ed revolutionary."
And he looked meltingly upon Otto.

"I see," replied the Prince; "that is very gratifying. Well, sir, the
great thing for the good of one's country is, first of all, to be a good
man. All springs from there. For my part, although you are right in
thinking that I have to do with politics, I am unfit by intellect and
temper for a leading role. I was intended, I fear, for a subaltern. Yet
we have all something to command, Mr. Fritz, if it be only our own
temper; and a man about to marry must look closely to himself. The
husband's, like the prince's, is a very artificial standing; and it is
hard to be kind in either. Do you follow that?"

"O yes, I follow that," replied the young man, sadly chop-fallen over
the nature of the information he had elicited; and then brightening up:
"Is it," he ventured, "is it for an arsenal that you have bought the
farm?"

"We'll see about that," the Prince answered, laughing. "You must not be
too zealous. And in the meantime, if I were you, I would say nothing on
the subject."

"O, trust me, sir, for that," cried Fritz, as he pocketed a crown. "And
you've let nothing out; for I suspected--I might say I knew it--from the
first. And mind you, when a guide is required," he added, "I know all
the forest paths."

Otto rode away, chuckling. This talk with Fritz had vastly entertained
him; nor was he altogether discontented with his bearing at the farm;
men, he was able to tell himself, had behaved worse under smaller
provocation. And, to harmonise all, the road and the April air were both
delightful to his soul.

Up and down, and to and fro, ever mounting through the wooded foothills,
the broad, white high-road wound onward into Gruenewald. On either hand
the pines stood coolly rooted--green moss prospering, springs welling
forth between their knuckled spurs; and though some were broad and
stalwart, and others spiry and slender, yet all stood firm in the same
attitude and with the same expression, like a silent army presenting
arms.

The road lay all the way apart from towns and villages, which it left on
either hand. Here and there, indeed, in the bottom of green glens, the
Prince could spy a few congregated roofs, or perhaps above him, on a
shoulder, the solitary cabin of a woodman. But the highway was an
international undertaking, and with its face set for distant cities,
scorned the little life of Gruenewald. Hence it was exceeding solitary.
Near the frontier Otto m