of the principality. The charcoal burner, the mountain sawyer, the
wielder of the broad axe among the congregated pines of Gruenewald, proud
of their hard hands, proud of their shrewd ignorance and almost savage
lore, looked with an unfeigned contempt on the soft character and
manners of the sovereign race.

The precise year of grace in which this tale begins shall be left to the
conjecture of the reader. But for the season of the year (which, in such
a story, is the more important of the two) it was already so far forward
in the spring, that when mountain people heard horns echoing all day
about the north-west corner of the principality, they told themselves
that Prince Otto and his hunt were up and out for the last time till the
return of autumn.

At this point the borders of Gruenewald descend somewhat steeply, here
and there breaking into crags; and this shaggy and trackless country
stands in a bold contrast to the cultivated plain below. It was
traversed at that period by two roads alone; one, the imperial highway,
bound to Brandenau in Gerolstein, descended the slope obliquely and by
the easiest gradients. The other ran like a fillet across the very
forehead of the hills, dipping into savage gorges, and wetted by the
spray of tiny waterfalls. Once it passed beside a certain tower or
castle, built sheer upon the margin of a formidable cliff, and
commanding a vast prospect of the skirts of Gruenewald and the busy
plains of Gerolstein. The Felsenburg (so this tower was called) served
now as a prison, now as a hunting-seat; and for all it stood so lonesome
to the naked eye, with the aid of a good glass the burghers of Brandenau
could count its windows from the lime-tree terrace where they walked at
night.

In the wedge of forest hillside enclosed between the roads, the horns
continued all day long to scatter tumult; and at length, as the sun
began to draw near to the horizon of the plain, a rousing triumph
announced the slaughter of the quarry. The first and second huntsman had
drawn somewhat aside, and from the summit of a knoll gazed down before
them on the drooping shoulders of the hill and across the expanse of
plain. They covered their eyes, for the sun was in their faces. The
glory of its going down was somewhat pale. Through the confused tracery
of many thousands of naked poplars, the smoke of so many houses, and the
evening steam ascending from the fields, the sails of a windmill on a
gentle eminence moved