the great gate
fast, lay rusting at his feet; and neither he, nor the sentinels on the
ramparts above, stirred or awoke at the sound of Greyfell's clattering
hoofs. As Siegfried passed from one part of the castle to another, many
strange sights met his eyes. In the stables the horses slumbered in
their stalls, and the grooms lay snoring by their sides. The birds sat
sound asleep on their nests beneath the eaves. The watch-dogs, with
fast-closed eyes, lay stretched at full-length before the open doors. In
the garden the fountain no longer played, the half-laden bees had
gone to sleep among the blossoms of the apple-trees, and the flowers
themselves had forgotten to open their petals to the sun. In the
kitchen the cook was dozing over the half-baked meats in front of the
smouldering fire; the butler was snoring in the pantry; the dairy-maid
was quietly napping among the milk-pans; and even the house-flies
had gone to sleep over the crumbs of sugar on the table. In the great
banquet-room a thousand knights, overcome with slumber, sat silent at
the festal board; and their chief, sitting on the dais, slept, with his
half-emptied goblet at his lips.

Siegfried passed hurriedly from room to room and from hall to hall, and
cast but one hasty glance at the strange sights which met him at every
turn; for he knew that none of the drowsy ones in that spacious castle
could be awakened until he had aroused the Princess Brunhild. In the
grandest hall of the palace he found her. The peerless maiden, most
richly dight, reclined upon a couch beneath a gold-hung canopy; and her
attendants, the ladies of the court, sat near and around her. Sleep held
fast her eyelids, and her breathing was so gentle, that, but for the
blush upon her cheeks, Siegfried would have thought her dead. For long,
long years had her head thus lightly rested on that gold-fringed pillow;
and in all that time neither her youth had faded, nor her wondrous
beauty waned.

Siegfried stood beside her. Gently he touched his lips to that matchless
forehead; softly he named her name,--

"Brunhild!"

The charm was broken. Up rose the peerless princess in all her
queen-like beauty; up rose the courtly ladies round her. All over the
castle, from cellar to belfry-tower, from the stable to the banquet
hall, there was a sudden awakening, a noise of hurrying feet and
mingled voices, and sounds which had long been strangers to the halls of
Isenstein. The watchman on the tower, a