddenly glare out at me."

Frau Ferber and Miss Mertens agreed with her, and the former declared that in her opinion the press, with all that it contained, ought to be carefully removed to some quiet, dry place, where it might be preserved untouched as a family relic until it fulfilled its destiny, which was to decay with all else that is mortal.

"Well, with regard to the press, let it be as you say," Reinhard here interposed; "but it seems to me that a different fate should await these articles."

He opened the casket. The sunlight penetrating, its interior came flashing back in a thousand sparkling rays, dazzling the eyes that looked on. Reinhard took out a necklace,--it was very broad, and of admirable design.

"These are brilliants of the purest water," he explained to the rest,--the necklace was set thick with precious stones,--"and these rubies here must have gleamed magnificently from the dark curls of the beautiful gypsy girl," he continued, as he took two pins from their velvet cushion with heads formed like lily-cups of red stones, from which chains, set thick with rubies, fell like a glittering little shower.

Elizabeth, smiling, held a costly agraffe above her forehead.

"And so you think, Herr Reinhard," she said, "that we should let all reverence for the past go, and recklessly adorn ourselves with these jewels? What would my white muslin dress say if I should some day introduce it into such distinguished society?"

"The brilliants are exquisitely becoming to you," replied Reinhard, smiling; "but to my mind a nosegay of fresh flowers would be far more suitable with the white muslin; and therefore I should advise that these precious stones be transformed at the jeweller's into shining coin."

Ferber nodded assentingly.

"What! Reinhard," cried Miss Mertens, "do you think these family jewels should be sold?"

"Certainly," he replied; "it would be both foolish and sinful to let such capital lie idle. The stones alone must be worth full seven thousand thalers, and then there are these very fine pearls, and this wrought gold, which will bring a very clever little sum besides."

"Zounds!" exclaimed the forester; "let them go then on the spot,----See, Adolph," he continued more gently, and rested his arm upon his brother's shoulder, "Heaven has been kind to you here. Did I not tell you that all would go smoothly with you in Thuringia, although I never dreamed that eight thousand thalers were waiting for you?"

"For me?" cried Ferber with surprise. "Does it not all belong to you as the elder?"

"None of that! What, in Heaven's name, should I do with the trash? Am I to begin to invest capital in my old days? I think I see myself at such work! I have neither chick nor child in the world, hold an excellent office,--and when my old bones fail me, there is a pension for me, which, try as I may, I shall never be able to spend. Therefore I resign my birthright in favour of the girl with the golden hair and Ernst, the rogue, who shall perpetuate our stock; I will not even have a mess of lentil pottage in exchange, for Sabina says it is not good with venison. Don't touch me!" he cried, with a comic gesture of refusal, clasping his hands behind him, as Frau Ferber, with tears in her eyes, came to him with outstretched arms, and his brother would have remonstrated with him. "It would be much better for you, sister-in-law, to go and see about our coffee. It is really past hearing! four o'clock and not a drop of the usual refreshments, for the sake of which I dragged myself up here."

He accomplished his aim in diverting from himself all grateful acknowledgments. Frau Ferber hastened into the house, accompanied by Elizabeth, and the others laughed. The whole party were soon seated upon the terrace, busy with the brown, fragrant beverage.

"Yes, yes," said the forester, leaning comfortably back in his chair; "I never thought, when I awoke this morning, that I should lie down at night a Herr von Gnadewitz. I shall gain a step in my profession, of course, instantly; that yellow parchment, with its crooked letters, has done for me in an instant what thirty years of hard service have failed to accomplish. As soon as his Highness arrives in L---- I shall make my best bow, and introduce myself by my new name. Zounds! how those people will stare!"

A peculiar side glance was directed, as these words were spoken, towards Elizabeth, and at the same moment the speaker puffed away at his pipe so vigorously that his face was quite concealed by a thick cloud of smoke.

"Uncle," cried his niece, "say what you will, I know that you can never intend to patch up again the shattered crest of the Gnadewitzes."

"I can't see why not, 'tis a beautiful coat of arms, with chevrons, stars----"

"And a wheel covered with blood," interrupted Elizabeth. "God forbid that we should swell the number of those who revive the sins of their ancestors to prove the antiquity of their race, and thus make nobility ignoble,--nothing in the world seems to me more detestable. I should think that all those who have been tortured and hunted down in life by that pitiless, haughty race, would arise, like accusing ghosts, from their graves, if the name should ever be revived, beneath whose shelter such oppression and tyranny existed for centuries. When I compare the two fathers,--one seeking death like a coward, never considering for an instant that his poor child had the most sacred claims upon him; the other, a poor servant, taking the outcast compassionately to his heart, and bestowing upon it his own honest name,--then I know well which was the noble, which name deserves to be perpetuated. And think what sorrow that haughty race has caused my poor, dear mother."

"True enough, true enough," Frau Ferber declared with a sigh--"in the first place, I owe to it a stormy, unhappy childhood, for my mother was a beautiful, amiable girl, whom my father married against the will of his relatives, who could not forgive her ignoble extraction. This misalliance was a source of endless suffering and annoyance to my poor mother, for my father had not sufficient strength of character to break with the chief of the Gnadewitz family, and live only for his wife. This weakness on his part was the cause of constant strife between my parents, which I could not but be cognizant of. And we"--here she held out her hand across the table to her husband--"we can never forget all we had to contend with before we could belong to each other. I would not for the world return to the class who so often ruthlessly stifle every warm, humane sentiment, that outward rank and show may be preserved."

"And you never shall return, Marie," said her husband, with a smile, as he pressed her hand. He glanced mischievously at his brother, who was still puffing forth immense clouds of smoke, while he was doing his best, most unsuccessfully, to keep up the frown upon his brow.

"Ah! my fine plans," he sighed at last, with a comical look of disappointment. "Elsie, you are a cruel, foolish creature. You forget what a fine life we should lead, if I had a position at court, and you were a fine lady. There, does not that tempt you?"

Elizabeth shook her head, smilingly, but most decidedly

"And who knows," added Miss Mertens, "but that, before we could turn round, some noble knight, of stainless lineage, would bear away from old Gnadeck our high-born Elsie as his wife!"

"Do you think I would go with him?" cried Elizabeth, indignantly, her cheeks aglow.

"And why not?--if you loved him."

"No, never," replied the girl in a suppressed voice, "not even if I loved him,--for I should then be all the more wretched in the consciousness that the prestige of my name had weighed heavier in the balance than my heart, that in the eyes of that man all aspiration after spiritual elevation and moral excellence was worthless in comparison with a phantom, which the miserable prejudices of men had tricked out with tinsel."

Frau Ferber gazed with surprise at her daughter, whose face showed evident signs of deep emotion. The forester, on the other hand, held his pipe firmly between his teeth, and clapped his hands loudly.

"Elsie, child of gold!" he cried at last, "give me your hand! that's my brave girl! true metal, through and through! Yes, I say, too, God keep me from swelling the number of those who give up an honest name for the sake of their own personal advantage. No, Adolph, we will not cast scorn upon the parish register of the little Silesian village where we were christened; we will go on writing our names as they are written there."

"And as they have faithfully clung to us in joy and sorrow for half a century," added Ferber with his quiet smile, "I will keep this document for this fellow," and he laid his hand upon little Ernst's curly head, "until his judgment is clear and ripe. I cannot and must not decide for him, but I trust I shall train him so that he will prefer to carve out a path for himself by his own energy, rather than to lie idly in the hot-bed of old traditions and wrongs enjoying privileges which should be the reward only of lofty endeavour. The Gnadewitzes in their long career added nothing to the world, but took much from it; let them moulder in their graves, and their high-sounding, undeserved titles with them!"

"Selah!" cried the forester, knocking the ashes from his pipe. "And now let us go," he said to his brother, "and advise with the Lindhof pastor. A spot beneath the beautiful lindens in our village church-yard seems to me infinitely preferable to those three gloomy walls, within which the mother of our line has lain for so long; and that the 'dark, cold ground' may not touch her coffin, let us have a grave built in the earth and closed with a tombstone."

He departed, accompanied by Ferber and Reinhard, and, whilst her mother and Miss Mertens were putting the jewel-box away in a place of security, Elizabeth climbed the ladder placed against the ruined jutty, pushed aside the boards, and descended into the secret chamber. A slender ray of the setting sun touched a ruby pane in the little window and threw a bloody stain upon the name "Lila," on the lid of the coffin. Elizabeth, with head bowed and hands clasped, stood for a long while beside the lonely bier, whereon that burning heart had slept undisturbed since the moment when death had stilled its wild beating and ended its sorrow. Centuries had flown by, effacing, as if they had never existed, all the transporting charm of that short life,--all the stormy emotion which had worked its ruin,--and yet the young heart that was throbbing restlessly in that chamber of death beside that bier, fancied that the emotions causing it to throb so wildly could never die.