ch minions
that the knights of the Temple pledge their word!"

"Enough," cried Otho, losing patience, and striking the Templar with
his clenched hand. "Draw, traitor, draw!"

Alone in his lofty tower Warbeck watched the night deepen over the
heavens, and communed mournfully with himself. "To what end," thought
he, "have these strong affections, these capacities of love, this
yearning after sympathy, been given me? Unloved and unknown I walk to
my grave, and all the nobler mysteries of my heart are for ever to be
untold."

Thus musing, he heard not the challenge of the warder on the wall, or
the unbarring of the gate below, or the tread of footsteps along the
winding stair; the door was thrown suddenly open, and Otho stood before
him. "Come," he said, in a low voice trembling with passion; "come, I
will show thee that which shall glad thine heart. Twofold is Leoline
avenged."

Warbeck looked in amazement on a brother he had not met since they
stood in arms each against the other's life, and he now saw that the
arm that Otho extended to him dripped with blood, trickling drop by
drop upon the floor.

"Come," said Otho, "follow me; it is my last prayer. Come, for
Leoline's sake, come."

At that name Warbeck hesitated no longer; he girded on his sword, and
followed his brother down the stairs and through the castle gate. The
porter scarcely believed his eyes when he saw the two brothers, so long
divided, go forth at that hour alone, and seemingly in friendship.

Warbeck, arrived at that epoch in the feelings when nothing stuns,
followed with silent steps the rapid strides of his brother. The two
castles, as you are aware, are scarce a stone's throw from each other.
In a few minutes Otho paused at an open space in one of the terraces of
Sternfels, on which the moon shone bright and steady. "Behold!" he
said, in a ghastly voice, "behold!" and Warbeck saw on the sward the
corpse of the Templar, bathed with the blood that even still poured
fast and warm from his heart.

"Hark!" said Otho. "He it was who first made me waver in my vows to
Leoline; he persuaded me to wed yon whited falsehood. Hark! he, who
had thus wronged my real love, dishonoured me with my faithless bride,
and thus--thus--thus"--as, grinding his teeth, he spurned again and
again the dead body of the Templar--"thus Leoline and myself are
avenged!"

"And thy wife?" said Warbeck, pityingly.

"Fled--fled with a hireling page. It is well! sh