eserted.

Once or twice I turned round, and could then see with a creeping feeling
of dread our two long fantastic shadows in ghostly fashion writhing in
strange distortions upon the high tapestry.

Sperver quickly opened the old oak door, and with torch uplifted, his
hair all bristling in disorder, and excited features, walked in the
first. Standing before the portrait of Hedwige, whose likeness to the
young countess had struck me at our first visit to the library, he
addressed me in these solemn words:--

"Here is she who was to return to comfort and pity me! She has returned!
At this moment she is downstairs with the old count. Look well, Fritz; do
you recognise her? Is it not Odile?"

Then turning to the picture of Hugh's second wife--

"There," he said, "is Huldine, the she-wolf. For a thousand years she has
wept in the deep gorges amongst the pine forests of the Schwartzwald; she
was the cause of the death of poor Lieverle; but henceforward the lords
of Nideck may rest securely, for justice is done, and the good angel of
this lordly house has returned!"

MYRTLE.

CHAPTER I.

Just at the end of the village of Dosenheim, in Alsace, about fifty
yards from the gravelly road that leads into the wood, is a pretty
cottage surrounded with an orchard, the flat roof loaded with
boulder-stones, the gable-end looking down the valley.

Flights of pigeons wheel around it, hens are scratching and picking up
what they can under the fences, the cock takes his stand majestically on
the low garden wall, and sounds the _reveillee_, or the retreat, for the
echoes of Falberg to repeat; an outside staircase, with its wooden
banisters, the linen of the little household hanging over it, leads to
the first story, and a vine climbs up the front, and spreads its leafy
branches from side to side.

If you will only go up these steps you will see at the end of the narrow
entry the kitchen, with its dresser and its pewter plates and dishes, its
soup-tureens puffing out like balloons; open the door to the right and
you are in the parlour with its dark oak furniture, a ceiling crossed by
brown smoke-stained rafters, and its old Nuremberg clock click-clacking
monotonously.

Here sits a woman of five-and-thirty, spinning and dreaming, her waist
encircled with a long black taffety bodice, and her head covered with a
velvet headdress, with long ribbons.

A man in broad-skirted velveteen coat, with breeches of the same, an