wd, she had broken one of a hundred little police
rules, whereupon the officers were about to carry her away to be fined,
or worse, amid the jeers of the bystanders, always ready to deal hardly
with "the gipsy," at which precise moment the tall Duke Carl, like the
flash of a trusty sword, had leapt from the palace stair and caused her
to pass on in peace. She had half detected him through his disguise; in
due time news of his reappearance had been ceremoniously carried to her
in her little cottage, and the remembrance of her hung about him not
ungratefully, as he went with delight upon his way.

The first long stage of his journey over, in headlong flight night and
day, he found himself one summer morning under the heat of what seemed
a southern sun, at last really at large on the Bergstrasse, with the
rich plain of the Palatinate on his left hand; on the right hand
vineyards, seen now for the first time, sloping up into the crisp
beeches of the Odenwald. By Weinheim only an empty tower remained of
the Castle of Windeck. He lay for the night in the great whitewashed
guest-chamber of the Capuchin convent.

The national rivers, like the national woods, have a family likeness:
the Main, the Lahn, the Moselle, the Neckar, the Rhine. By help of such
accommodation as chance afforded, partly on the stream itself, partly
along the banks, he pursued the leisurely winding course of one of the
prettiest of these, tarrying for awhile in the towns, grey, white, or
red, which came in his way, tasting their delightful native "little"
wines, peeping into their old overloaded churches, inspecting the
church furniture, or trying the organs. For three nights he slept, warm
and dry, on the hay stored in a deserted cloister, and, attracted into
the neighbouring minster for a snatch of church music, narrowly escaped
detection. By miraculous chance the grimmest lord of Rosenmold was
there within, recognised the youth and his companions--visitors
naturally conspicuous, amid the crowd of peasants around them--and for
some hours was upon their traces. After unclean town streets the
country air was a perfume by contrast, or actually scented with
pinewoods. One seemed to breathe with it fancies of the woods, the
hills, and water--of a sort of souls in the landscape, but cheerful and
genial now, happy souls! A distant group of pines on the verge of a
great upland awoke a violent desire to be there--seemed to challenge
one to proceed thither. Was t