e the deep tones of a distant
organ.

Under the threatening sky lay the glittering lake. Its surface of
quicksilver was streaked here and there with black shadows--the track of
the wind-gusts racing across it. The trees were rustling in the wind,
making a sound like a distant choral.

On the shore of Lake Neusiedl stood the Volons in rank and file. They
were waiting for something that was coming from the farther shore of the
little cove.

Presently the glistening surface of the water was ruffled by a black
object that pushed out from the shore. It was a boat. Six men were
rowing, a seventh held the rudder. There was a coffin in the boat,
covered with a simple pall. No ostentatious trappings ornamented the
coffin; only a myrtle wreath lay on it. A woman, sat at the head of it,
another at the foot--the former a lady, the latter a peasant wife.

The six men, with even and powerful strokes, sent the craft through the
ripples which occasionally leaped into the boat, as if they would salute
her who had so often toyed with them.

At the moment the boat touched the shore the storm burst. Vivid
lightning illumined the heavy downpour of rain, and it seemed as if the
black-robed forms bore the coffin to its grave amid a flood of
harpstrings that reached from heaven to earth.

The two weeping women followed the coffin; at a little distance they
seemed two shadows. The helmsmen of the funeral boat now stepped to the
head of the grave and opened his lips to speak, but a heavy peal of
thunder drowned his voice. When it had ceased he said:

"My brave comrades, you are here to pay a last honor to your patroness.
There is nothing left for us to fight for. Peace has been proclaimed.
The conqueror takes from you a plot of ground twenty-four hundred square
miles in extent. The one lying here takes from you only six feet of
earth. To you remain your tattered flag and your wounds. Return to your
homes. My sword has finished its work, and will accompany the saint for
whom it was drawn!"

As he spoke he broke the keen blade in twain and cast the pieces into
the grave, adding impressively, "May God give us forgetfulness, and may
we be forgotten!"

The Volons fired three salvos over the grave, the reverberating thunder
and the flashing lightning mingling with the noise of the muskets.

When the storm had passed the moon rose in a cloudless sky. Only the
waves, which had been stirred by the tempest, continued to murmur to
their favori