The Goose Girl

An old man, clothed in picturesque patches and tatters, paused and leaned on his stout oak staff. He was tired. He drew off his rusty felt hat, swept a sleeve across his forehea...

The nights in Dreiberg during September are often chill. The heavy mists from the mountain slip down the granite clifts and spread over the city, melting all sharp outlines, enf...

"One of my reasons is that I do not want any alliance with a country so perfidious as Jugendheit. What! I make overtures? I, who have been so cruelly wronged all these years? Yo...

The Black Eagle (_Zum Schwartzen Adler_) in the Adlergasse was a prosperous tavern of the second rate. The house was two hundred years old and had been in the Bauer family all t...

Fräu-Wirtin greatly admired that race, though no one knew why. The girls fully able to defend themselves, and were not at all diffident in boxing a smart fellow's ears. They had...

Krumerweg was indeed a crooked way. It formed a dozen elbows and ragged half-circles as it slunk off from the Adlergasse. Streets have character even as humans, and the Krumerwe...

The day promised to be mild. There was not a cloud anywhere, and the morning mists had risen from the valleys. It was good to stand in the sunshine which seemed to draw forth al...

Grumbach was very fond of music, and in America there were never any bands except at political meetings or at the head of processions; and that wasn't the sort of music he prefe...

The ambassador from Jugendheit, Baron von Steinbock, was not popular in Dreiberg, at least not among the people, who still held to the grand duke's idea that the kingdom had bee...

Gretchen was always up when the morning was rosy, when the trees were still dark and motionless, and the beads of dew white and frostlike. For what is better than to meet the da...

The grand duke stamped back and forth with a rumble as of distant thunder. He would search the very deeps of this matter. He was of a patient mold, but this was the final straw....

Hermann Breunner lived in the granite lodge, just within the eastern gates of the royal gardens. He was a widower and shared the ample lodge with the undergardeners and their fa...

Gretchen, troubled in heart and mind over the strange event of the night, walked slowly home, her head inclined, her arms swinging listlessly at her side. A spy, this man to who...

Colonel Von Wallenstein curled his mustaches. It was a happy thought that had taken him into the Adlergasse. This Gretchen had been haunting his dreams, and here she was, coming...

The watch, slipping from the clock-mender's hand, spun like a coin on the counter, while the clock-mender himself, his eyes bulging, his jaw dangling, it might be said, staggere...

Herbeck dropped his quill, and there was a dream in his eyes. His desk was littered with papers, well covered with ink; flowing sentences, and innumerable figures. He was the wa...

It was dawn when they began to pull up the road to Dreiberg. The return had been leisurely despite Carmichael's impatience. In the military field the troops were breaking camp f...

The ducal vineyards covered some forty acres of rich hillside. All day long the sun beat squarely upon the clustering fruit. A low rambling building of stone covered the presses...

"Yes. Soon I shall be shaking the dust of Dreiberg, and I want to know beforehand what this Chinese puzzle is. What did you do that compelled your flight from Ehrenstein?"

The office of the American consulate in the Adlergasse ran from the front to the rear of the building. Carmichael's desk overlooked the street. But whenever a flying dream came...

"With absolute authority on the subject, sire. Your face was familiar, but I failed at first to place it rightly. It was only after you had duped me into going after the veiled...

Carmichael tramped about his room, restless, uneasy, starting at sounds. Half a dozen times his cigar had gone out, and burned matches lay scattered on the floor. He was waiting...

The king of Jugendheit, Prince Ludwig, and the chancellor sat in the form of a triangle. Herbeck was making a pyramid of his finger-tips, sometimes touching his chin with his th...

The grand duke of Ehrenstein beheld the chancellor with that phase of astonishment which leaves the mind unclouded. The violent storm in his heart gave way to a calm, not at all...