enly
on the green turf. Like a sponge, the hillside oozed with well-water.
The burn kept growing both in force and volume; at every leap it fell
with heavier plunges and span more widely in the pool. Great had been
the labours of that stream, and great and agreeable the changes it had
wrought. It had cut through dykes of stubborn rock, and now, like a
blowing dolphin, spouted through the orifice; along all its humble
coasts, it had undermined and rafted-down the goodlier timber of the
forest; and on these rough clearings it now set and tended primrose
gardens, and planted woods of willow, and made a favourite of the silver
birch. Through all these friendly features the path, its human acolyte,
conducted our two wanderers downward,--Otto before, still pausing at the
more difficult passages to lend assistance; the Princess following. From
time to time, when he turned to help her, her face would lighten upon
his--her eyes, half desperately, woo him. He saw, but dared not
understand. 'She does not love me,' he told himself, with magnanimity.
'This is remorse or gratitude; I were no gentleman, no, nor yet a man, if
I presumed upon these pitiful concessions.'

Some way down the glen, the stream, already grown to a good bulk of
water, was rudely dammed across, and about a third of it abducted in a
wooden trough. Gaily the pure water, air's first cousin, fleeted along
the rude aqueduct, whose sides and floor it had made green with grasses.
The path, bearing it close company, threaded a wilderness of briar and
wild-rose. And presently, a little in front, the brown top of a mill and
the tall mill-wheel, spraying diamonds, arose in the narrows of the glen;
at the same time the snoring music of the saws broke the silence.

The miller, hearing steps, came forth to his door, and both he and Otto
started.

'Good-morning, miller,' said the Prince. 'You were right, it seems, and
I was wrong. I give you the news, and bid you to Mittwalden. My throne
has fallen--great was the fall of it!--and your good friends of the
Phoenix bear the rule.'

The red-faced miller looked supreme astonishment. 'And your Highness?'
he gasped.

'My Highness is running away,' replied Otto, 'straight for the frontier.'

'Leaving Grunewald?' cried the man. 'Your father's son? It's not to be
permitted!'

'Do you arrest us, friend?' asked Otto, smiling.

'Arrest you? I?' exclaimed the man. 'For what does your Highness take
me? Why, sir,