the room. She saw a man in earnest conversation
with her father, whose features did not escape her notice, although he
tried to conceal them under a large cap. She thought she recognised in
the stranger a servant of the knight of Lichtenstein, who had often
been in the habit of coming in a mysterious way to the fifer of Hardt,
upon which occasion she was always obliged to leave the apartment.

Bent upon knowing what this man had to communicate to her father, she
feigned to be asleep thinking he would not disturb her. She was right
in her conjecture; and heard the stranger speak of a young lady, who
was inconsolable, on account of a certain young man. She had
commissioned him to go to Hardt to ascertain the truth of the report
which had given her great concern, and had determined to acknowledge
every thing to her father respecting her acquaintance with the invalid,
and in case he returned to her with unsatisfactory intelligence, she
would immediately proceed to nurse him herself.

The messenger from Lichtenstein spoke in an under tone, as if afraid of
being overheard; and her father, lamenting the case of the lady,
represented the state of the patient as being likely soon to be
ameliorated, and promised that, when he was decidedly better, he would
immediately convey the consoling news to her himself. The stranger then
cut off a lock of the sick man's hair, folded it up carefully in a
cloth, which he carried under his jacket, and being led out of the room
by her father, took his departure.

The many occupations of the following days, had driven the conversation
of the stranger from the recollection of the fifer's daughter; but when
she witnessed the scene from the kitchen window, it came back in full
force to her mind. She knew that the knight of Lichtenstein had a
daughter, because her aunt had been her nurse, and now was her
attendant. It could be no other than this very lady, who had sent the
servant to inquire about the sick man, and intended to come herself to
nurse him.

All the stories she had ever heard as she sat at the spinning-wheel on
a long winter's evening,--and there were many terrible ones, of king's
daughters in love, of gallant knights sick in prison, saved by the
hands of noble ladies,--came to her remembrance. She did not exactly
know what people of quality thought of love, but she supposed that
sensation must be much the same kind of thing, which girls of her
village felt, when they surrendered th