s with the blood of their
neighbours.

In order to atone for these sins, and in accordance with the wise
counsel of a priest, the trees on which the bodies had been hanged
were cut down, and the wood used to build a chapel of expiation.
Stones were also taken from the smoking ruins of the burning castles
and employed for the same purpose. The little church was built on the
lonely place of execution on the Rhine near Assmannshausen.

The day arrived--a day of great sorrow and weeping--when all was
ready, and the priest was to read prayers from the altar for the first
time. Many funeral barges were to be seen on the river, bringing the
dead who were buried in the aisle of the church.

The Archbishop of Mayence absolved the bodies from their sins, and
afterwards they were all interred together near the little church for
the second time.

This occurred towards the end of the thirteenth century. For long
years afterwards prayers were offered up in this church in
Assmannshausen for the souls of the dead.

The once proud and mighty races gradually died out, and their
strongholds fell into ruins. And time which had demolished the castles
on the heights above, began her work of destruction on the little
church below; its roof decayed and its walls crumbled.

The ancient little church of St. Clement has since that time been
raised again from its ruins, and now the voice of God's priest is
heard chanting in it again, as it was heard six hundred years ago.

CASTLE RHEINSTEIN

The Wooing

[Illustration: Der Brautzug--Nach dem Gemaelde von L. Herterich--(zur
Sage von Burg Rheinstein)]

In Castle Rheinstein once lived a knight called Diethelm, who devoted
himself without restraint to all the excesses of the robber barons.
From one of his pillaging expeditions he brought back a charming
maiden called Jutta. As the delicate ivy twines itself round the rough
oak and clothes its knotty stem with shimmering velvet; so in time the
gentle conduct of this maiden changed the coarse baron to a noble
knight who eschewed pillaging and carousing, and ultimately made the
fair Jutta the honoured wife of her captor.

The first fruit of their love cost the tender mother her life. Gerda
however, who much resembled her mother, grew to such a noble beauty
that soon wooers from far and near came to sue for the hand of the
beautiful daughter of the aged Diethelm. But the aged knight made a
most careful selection, and many gay wooers