e of the
apartment with his sword unsheathed. Was he about to use it? None can say;
for at this moment the young Baron burst into the room, and, without the
slightest apology for the liberty he was taking, passed his sword through
Otto's body.

Otto groaned, and fell upon his face. He was dead. The young Baron ungently
reversed the position of the corpse, and scanned its features with evident
surprise and dissatisfaction.

"It is not Arnold, after all!" he muttered. "Who would have thought it?"

"Thou seest, brother, how unjust were thy suspicions," observed Aurelia,
with an air of injured but not implacable virtue. "As for this abominable
ravisher----" Her feelings forbade her to proceed.

The brother looked mystified. There was something beyond his comprehension
in the affair; yet he could not but acknowledge that Otto was the person
who had rushed by him as he lay in wait upon the stairs. He finally
determined that it was best to say nothing about the matter: a resolution
the easier of performance as he was not wont to be lavish of his words at
any time. He wiped his sword on his sister's curtains, and was about to
withdraw, when Aurelia again spoke:

"Ere thou departest, brother, have the goodness to ring the bell, and
desire the menials to remove this carrion from my apartment."

The young Baron sulkily complied, and retreated growling to his chamber.

The attendants carried Otto's body forth. To the honour of her sex be it
recorded, that before this was done Aurelia vouchsafed one glance to the
corpse of her old lover. Her eye fell on the brazen ring. "And he has
actually worn it all this time!" thought she.

"Would have outraged my daughter, would he?" said the old Baron, when the
transaction was reported to him. "Let him be buried in a concatenation
accordingly."

"What the guy dickens be a concatrenation, Geoffrey?" interrogated Giles.

"Methinks it is Latin for a ditch," responded Geoffrey.

This interpretation commending itself to the general judgment of the
retainers, Otto was interred in the shelving bank of the old moat, just
under Aurelia's window. A rough stone was laid upon the grave. The magic
ring, which no one thought worth appropriating, remained upon the corpse's
finger. Thou mayest probably find it there, reader, if thou searchest long
enough.

The first visitor to Otto's humble sepulchre was, after all, Aurelia
herself, who alighted thereon on the following night after letting herse