bourhood, that in the first and the last quarter of the moon the
spirit of Ulric, the last of the old lords of Rheineck, still sweeps
around the ruin at the hour of midnight, and is occasionally visible
to belated wanderers.

THE CELLAR OF THE OLD KNIGHTS IN THE KYFFHAUSER.

There was a poor, but worthy, and withal very merry, fellow at
Tilleda, who was once put to the expense of a christening, and, as
luck would have it, it was the eighth. According to the custom of the
time, he was obliged to give a plain feast to the child's sponsors.
The wine of the country which he put before his guests was soon
exhausted, and they began to call for more.

"Go," said the merry father of the newly baptized child to his eldest
daughter, a handsome girl of sixteen,--"go, and get us better wine
than this out of the cellar."

"Out of what cellar?"

"Why, out of the great wine-cellar of the old Knights in the
Kyffhauser, to be sure," said her father jokingly.

The simple-minded girl did as he told her, and taking a small pitcher
in her hand went to the mountain. In the middle of the mountain she
found an aged housekeeper, dressed in a very old-fashioned style,
with a large bundle of keys at her girdle, sitting at the ruined
entrance of an immense cellar. The girl was struck dumb with
amazement, but the old woman said very kindly--

"Of a surety you want to draw wine out of the Knights' cellar?"

"Yes," said the girl timidly, "but I have no money."

"Never mind that," said the old woman; "come with me, and you shall
have wine for nothing, and better wine too than your father ever
tasted."

So the two went together through the half-blocked-up entrance, and as
they went along the old woman made the girl tell her how affairs were
going on at that time in Tilleda.

"For once," said she, "when I was young, and good-looking as you are,
the Knights stole me away in the night-time, and brought me through a
hole in the ground from the very house in Tilleda which now belongs to
your father. Shortly before that they had carried away by force from
Kelbra, in broad daylight, the four beautiful damsels who occasionally
still ride about here on horses richly caparisoned, and then disappear
again. As for me, as soon as I grew old, they made me their butler,
and I have been so ever since."

They had now reached the cellar door, which the old woman opened. It
was a very large roomy cellar, with barrels ranged along both sides.
The o