euds of his neighbors;
people saw him but rarely outside the encircling wall of his little
castle. His wife loved solitude quite as much as he, and both seemed
to love each other from the heart; only they were wont to complain
because Heaven seemed unwilling to bless their marriage with children.

Very seldom was Eckbert visited by guests, and even when he was,
almost no change on their account was made in the ordinary routine of
his life. Frugality dwelt there, and Economy herself seemed to
regulate everything. Eckbert was then cheerful and gay--only when he
was alone one noticed in him a certain reserve, a quiet distant
melancholy.

Nobody came so often to the castle as did Philip Walther, a man to
whom Eckbert had become greatly attached, because he found in him very
much his own way of thinking. His home was really in Franconia, but he
often spent more than half a year at a time in the vicinity of
Eckbert's castle, where he busied himself gathering herbs and stones
and arranging them in order. He had a small income, and was therefore
dependent upon no one. Eckbert often accompanied him on his lonely
rambles, and thus a closer friendship developed between the two men
with each succeeding year.

There are hours in which it worries a man to keep from a friend a
secret, which hitherto he has often taken great pains to conceal. The
soul then feels an irresistible impulse to impart itself completely,
and reveal its innermost self to the friend, in order to make him so
much the more a friend. At these moments delicate souls disclose
themselves to each other, and it doubtless sometimes happens that the
one shrinks back in fright from its acquaintance with the other.

One foggy evening in early autumn Eckbert was sitting with his friend
and his wife, Bertha, around the hearth-fire. The flames threw a
bright glow out into the room and played on the ceiling above. The
night looked in darkly through the windows, and the trees outside were
shivering in the damp cold. Walther was lamenting that he had so far
to go to get back home, and Eckbert proposed that he remain there and
spend half the night in familiar talk, and then sleep until morning in
one of the rooms of the castle. Walther accepted the proposal,
whereupon wine and supper were brought in, the fire was replenished
with wood, and the conversation of the two friends became more cheery
and confidential.

After the dishes had been cleared off, and the servants had go