wald 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 very conspicuously, like a donkey's ears. And hard by,
like an open gash, the imperial high-road ran straight sun-ward, an
artery of travel.

There is one of nature's spiritual ditties, that has not yet been set to
words or human music: 'The Invitation to the Road'; an air continually
sounding in the ears of gipsies, and to whose inspiration our nomadic
fathers journeyed all their days. The hour, the season, and the scene,
all were in delicate accordance. The air was full of birds of passage,
steering westward and northward over Grunewald, an army of specks to the
up-looking eye. And below, the great practicable road was bound for the
same quarter.

But to the two horsemen on the knoll this spiritual ditty was unheard.
They were, indeed, in some concern of mind, scanning every fold of the
subjacent forest, and betraying both anger and dismay in their impatient
gestures.

'I do not see him, Kuno,' said the first huntsman, 'nowhere--not a trace,
not a hair of the mare's tail! No, sir, he's off; broke cover and got
away. Why, for twopence I would hunt him with the dogs!'

'Mayhap, he's gone home,' said Kuno, but without conviction.

'Home!' sneered the other. 'I give him twelve days to get home. No,
it's begun again; it's as it was three years ago, before he married; a
disgrace! Hereditary prince, hereditary fool! There goes the government
over the borders on a grey mare. What's that?