st. Fink drew her
away. "Come to our mother!" cried he.

Both bent over the bed of the invalid. A brightness passed over the pale
face of the baroness as she laid her hands on Fink's head and gave him
her blessing.

"She is still a child," said she. "It remains with you, my son, to make
a good woman of her."

She sent her children out of the room. "Go to your father; bring him to
me, and leave us alone together."

When the baron sat by the side of his wife, she drew his hand to her
lips and whispered, "Let me thank you, Oscar, to-day, for many years of
happiness--for all your love."

"Poor wife!" murmured the blind man.

"What you have done and suffered," continued the baroness, "you have
done and suffered for me and my son, and we both leave you behind in a
joyless world. You were not to have the happiness of transferring an
inheritance; you are the last to bear the name of Rothsattel."

The baron groaned.

"But the reputation we leave behind will be spotless as was your whole
life till two hours of despair." She placed the bundle of notes of hand
in the blind man's grasp; then, having torn each one up, she rang the
bell, and told the servant to put them piece by piece into the stove.
The flames leaped up and threw a red light over the room till the last
was consumed. The evening closed in, and the baron lay on the sick
lady's bed, and hid his face in the pillows, while she held her hands
folded over him, and her lips moved in prayer.

In the early morning light the ravens and jackdaws fluttered over the
snowy roof; their black wings hovered a while above the tower; then,
with loud cries, they broke away to the wood, to announce to their
feathered race that the castle walls contained a bride and a corpse. The
pale lady from a foreign land has died in the night, and the blind man
who is lying in his daughter's arms has but one consolation, that of
knowing that he shall soon follow her to her endless rest. And the
ill-omened birds scream out to the winds that the old Slavonic curse has
fallen on the castle, and the doom has lighted on the foreign settlers
too.

But little cares the man who now holds sway within the castle walls
whether a raven croak or a lark sing, and if a curse lie on his
property, he will laughingly blow it away. His life will be a ceaseless
and successful conflict with the dark influences around, and from the
Slavonic castle will come out a band of noble boys, and a new German
race, str