ppened to them as yet.

Babette lived during the next days in a state of suppressed excitement.
She felt that something _must_ happen for good or evil; but she did not
know what. Patient waiting! a hard lesson for all of us to learn, but
harder still for a maiden of seventeen years who had been kept so long
in that dull hole. She had passed her birthday in that horrid place!
just think of it, and not one birthday present did she get. She made up
for it afterwards by having two birthdays at once; but it was not
_quite_ so nice.

Meanwhile Sir Rudolf had turned homewards pondering on his strange
adventure, and fully determined to seek Mother Holle's aid. Should he go
first to the Castle of Eppenhain and tell Babette's foster-parents that
he had found out where Babette was imprisoned? He felt that, credulous
though they were in those days, they would only laugh at him, and
consider the story as outside the range of possibility. They might even
suggest that a cask of Rhine wine had clouded his intelligence; no, he
would go home to Ruppertshain Castle and have supper, and think it over.
So he returned home, and was so silent and dreamy, and his appetite,
which was usually of heroic proportions, was so small that his mother
felt quite anxious about him.

"You are not bewitched, Rudie dear?" she asked anxiously, just as we
might inquire if he were a little upset.

"I am not sure, mother, maybe I am!" he answered to the good lady's
dismay.

After sprinkling him with various herbs, she insisted on his drinking
some nasty aromatic tea when he went to bed. As she had put some
spider's legs in it and a few choice things of that sort, Rudolf asked
to be allowed to take it upstairs with him. Then I regret to say he
deceived the good lady by pouring it out of the window. I rather think
that you or I might have done the same thing under the circumstances,
though it was undoubtedly wrong.

The full moon was shining into the little window in the gable of the
turret. He shook off the very natural sleepiness and fatigue consequent
on his night's hunting, took off his soiled clothes, and dressed
himself in his fine velvet Court suit with the beautiful lace on the
collar.

He opened the little window, squeezed himself (it was lucky that he was
slight for a German knight) through the iron bars, and climbed on to the
roof with some difficulty, not to say danger. Then he crawled
noiselessly along the Castle walls, fearing to be challen