me before I applied in your name for the honorable
appointment which you surely will not now reject.'

'You are right,' cried Oswald. 'You see farther than I do, and I
gratefully receive the commission from your paternal hands.'

'My application alone would not have met with such ready success,'
continued Goes. 'For that, you have to thank one whose friendship and
patronage you literally conquered at Dessau,--the duke of Friedland. He
wrote himself to Copenhagen in your behalf; and the mediator who
brought about the treaty of Lubeck could hardly be refused so small a
request by the king of Denmark.'

'Honor to the lion!' jocosely exclaimed Frau Rosen. 'Those large wild
beasts generally have some generosity about them.'

'All is in readiness!' said the old Hussite host, entering the room and
throwing open the doors.

'Give your arm to Faith, my son, and follow this man,' said Goes. The
lovers looked at each other with some surprise, and obeyed the command.
After them came the matron, supported by Goes and Fessel. The officers
followed.

The procession entered directly among the rocks, and at length,
magnificently gilded by the evening sun, the eventful mass of stone
which had been detached and overthrown by the lightning, shone upon
them with a far different and more friendly aspect than when it had
last met their view. It was hung around with evergreens and adorned
with flowery garlands; and upon the most conspicuous part of it a
medallion had been cut out, with these words engraved upon it: '_The
lightning of heaven here punished and warned._' Underneath was cut out
the day of the month and the year. In front of the huge mass stood an
altar, built of the fragments which were shivered from it when it fell.
The old pastor of Huss's Rest waited at the altar, in his clerical
robes and with opened book. On each side of him stood Fessel's
children, holding wreaths of flowers.

'What can all this mean?' whispered Faith to Oswald, in sweet
confusion, while the colonel placed the missing myrtle wreath upon her
blond locks.

'Unite this pair in marriage, reverend father,' cried the colonel, with
gushing tears, leading the lovers to the altar.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Mild toleration has spread its dove-like wings over the states of
Austria for many long years since the period above referred to,--the
colony of Huss's Rest is no longer to be found among the rocks of
Aldersbach,--and the s