The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1879-01-09

not falsify."
Nor would mine steal?"
"But the facts have been kept in re-
membrance by all of J"
But the facts are untrue !"
"Amalie do not let us quarrel about
so small a matter. What sit ignifies it
if your Observation-Disclosures
great-grandfather was unjust?"
What signifies it,my dear Anselm,
if your Observation-Disclosures
great-grandfather told untruths ?"
My race has ever been noted for
honor and truthfulness." t
"And mine for honesty and fair
ness"
"Not according to the record of my
family"
(which has become an exaggerated
fable"
"Nonsense! Your ancestors must
have seized the property of others to
have grown rich. They were poor at
first"
"I do not believe it; I will never
believe I am the descendant of a pau
per race"
"Such is the truth, however. The
first Duke Of their present line had
nothing but his sword before he had
captured my forefather's fair lands and
castles. Even the Court jewels that
are now worn SO proudly by his de-
scendants were made from gems taken
in warfare from my people!"
The blood was boiling through ANA
lies veins and crimsoning her cheeks
at this point of the discussion, which
seemed to have grown into a quarrel.
She took the coronet from the balus-
trade and placed it upon her head.
Then she turned upon her lover flash
ing and scornful glance.
Here, them" she cried, are your
jewels, upon my head. Your ancestors
had not the courage to recover them by
war you have not the heart to recover
them by 8larriage. See how the daugh-
ter of race of beggars despises the son
of race of towards! When you recov-
er this crown will wed you. Not till
then J"
And with a sudden movement she
plucked the diadem from her head and
whirled it far out over the black wat
ers of the Rhine that washed the base
of the lofty Sperlingstein on which the
castle stood.
A dull splash far below told that the
bauble was gone, and the rushing of a
heavy rode announced the departure
of its wearer.
A moment after the horses of Anselm
and his servants clattered over the
bridge and away from the castle, fol-
lowed, within the hour, by a party of
rough riders-friends and admirers of
Amalie, who had taken up arms on
the instant to avenge the insult she
felt she had received.
Anselm was not Overtaken before he
reached his home, and when his pur-
suers arrived there they were welcom-
ed with such shower of cross-bow and
arqueous shots as left but one of them
to tell the story. He, dying of terri
BILE wound, at Amalie's feet, when he
returned, gasped out the news, and the
stern old. Duke marshaled his forces at
once to punish the quondam lover of
his daughter, now the mortal foe of
his house.
The Baron, on his part, fortified him.
self, and gathered all his retainers to-
gether under his banner to repulse the
enemy.
The feud, thus hastily renewed, was
bitterer than of old. Battle after bat
tie, siege after siege, sortie after sortie,
followed in fierce succession, and the
gallant young Baron almost always
came off victorious. The Dukes es-
tate was seized upon, one after another
of his castles taken and his people put
to death, until, in a grand final
siege before Sperlingstein, the whole
race was annihilated and the castle
left ruin. In its battered and smold-
ering debris the lifeless forms of the
Duke, his once-lovely daughter and a
few brave men-at-arms who had clus-
tered around them to the last, were
permitted to lie. The wreck of their
greatness was the fittest sepulcher for
them, perhaps.
Then Anselm returned to his castle,
far beyond the Thranenthal, and made
great feast at high-tide to celebrate
his victory. But all noted his weary
and absent air. A melancholy fell up
on him in the midst of his triumph,
and ghost seemed to haunt him eve
ry where, till he was like to lose his
reason.
In win he sought forgetfulness in
the affairs of his estates-in beautify-
ing them and overcoming the rudeness
that nature had stamped upon forest
and hill. In vain he visited other
lands, travelling abroad in luxurious
state, and studying how to amuse him
self only. At the end of a few years
he settled down to a resigned and 81.
lent sorrow that ever preyed upon him.
His friends observed that he spent
much of his time about the Sperling-
stein and its ruing, now overgrown
with vines and moss. Under pretense
of shooting and fishing,. he rambled
over the almost inaccessible crags, and
loitered for hours by the still, black
waters beneath.
In truth, he was thinking only OF
the jeweled crown that lay in the
depths of the streams, and of hel
whose fair forehead it once adorned.
And one bright morning, as he sal
moodily in his boat gazing down into
the waves, a strange vision uprose
from an eddy that boiled between two
half-sunken rock-a vision of beauti
GUS maiden, like to Amalie, with gold
en- hair and snowy arms, beckoning
him to her. His boat drifted slowly
toward the dangerous current, but he
needed nothing save the exquisite
song of the apparitiOn-a slow an(