le to make out what it really was.

Great drops were beginning to patter on the roof. Christian lighted a
rush, and seeing Maitre Bernard with his hands convulsively clutching the
edge of his box of heather, and his face covered with beads of cold
sweat, he cried--

"Why! Master Bernard! what is the matter with you?"

But, without answering, he merely pointed to the figure huddled up in the
corner; it was an old woman, so very advanced in extreme old age, so
yellow and wrinkled, with such a hooked nose, fingers so skinny, and
lips so lean, that she looked like an old owl with all its feathers gone.
There were only a few hairs left on the back of her head; the rest of her
skull was as bare of covering as an egg. A threadbare ragged linen gown
covered her poor skeleton figure. She was sightless, and the expression
of her face was one of constant reverie.

Christian, noticing my uncle's inquiring look, turned his head and said
quietly--

"It's old Irmengarde, the old teller of legends. She is waiting to die
till the old tower falls into the torrent."

Uncle Bernard, stupefied, looked at the woodman; he did not seem inclined
to joke; on the contrary, he looked serious.

"Come, Christian," said the good man, "you mean to have your joke."

"Joke! no indeed, old and feeble as you see her, that old woman knows
everything; the spirit of the ruins is in her. She was living when the
old lords of the castle lived."

Now my old uncle was very nearly falling backwards at this astounding
disclosure.

"But what do you mean?" he cried; "the castle of Nideck has been down
these thousand years!"

"What if it was two thousand years?" said the woodman, making the sign of
the cross as a new flash lighted up the valley; "what does that prove?
The spirit of the ruins lives in her. A hundred and eight years
Irmengarde has lived with this spirit in her. Before her it was in old
Edith of Haslach; before Edith in some other--"

"Do you believe that?"

"Do I believe it! It is as sure, Master Bernard, as that the sun will be
back in three hours' time. Death is night, life is day. After night comes
day, then night again, and so on without end. The sun is the soul of the
sky, the great spirit that is in us all, and the souls of the saints are
like the stars which shine in the night, and which will never cease to
return."

Bernard Hertzog replied not another word, but having risen, he began
suspiciously to consider the aspect of that