gh many
centuries?" he asked. "Do you not know that this is a place of terror
and death? Are you a stranger that you stand on the place where a
king, Louis the Pious, betrayed by his own sons, was handed over to
his enemies, his crown torn from his head by his own troops? And he who
would have died gladly in battle suffered the shame and dishonour that
were worse than death. He lifted up his hands to heaven and cried with
bitterness: 'There is no such thing on earth as faith and loyalty.
Accursed be sons and warriors, accursed be this field whereon such deeds
have been done, accursed be they for ever!'"

The spectre paused and his words echoed across the field like the cry of
a lost soul. Again he spoke to the trembling wanderer: "And that curse
has endured through the centuries. Under this plain in mile-wide graves
we faithless warriors lie, our bones knowing no repose; and never will
that curse of our betrayed king be lifted from us or this place!"

The spectral warrior sank into the gloomy earth, the tumult of fighting
died away. The wayfarer, seized with terror, stumbled blindly on in the
night.

Strassburg

Strassburg, the capital of Alsace-Lorraine, is only two miles west of
the Rhine. The city is of considerable antiquity, and boasts a cathedral
of great beauty, in which the work of four centuries is displayed to
wonderful advantage. By the light of the stained-glass windows the
famous astronomical clock in the south transept can be descried,
still containing some fragments of the horologe constructed by the
mathematician Conrad Dasypodius in 1574. This, however, does not tally
with the well-known legend of the clock, which now follows.

The Clockmaker of Strassburg

There dwelt in the town of Strassburg an old clockmaker. So wrapped up
was he in his art that he seemed to live in a world of his own, quite
indifferent to the customs and practices of ordinary life; he forgot his
meals, forgot his sleep, cared nothing for his clothes, and would have
been in evil case indeed had not his daughter Guta tended him with
filial affection. In his absent-minded fashion he was really very fond
of Guta, fonder even than he was of his clocks, and that is saying not a
little.

The neighbours, busy, energetic folk who performed their daily tasks and
drank wine with their friends, scoffed at the dreamy, unpractical old
fellow and derided his occupation as the idle pastime of a mind not too
well balanced. But the clockmak