re I don't," he answered.

We talked till late into the night, lay down on our soft, clean beds of
straw, and were soon asleep.

I did not know how long I had been sleeping when I was wakened by a
voice that seemed to fill the room, low, soft, and musical as the tones
of an Aeolian harp. I groped my way noiselessly in the dark to Max's bed
and aroused him. Placing my hand over his mouth to insure silence, I
whispered:--

"Listen!"

He rested on his elbow, and we waited. After a few seconds the voice
again resounded through the room, soft as a murmured ave, distinct as
the notes of a bird. Max clutched my hand. Soon the voice came again,
and we heard the words:--

"Little Max, do you hear? Answer softly."

"I hear," responded Max.

There was an uncanny note in the music of the voice. It seemed almost
celestial. We could not tell whence it came. Every stone in the walls
and ceiling, every slab in the floor seemed resonant with silvery tones.
After Max had answered there was a pause lasting two or three minutes,
and the voice spoke again:--

"I love you, Little Max. I tell you because I wish to comfort you. Do
not fear. You shall be free to-morrow. Do not answer. Adieu."

"Yolanda! Yolanda!" cried Max, pleadingly; but he received no answer. He
put his hand on my shoulder and said:--

"It was Yolanda, Karl--ah, God must hate a child that He brings into
the world a prince."

For the rest of the night we did not sleep, neither did we speak. The
morrow was to be a day of frightful import to us, and we awaited it in
great anxiety.

When the morning broke and the sun shot his rays through the narrow
window, we carefully examined the floor and walls of our room, but we
found no opening through which the voice could have penetrated. In the
side of the room formed by the wall of the tower, the mortar had fallen
from between two stones, leaving one of them somewhat loose, but the
castle wall at that point was fully sixteen feet thick, and it was
impossible that the voice should have come through the layers of stone.

From my first acquaintance with Yolanda there had seemed to be a
supernatural element in her nature, an elfin quality in her face and
manner that could not be described. Max had often told me that she
impressed him in like manner. The voice in our stone-girt chamber,
coming as it did from nowhere, and resounding as it did everywhere,
intensified that feeling till it was almost a conviction, though I am