e
places mentioned, and the frightened couple obeyed in silence.

* * * * *

In anxious expectation of what would follow, Tugendreich had been
standing for some time in the window of the baronial hall, from which
she had in the morning admired Axel's horsemanship, when her father
came up to her with a wrathful countenance, seized her hand, and led
her to the gigantic portrait of the ancestors of the Starschedels,
which gloomily and menacingly looked down, as it were, from the gold
frame upon the delinquent. "Who is that?" asked the baron, with
suppressed wrath.

"Magnus von Starschedel, the founder of our family," repeated
Tugendreich, words which had been impressed on her memory from infancy.
"In the war against the emperor, Henry IV., Duke Rodolph of Swabia
dubbed him knight, A.D. 1078, at Stronow, near Mellenstaedt; and he fell
in the battle fought against the same emperor, near Wuerzburg, A.D.
1086, after his valour had contributed to gain the victory."

"What think you this glorious knight would have done, if he had, like
myself, seen you from behind the hedge?" asked her father, while
Tugendreich cast her eyes down on the squares of the inlaid floors.
"He would have cleft the head of the unfaithful servant," continued the
baron, raising his voice, "and thrown the degenerate girl into the
dungeon, until he should have placed her and her passion for ever in a
cloister."

The Fraeulein gave a silent assent to the justice of this sentence.

"Tugendreich! Tugendreich!" continued her father, reproaching her;
"why did I give you this lovely name?[2] I ought to have christened
you Philippe, for Talander has interpreted this name to me, to mean a
lover of horses, and it would therefore be some excuse for your
predilection for the stable."

Now a feeling of pride rose within her, and she cried, "I deserve
blame, but do not merit your contempt. My feelings are pure, and I
need not be ashamed of him."

The furious impetuosity of noble wrath would now have broken through
the last barrier of paternal love, when fortunately for the poor
Fraeulein a loud shriek of terror resounded from the court-yard, and
Talander entered the hall with a countenance as pale as death. "May
God and his holy gospel protect us," exclaimed the old man. "A swarm
of Croats is storming through the country, and may probably come this
very night."

"Well," replied the baron, with affected composure, "Saxony has n