also flaming
brands, but their beginnings are from above and they point out another
way--and now farewell!"

Long after she had disappeared, Hartmut stood on the same spot as if
rooted to the ground. He had answered no word, made no comment, only
gazed where she had pointed, with fixed, hopeless eyes.

Flash after flash of lightning was now rending the heavens and the whole
landscape was enveloped in a lurid glare which reflected itself in that
little sheet of water so like the Burgsdorf fish pond; the long reeds
and grasses swayed and bent above the water and the mist from the meadow
rose above it all.

Under just such long, waving grass the boy had lain long ago and dreamed
of the day when he should mount like the falcon from which his race had
taken their name, always higher and higher into boundless freedom toward
the sun, and now on a similar spot the sentence had fallen upon him like
a judgment from heaven, and the will-o'-the-wisp on this lowering autumn
night seemed in its spectral flashes to dance over the grave of false
hopes and falser aspirations. The falcon had not mounted to the skies,
the earth had held him fast. He had felt for some time that the
intoxicating cup of freedom and of life which his mother's hand had
poured for him was poisoned; there were for him no cherished memories to
guard--he dare not venture to think of his father.

Darker and darker grew the heavens with their heavy, storm laden clouds,
and wilder and fiercer was the struggle between those giant figures
which were riven at every flash only to come together again with greater
fury, and brighter and more vivid grew that mighty flame as it mounted
higher and higher in the inky firmament.

CHAPTER X.

The winter gaieties had fairly begun in the South-German capital, and in
the exclusive court circle the artistic element played a prominent part.
The duke, who loved and fostered art, took great pride in being
accounted its patron, and strove to make his capital an intellectual and
artistic centre. The young poet who had been received so favorably by
the court, and whose first great work was soon to be produced at the
court theatre, was an object of great interest to the little world. It
was an almost unheard of feat for a Roumanian to write in the German
tongue, even though it was admitted that, in this instance, the writer
had received his education in Germany. Here, as at Rodeck, he was the
bosom friend and guest of Princ