with scarlet cheeks,
Guinea hens, and a white peacock, which perched habitually on the
garden wall, and which divided with the negress the admiration of the
mountaineers.

If I enter into these details, Master Frantz, it's because they recall
my early youth; Dr. Christian found himself to be at the same time my
cousin and my tutor, and as early as on his return to Germany he had
come to take me and install me in his house at Spinbronn. The black
Agatha at first sight inspired me with some fright, and I only got
seasoned to that fantastic visage with considerable difficulty; but
she was such a good woman--she knew so well how to make spiced
patties, she hummed such strange songs in a guttural voice, snapping
her fingers and keeping time with a heavy shuffle, that I ended by
taking her in fast friendship.

Dr. Weber was naturally thick with Sir Thomas Hawerburch, as
representing the only one of his clientele then in evidence, and I was
not slow in perceiving that these two eccentrics held long
conventicles together. They conversed on mysterious matters, on the
transmission of fluids, and indulged in certain odd signs which one or
the other had picked up in his voyages--Sir Thomas in the Orient, and
my tutor in America. This puzzled me greatly. As children will, I was
always lying in wait for what they seemed to want to conceal from me;
but despairing in the end of discovering anything, I took the course
of questioning Agatha, and the poor old woman, after making me promise
to say nothing about it, admitted that my tutor was a sorcerer.

For the rest, Dr. Weber exercised a singular influence over the mind
of this negress, and this woman, habitually so gay and forever ready
to be amused by nothing, trembled like a leaf when her master's gray
eyes chanced to alight on her.

All this, Master Frantz, seems to have no bearing on the springs of
Spinbronn. But wait, wait--you shall see by what a singular concourse
of circumstances my story is connected with it.

I told you that birds darted into the cavern, and even other and
larger creatures. After the final departure of the patrons, some of
the old inhabitants of the village recalled that a young girl named
Louise Mueller, who lived with her infirm old grandmother in a cottage
on the pitch of the slope, had suddenly disappeared half a hundred
years before. She had gone out to look for herbs in the forest, and
there had never been any more news of her afterwards, except t