and it opened. What a sight! there lay the bleeding body of his bad neighbour, stretched lifeless upon his own sacks; and behold, farther in the cave, the whole array of bags and caskets filled with gold and diamonds, began to disappear; down they all went, deep and deeper, before his eyes, into the bowels of the earth.

A BRIGHT Summer's sun shone upon light hearts and merry faces in Rheinstein's old walls, and fleeting snatches of song and light bursts of laughter rose cheerily from the frowning battlements of the grey fortress and the thickets that cluster under its towers, whilst it was quite manifest that it was no ordinary festivity or village merry-making that had this day collected the simple vine-dressers from both banks of their lordly river, in such unusual numbers and holiday attire. An

This and the two following tales are extracted from Knox's "Traditions of the Rhine," in which will be found many others equally interesting. For the present purpose, it was necessary somewhat to abridge them.

observer would have pronounced, without much hesitation,from a certain mysterious manner which prevailed amongst the fair portion of the community, as well as from the interest which, notwithstanding their gigglings, the younger damsels evidently took in the proceedings of the day,—that some wedding was at hand; though, had he been called upon to pick the happy bridegroom out of the crowd of richly attired knights, that loitered about the court or gazed idly from the window of the Rittersaal, he probably would have been quite mistaken; for of all the knights assembled on that festive morning, rough and uncivilized as they nearly all were, not one bore so deeply impressed upon every feature and every gesture, the stamp of a bold bad man as Kurt of Ehrenfels, the hero of the present ceremony.

It has been said that many a rough nut contains a sweet kernel, but such was not here the case; and Kurt's countenance did no injustice to his life. Yet he had neither youth, nor hot blood, nor high passions, nor strong temptations to plead; he was born of a noble and ancient race, that acknowledged few equals and no superiors among the proud nobility of the Rheingau, and lord of that stately castle that looks down on the Biengerloch and its rushing waters, with a stern magnificence. Sensual, calculating, and intensely selfish, he had allowed a youth of profligacy to be succeeded by a manhood, of which it was hard to say whether the most unprincipled fraudulence, or the most unscrupulous violence, was most characteristic; and now he was about to swell his already over-grown, though ill-gotten wealth, by forcing into a hateful marriage a trembling girl of eighteen, access to whose society he had obtained under pretence of negociating an alliance

between her and Sir Cuno of Reichenstein, his own nephew, whose cause he, nevertheless, betrayed; and, working on the weakness of her father, he had persuaded the old knight of Rheinstein to bestow the fairest flower on the Rhine upon the greatest ruffian on its banks.

In a low vaulted chamber in the castle, sat the miserable victim of his hateful passion, silently and shudderingly waiting, with a feeling of sickening apprehension, the dreaded summons that was to send her forth a decked and glittering sacrifice to ambition, a mourner at the funeral of her own young hopes and affections.

Poor Gerda's affectionate heart had been given, with all the devotion of youth and freshness, entirely and unsparingly, to Sir Cuno of Reichenstein, the only son of the treacherous Kurt's sister, a young knight whose castle was scarcely half an hour's ride from Rheinstein, and who consequently had lived upon terms of such intimacy with the family, that an attachment had readily sprung up between him and Gerda, which now assumed the form of a violent and despairing passion that brought them both to the very verge of insanity.

Twice he had attempted, since he became aware of his uncle's treachery, to carry her off by force, which was considered a very spirited enterprize, and by no means wrong in the 13th century, but his efforts had been fruitless, and a deep scar on his left cheek bore testimony to the sincerity of his affection, and to its energetic character into the bargain. It may be asked why the knight of Rheinstein, a kind parent and passionately fond of his daughter, allowed this unnatural alliance to be entered into. Alas! the substance was thrown away for the shadow. Poor Cuno had not even one hundred

years nobility, and the old knight himself, though justly proud of his lineage, did not possess by birth certain privileges which he eagerly longed to see enjoyed by his progeny. The children of Ehrenfels would be chapitral, would be admissible to noble convents, to knightly orders, to royal tables that were fast closed against the family of Cuno of Reichenstein, and for this, alas! was the aged and experienced knight of Rheinstein prepared to compel, in spite of her most earnest entreaties, the daughter of his heart to sacrifice herself to one whose cunning and treachery made him odious even to the lawless chiefs of the Rhine.

And where was Cuno whilst his Gerda's heart was breaking? On the terrace of his castle, which overhung the river not very far below Rheinstein, the unhappy lover paced to and fro like a caged lion, with uncertain steps and uneasy gestures; sometimes he would stop and fix an impatient glance upon the little chapel, the Klemenskirche, which lay as if in mockery of his agony, richly decorated for the wedding, almost at his feet. There is probably no occasion more intensely galling to man, than when an event that he would give worlds to prevent, takes place before his very eyes and he cannot hinder it; and in this position was the incensed Cuno. There he stood, a gallant and resolute man, an ardent and devoted lover, whilst the bridal procession, that was to deprive him for ever of hope and happiness, wound slowly its accursed course, like a snake glittering in the sun along the narrow path that then skirted the Rhine. It is not to be supposed that all this could go on without the thought of once more trying the fortune of the sword arising in his passiontossed mind, but it soon died away again, for his practised