Like a vast sea the mighty Schwarzwald stretched its forests of pine and its wide wastes of heather around Castle Rittenberg, its surface forever fretted into waves by the wind. Like the sea it seemed measureless, and the lands which lay beyond its borders appeared to the scattered dwellers in its valleys as remote as might appear the continents to the people of far islands.

Like the sea, moreover, the Schwarzwald was peopled by strange beings, of whom alike the peasant folk who dwelt upon its borders, the rude churls whose huts stood here and there in clusters in its less intractable nooks, and the nobles whose castles overtopped the wilderness of trees and bracken, went always in secret dread. In the north lurked the hordes of the Huns, the terrible barbarians who from time to time descended, hardly human, upon the fertile lands which lay beyond the borders of the forest, swarming as they went upon whatever luckless castle lay in their path. The boldest knight might well tremble at the name of the ferocious Huns, and even the army of Charlemagne himself had hardly been able to cope with this foe.

But more near at hand, and more terrible than even the Huns, were the strange creatures who abode in the forest, and who walked invisible at their will, the mysterious beings who lurked in dim recesses, and of whom men spoke only in awe-struck whispers. Even what they were it was not easy to say; and who could tell how they were offended or how to be placated? The nixies of the lakes and streams; the dwarfs and gnomes of cave and mountain; the kobolds, who were more daring and more human in appearance than either, so that haply a man might endanger not only his life but even his soul holding commerce with them, unsuspecting that they were not of his fellow mortals—all these and many others dwelt in the shadowy recesses, and against these not even the hosts of the Great Emperor would avail.

The wind soughing all day in the pine-trees, and the weird, sweet music of the elfin harps which belated wanderers heard sounding to lure them on into blinder depths of the wood, seemed to sing the same song; but its mystery human ears might not fathom, and scarcely could human will resist its spell. In the tempest the bugles of the Wild Huntsman pealed shrilly through the storm, and the retainers at Castle Rittenberg crossed themselves at the sound almost as openly as did the damsels; but there was less danger in this than in the heavenly sweet strains which beguiled the wayfarer into forgetfulness of home and of dear ones until he joined himself to the soulless folk of the forest, and was heard of no more.

It was music of this sort, more sweet than words might tell, faint on the air as the breath of a sigh or yet again swelling full and strong as a blast from the horns when the hunt is rushing through the wood, that had of late been heard around the castle. Delicious, enervating, seductive and yet pleading, the strange melodies had seemed to surround the towers, as if throngs of invisible musicians floated in the air to bring their heavenly minstrelsy to the Countess Erna.

There had indeed been more than one token that something mysterious was forward in the forest; and although the priest of Rittenberg frowned upon all talk of the wood-spirits and their doings, the folk of the castle whispered under their breath many a wild surmise.

Mayhap it was of these things that the Countess Erna dreamed as one spring morning she sat by her open lattice, albeit she had before her a parchment from which she might be reading. From below arose the noise of horses' hoofs, the cries of grooms and pages, the clatter of spurs upon the stone pavement, and all the sounds that betoken the preparation of a troop to leave the castle. So little did she heed, however, that she seemed not to hear. So motionless was she that the doves which had perched upon the wide window-ledge in perfect fearlessness had ceased to regard her at all, and preened themselves in the sun with soft, full-throated cooings, contrasting oddly with the clamor which arose from below.

The morning sun shone gloriously, casting a flood of light through the room; and although Erna sat withdrawn from the fervor of its direct rays, she seemed to glow in the radiance like a lily golden-hearted. Her hair, yellow as the flax on a fairy's distaff, caught a stray sunbeam which stole through a crevice in the curtain-folds, and scattered the light in a hundred reflections, making of them an aureole about the graceful young head. The eyes, blue as an oker-bell, were now and then raised from the richly illuminated parchment before her, absently regarding the doves as if she saw them not, while the slender hands which held the scroll were only a little warmer in their color than the robe of snowy wool loosely confined at the waist with a golden girdle. As she sat there in the still chamber, withdrawn from the bustle of the courtyard below in mind no less than in place, there was about the countess an atmosphere of peace, of innocence, of purity, one might almost have said of holiness, that he must be dull indeed who could not feel, or who, feeling, failed to reverence.

There was little reverence, however, in the mien of the old dame who came hastily into the chamber, and broke in upon the reading and the dreaming of the Countess Erna with exclamations full of vexation.

"Body of Saint Fridolin!" she cried. "Thou sittest here reading as quietly as if thy suitor, Count Stephen, were a thousand leagues away instead of waiting below to take leave of thee. No wonder that he declares that thou hast not a drop of warm blood in thy body, as his squire reported to my damsel."

"Count Stephen is no suitor of mine," Erna responded calmly, "as no one knoweth better than thou, Aunt Adelaide. He is my guest, however, and I should be loath to fail in aught of courtesy toward him. Why have I not been summoned if he be in truth waiting?"

"Well, if he be not waiting," the old dame replied with a lower voice and some softening of manner, "he is at least ready to set out, and that is much the same thing. It would certainly look more attentive on thy part shouldst thou be in the hall when he comes to take leave rather than to wait to be sent for."

"Doubtless; but I have no wish to be attentive to Count Stephen beyond the claim of any guest."

"But Count Stephen is a member of the family."

"His connection is hardly near enough to count in this matter," Erna answered. "Dear Aunt," she continued, coming closer to the other, and laying a caressing hand lightly upon the old woman's arm, "I am sorry that thou shouldst be disappointed. I did what I could to fulfil thy wish when I bade thee have Count Stephen come here, although what we had heard of him was so little of the sort to make me long for such a guest, because I knew that more than for aught else in the world thou didst long for the perpetuation of the Von Rittenberg name by my becoming his wife. I shrank from the knight from the first moment I saw him, and never could it be that I should be brought to look upon him with favor. Happily he feels the same repugnance to me, so that I am spared the pain of telling him nay; but I cannot fail to be glad at his departure."

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