d not
cut you in two, for there are few who can stand before his sword. Some
one, I suspect, has been playing this cruel game with you."

Albert related to his former guide the news he had heard in the Golden
Stag of Pfullingen. He pointed out particularly the evidence of the
nurse, the fifer's sister, which gave it an air of so much probability.

"I thought it would come to that," replied the fifer: "Love has played
many worse tricks, and I don't know what it might not have done to me
in such a case, when I was young. No one is in fault but old Rosel, the
gossip! What business had she to make the hostess of the Golden Stag
her confidant, who cannot keep a secret for a moment?"

"But there must be some truth in the affair," said Albert, whose former
suspicions were again awakened; "for Rosel could never have said it
without some foundation."

"Yes, there is indeed much truth in the report. Everything is as true
as she has related. The servants are sent to bed, and the old spy also.
At eleven o'clock the man appears at the castle,--the drawbridge is let
down,--the doors open,--the young lady receives him and leads him into
the saloon----"

"Well, don't you see?" cried Albert, impatiently, "if all be as you
say, how could that man swear that he had nothing to do with----"

"That he had nothing of any kind to do with the lady, you would say?"
answered the fifer, "without hesitation he can swear to that; but there
is one essential difference in the story, which that old goose Rosel
certainly never knew; namely, that the knight of Lichtenstein always
receives his guest in the saloon, and, as soon as his daughter has
placed before him the refreshments which she has prepared, she
withdraws. The old gentleman remains with the banished man till the
first crow of the cock, when, after having well satisfied his hunger
and thirst, and warmed his weary limbs at the fire, he leaves the
castle in the same way that he entered it."

"Oh, fool that I was not to have thought of all this before! The truth
was close at hand, and I pushed it from me! But cursed be the curiosity
and slanderous spirit of those women, who always fancy they can divine
something extraordinary in the most trifling circumstance, and whose
greatest charm consists in conjecturing improbabilities. But tell me,"
said Albert, after a moment's thought, "it strikes me very odd, that
this banished man should visit the castle every night exactly as the
clock strikes