s old houses which raised their
drooping eyelids in quaint gable-windows looking forth over
ivy-mantled walls, as if in sleepy surprise at all the bustle and stir
of this work-a-day world.

One or two hamlets had been passed, and the camp, from which we had
met a train of artillery and many companies of soldiers on their way
to the city, when the tram-conductor announced the village of Tegel,
the end of the route. A few rods, and a turn to the left past some
mills brings us to the entrance of the castle park. An obelisk,
battered and ancient-looking enough to belong to the age of Cleopatra,
stands beside the modest iron gate of the entrance. An old
peasant-woman passing with a pack on her back answers our question by
saying that this is an ancient milestone which formerly stood a little
above its present site; and we surmise that its mutilated condition is
due to relic-hunters. Inside the gate we see a grassy plain with sandy
patches; here and there are deep open ditches for drainage; and
avenues stretch off in several directions, bounded by rows of great
overarching trees. We follow one reaching toward higher ground and
forest-covered hills. On an elevation a few rods farther on stands the
chateau,--the old hunting-lodge no more, but a two-story Roman villa,
rectangular, with square towers at the corners, on each face of which
is a carved frieze with a Greek inscription. Back of this "Schloss,"
but not hidden by it, on a smooth slope, is a large ancient one-story
dwelling with side front, in good preservation. Its ivy mantle does
not conceal the frame, which is filled in with stuccoed brick, and
which alone would proclaim the age of the building. The long slope of
the mossy roof must hide a wonderful old attic, for it is full of
tiled "eyes" to admit light and air, and two or three single panes of
glass are inserted in different places for the same purpose. Three
windows on each side the low doorway in the front look forth on the
quiet scene, the lace curtains within revealing glimpses of a cosey,
homelike interior. On one side are supplementary buildings fit for
companionship with this quaint home, and a fenced garden and ancient
orchard, beyond which five woodmen were leisurely sawing an
old-fashioned woodpile of immense size;--only princely estates can
supply such a luxury in these degenerate days.

The shadow of death was in the villa. Two days before, Frau von Buelow,
the last of the Humboldts, had been carried