e wildest spirits. From time to time Lenore's
ringing laugh reached Anton through the massive door, and then he forgot
sale and mortgage, looked with clouded brow at the door, and felt, not
without bitterness, that a new struggle was approaching both for the
family and for himself.

Without, as we have already said, the rain poured and the storm raged.
The wind from the forest wailed to the castle. The old firs creaked, and
ceaselessly bent down their branches toward the building. Around the
pear-trees in the meadows leaves and white blossoms fluttered timidly to
earth. The storm angrily stripped them off, and crushed them, low with
his rain, howling the while. "Down with your smiling pomp! to-day all
belonging to the castle shall wear mourning." Then the fierce spirit
flew from the trees to the castle walls; it shook the flag-staff on the
tower; it hurled the rain in slanting torrents against the windows; it
groaned in the chimneys and thundered at the doors. It took advantage of
every opening to cry, "Guard your house!" And this it did for hours
together, but those within understood not its speech.

Neither did any one heed the horseman who was urging his weary horse
through the village to the castle. At last the knocker outside the gate
was heard, the strokes sounded impatient, and loud voices resounded in
the court-yard and on the stairs. Anton opened the door; an armed man,
dripping with wet and stained with mud, entered the room.

"It is you!" cried Anton, in amazement.

"They are coming," said Karl, looking cautiously round; "prepare for it;
this time it is our turn."

"The enemy?" rapidly asked Anton. "How strong is the band?"

"It was not a band that I saw," replied Karl, seriously; "it was an army
of about a thousand scythe-bearers, and at least a hundred horsemen at
their head. I hear that they have orders to enlist all Poles and disarm
all Germans."

Anton opened the door of the next room and made a sign to Fink.

"Ah!" cried Fink, as he cast a look on Karl, "he who brings half the
highway into the room with him has no good tidings to tell. From which
side comes the enemy, sergeant?"

"From the Neudorf birch wood straight down upon us. Our villagers are
assembled in the tavern drinking and quarreling."

"No beacon-fires have been seen--no tidings have come from the
neighboring villages," cried Anton at the window. "Have the Germans at
Neudorf and Kunau been fast asleep, then?"

"They were taken