ttention, he made a rustling noise with the curtains as
he threw them further back.

She' started when she heard the noise, and looking round, exhibited, to
Albert's astonishment and delight, the beauty of her countenance, now
slightly tinged with a blush. His sudden apparition appeared for a
moment to deprive her pretty smiling mouth of the power of finding
words to welcome the invalid to returning life. She soon collected
herself, however, and hastened to the bedside, but immediately after
checked her steps, as if she were not quite certain of her patient
being really awake, or whether it were proper to be in the room when he
returned to his senses.

The young man, observing the embarrassment of this beautiful maiden,
was the first to break silence.

"Tell me, where am I? how came I here?" asked Albert. "To whom belongs
this house, in which, it appears, I awake out of a long sleep?"

"Are you really in your senses again?" cried she, clasping her hands
for joy. "Ah! thank God, who would ever have thought it? But you look
at one as if it were true, though you have been so long ill as to make
us very fearful and anxious about you."

"Have I been ill?" inquired Albert, who scarcely understood the dialect
of the Swabian girl. "I have only been a few hours without
consciousness?"

"Eh! what are you thinking about," giggled the girl, and bit the end of
the tress, to suppress a rising laugh; "a few hours, did you say? This
night will just be the ninth that I have been watching you."

The young man could not comprehend what he heard. Nine days, and not
arrived at Lichtenstein, to see Bertha? And with this thought his
recollection of the past returned in full force to his mind; he
remembered having renounced the service of the League,--that he had
determined to visit Lichtenstein,--that he had crossed the Alb by
unfrequented paths, and that he and his leader had been attacked. But
now, when he looked about him, fearful doubts oppressed his mind. Am I
a prisoner, he thought to himself; and immediately put the same
question to his pretty attendant.

She had noticed, with increasing anxiety, the placid countenance of the
young knight, as it became ruffled, and the wild look his features had
suddenly assumed. Fearful he might relapse again into his former
situation, which the languid tone of his voice seemed to indicate, she
hesitated what to do, whether to remain in the room, or call in the
assistance of her mother.

S