but was it not a strange and haunted chamber? Ever it seemed to me as if
breaths of air blew through it, which came from all imaginable kinds of
graves, and were the breaths of those departed ones who had handled the
strange collection, and who wished to finger, or blow into, or beat the
dumb, unvibrating things once more.

Did I say unvibrating? I was wrong then. The strings sometimes
quivered to sounds that set them trembling; something like a whispered
tone I have heard from the deep, upturned throats of great brazen
trumpets--something like a distant moan floating around the gilded
organ-pipes. In after-days, when Friedhelm Helfen knew this room, he
made a wonderful fantasia about it, in which all the dumb instruments
woke up, or tried to wake up to life again, for the whole place
impressed him, he told me, as nothing that he had ever known before.

Brunken went on in a droning tone, giving theories of his own as to the
nature of the Magrepha, and I, with my arms around Sigmund, half
listened to the sleepy monotone of the good old visionary. But what
spoke to me with a more potent voice was the soughing and wuthering of
the sorrowful wind without, which verily moaned around the old walls,
and sought out the old corners, and wailed, and plained, and sobbed in a
way that was enough to break one's heart.

By degrees a silence settled upon us. Brunken, having satisfactorily
annihilated his enemies, ceased to speak; the fire burned lower;
Sigmund's eyes were closed; his cheeks were not less flushed than
before, nor his brow less hot, and a frown contracted it. I know not
how long a time had passed, but I had no wish to rise.

The door was opened, and some one came into the room. I looked up. It
was the Graefin. Brunken rose and stood to one side, bowing.

I could not get up, but some movement of mine, perhaps, disturbed the
heavy and feverish slumber of the child. He started wide awake, with a
look of wild terror, and gazed down into the darkness, crying out:

"_Mein Vater_, where art thou?"

A strange, startled, frightened look crossed the face of the countess
when she heard the words. She did not speak, and I said some soothing
words to Sigmund.

But there could be no doubt that he was very ill. It was quite unlike
his usual silent courage and reticence to wring his small hands and with
ever-increasing terror turn a deaf ear to my soothings, sobbing out in
tones of pain and insistence:

"Father! father! wher