ft of the gab, and a devoted
lover of races and steeple-chases. He brought with him a whole budget of
the latest sporting intelligence, and bamboozled the baron into ordering
a pipe of port wine. Anton looked at the empty purse, cursed the pipe,
and hurried into the audience-chamber of the baroness. It required a
long feminine intrigue to effect the retraction of the order given.

The baron was displeased with his carriage-horses, which were no longer
young, and, besides, of a chestnut color. This last peculiarity might,
indeed, have been supposed immaterial to him now, but it had been an
annoyance for years, his family having always had a preference for
roans; nay, was there not an old distich to the following effect:

"Who rides thus through the fray alone?
I ween a noble knight,
The red drops fall from his gallant roan,
With red is the saddle dight."

This was supposed to allude to some remote ancestor, and on this account
the Rothsattels (red-saddles) prized roans above all other horseflesh;
but, as the color is rare in handsome horses, the baron had never had
the good luck to meet with them. Now, however, Fate willed that a
horse-dealer in the district should just bring round a pair. The blind
man evinced a delight which much affected the ladies. He had them
ridden, and driven backward and forward, carefully felt them all over,
took Karl's opinion as to their merits, and revolved a plan of
pleasantly surprising the baroness by their purchase. Karl ran to
advertise Anton of the impending danger, and he again entered the
audience-chamber, but on this occasion he met with no favorable hearing.
The baroness, indeed, allowed that he was not wrong in theory, but still
she implored him to let the baron have his own way. At length the new
horses were in all secrecy led to their stalls, and the purchaser gave,
besides the chestnuts and all the money he had in his private purse, a
promise of letting the horse-dealer have, after the next harvest, two
hundred bushels of oats at an unreasonably low price. Anton and Karl, in
their zeal for the estate, were highly indignant at this when it first
came to their knowledge months later.

The forester had the misfortune not to be an especial favorite. The
baroness disliked the abrupt manner of the old man, who, in his
solitude, had entirely lost the obsequiousness to which she was
accustomed. One evening a plan was disclosed of giving him notice, and
replacing him by a younge