ce for deeds of violence.
Suddenly from the forest glades rode forth four armed and masked men,
who stopped the wagon, sternly bade the traveller to descend and mount a
spare horse they had with them, and rode off with him, a seeming
captive, through the thick woodland.

As if in fear of pursuit, the captors kept at a brisk pace, not drawing
rein until the walls of a large and strong castle loomed up near the
forest border. The gates flew open and the drawbridge fell at their
demand, and the small cavalcade rode into the powerful stronghold, the
entrance to which was immediately closed behind them. It was the castle
of Wartburg, near Eisenach, Saxony, within whose strong walls the man
thus mysteriously carried off was to remain hidden from the world for
the greater part of the year that followed.

The monk-like captive was just then the most talked of man in Germany.
His seemingly violent capture had been made by his friends, not by his
foes, its purpose being to protect him from his enemies, who were many
and threatening. Of this he was well aware, and welcomed the castle as a
place of refuge. He was, in fact, the celebrated Martin Luther, who had
just set in train a religious revolution of broad aspect in Germany, and
though for the time under the protection of a safe-conduct from the
emperor Charles V., had been deemed in imminent danger of falling into
an ambush of his foes instead of one of his friends.

That he might not be recognised by those who should see him at Wartburg,
his ecclesiastic robe was exchanged for the dress of a knight, he wore
helmet and sword instead of cassock and cross and let his beard grow
freely. Thus changed in appearance, he was known as Junker George
(Chevalier George) to those in the castle, and amused himself at times
by hunting with his knightly companions in the neighborhood. The
greater part of his time, however, was occupied in a difficult literary
task, that of translating the Bible into German. The work thus done by
him was destined to prove as important in a linguistic as in a
theological sense, since it fixed the status of the German language for
the later period to the same extent as the English translation of the
Bible in the time of James I. aided to fix that of English speech.

Leaving Luther, for the present, in his retreat at Wartburg Castle, we
must go back in his history and tell the occasion of the events just
narrated. No man, before or after his time, ever created