nces _a la_ Bosko and Philadelphia; and others would
delight the audience with the wonderful scenes of a magic lantern.

Once the baroness arranged a chase, and herself joined in the hunt after
the pheasants and deer on her estate, proving herself a skilled Amazon
in the saddle and in the management of her rifle. Then, the officers
improvised a horse-race; and once they even got up a circus, in which
all look part.

Count Vavel, in his tower, was an interested spectator of many of these
amusements. There had been a time when he, too, had taken part in and
enjoyed just such sports. He was a lover of the chase and of
horse-racing. No one knew better than he the keen delights of a clean
vault over ditches and hedges. If only he might join the merry company
down yonder, _he_ could show them some riding!

And as for hunting? He could spend whole days on the mountains,
clambering after the fleet-footed chamois, following the larger game
through morass and forest. He had grown up amid exhilarating sports such
as these.

And the dance-music! How alluring were the strains! and how often
through the day he found himself humming the melodies which had floated
to him from the open windows of the manor! Once he, too, had taken
pleasure in jesting with fair women until their white shoulders would
shake with merry laughter. And all this he must look upon and hear at a
distance, since he had made himself his own jailer!

* * * * *

During these weeks Marie was very restless. The sound of the trumpets
startled her; the unusual noises terrified her. She whose nightly
slumbers had been guarded from the barking of dogs and the crowing of
fowls now was obliged to listen half the night to clarionet, horn, and
piccolo, and to wonder what these people could be doing that they kept
their music going until such late hours.

One circumstance, however, reconciled Marie to the excitement of these
days: Ludwig spent more time with her; and though his face was as stern
as ever, she could not detect in it the melancholy which cannot be
concealed from the eyes of the woman who can look into the depths, of
the soul.

CHAPTER II

At last, one day late in the autumn, Count Vavel received from his
correspondent, Herr Mercatoris, the information that the dragoon
regiment was going to change its quarters, and that the departure from
Fertoeszeg would be celebrated by various amusements, among them a
regatta w