THE MYSTERY OF THE MOATED-SCHLOSS.

Tuapeka Times, Volume II, Issue 72, 26 June 1869, Page 5

THE MYSTERY OF THE MOATED-SCHLOSS.

(From " All the Year Round.")

IN JTYE OHAPTEES. — CHAPTEE IT.

"With a firmer and more rapid step, Magda crossed the bridge, and passed under the portcullis once more. She would not return to the parlour. By her desire, Bettine conducted her straight to the tapestried room, which was now flooded with moonlight. She threw, the window wide open, and then, dismissing Bettine, she knelt beside the great old-fashioned bed, and prayed — prayed for forgiveness of her many sins, poor little soul ! — for courage to meet present trial, whatsoever it might be — for faith that should resist any devil's machination, and strength to overcome temptation. And to this was joined a fervent | prayer that " unsei 1 Vater " would shield her Albrecht from all evil, and remove that dark and nameless .cloud under which, he suffered. She rose and blew out the candles, | which flared in the night breeze, and sent flickering shadows upon the tapestry. She did not need them to undress by, for the room was as light as day. She could see the faces of Ahasaerus and Esther in their royal robes on the wall opposite, with the black-bearded Mordecai, and the evileyed Haman hanging on the gallows, which last was a ghastly image enough Avithout the trembling light, by which j the corpse appeared to be swaying to and fro. j

It was warm ; she would leave the window open all night ; the moon was friendly; she could hear the wind stirring the topmost boughs of the forest yonder, where Albrecht was; and that was something. She had double-locked the door, and now she slid off the narrow quaint garment wherein she had been attired, and crept into the great black bed, which looked to her so like a grave, with its headstone and its garland in memory of the departed. The clock struck ten as she lay down and turned her face to the window. The moon itself she could not see, though its light streamed in upon the floor; but there were spaces of clear sky, sprinkled with stars, across which the dusky shadow of a bat every now and then flitted. Except the hoarse croaking of the frogs, there was no other sign of life. For a long time she lay awake .... she heard eleven strike, and then twelve .... a prey to all manner of fancies. Now she thought that Esther stirred from her place upon the wall, and that she hsard the rustle of her royal robes ; now it was Ahasuerue who. was stepping from his throne, and advancing to meat her ; now Hainan's j dead limbs seem to become animated, and the miscreant was descending from the gallows. But, one by one, these fancies wore themselves out. . The woven figures came not to life ; no ] sound, not even that of a mouse be- I hind the wainscot, broke the perfect stillness of the night. The imagination, without ailment, cannot keep up for ever at high-pressure pitch ; and when youth and health are in the other scale, nature will sooner or later have its way, and claim its right of rest. She fell asleep. How long she remained so she never knew ; but she started from her sleep with the horrible consciousness that something was near her — something between her and the window — something bending over her, with its face close, close to hers. She lay there breathless, motionless. She tried to scream to spring from the bed ; she could not stir a muscle, and the ihing stood there, immovable, with its glittering eyes looking down into hers. She knew she had been dreaming ; she asked herself, in those few doubtful moments, whether this was a continue tjon of her nightmare. Por, paralysed with terror as she was, strange to say, the deadly face of this shadow brought vividly to her mind the picture which had made so deep an impression on her at' Prague.* Though this was the face of a shadow, white and hollow, there were the same extraordinary eyes, unlike any Magda had ever seen. The rest was shrouded in black, and the moon 'from behind touched, the edges of one white lock of hair with silver. " Louise ! " murmured the shadow ; and Magda felt a death-cold hand laid jipon hers, outside the coverlet. She trembled so that the very bed shook under her, but she gave no other sign of life. Lower and lower, closer and closer, bent the shadow. And now, indeed, Magda -shut her eyes, and felt that life was ebbing fast from her heart ; for the corpse-like face touched hers, and those dead lips rained kisses on her cheek. Then, with a great cry, as though something within her had snapped, Magda felt a sudden momentary power given to her to spring from the bed, and run shrieking towards the window. It wss but momentary ; there was another shriek, the piercing echo of her own ; she was conscious of the spectre's rushing towards her, white hair flowing, wild arms tossed into the sky; and then Magda sank in a- swoorTupon the floor. Bettine was bending over her with salvolatile when she opened her eyes. Hanne stood by the bed, whereon something'black lay stretched. "■Mem G-ott! sic ist todt!" were the first words 'Magda heard. They came from the lips of the grim Hanne. The 4oor opened quickly at the same

moment, and Magda found herself in Albrecht's arms.

But the next minute lie turned towards the bed. Hanne and he exchanged looks ; it was enough ; and then, leaving Magda to Bettine's care, he ran towards the bed, and threw himself on his knees beside it. . . Too late ! too late ! All his hope, then — his heart's first wish for years past — was now frustrated at the very moment of fulfilment ! He buried his head in the coverlid, and Magda heard a low sob. There was no other sound in the room. Then, after a while, she caught these disjointed sentences, wrung from the agony of the young man's soul : "Dv barmherziger Himniel ! . . Is it all over then ? . . . After so many years, so many ! — without one kind 100k — without a word! It is hard. To go thus from me before the cloud was lifted. .. . Ach ! mutter — tliou knowest now the truth — open thy lips, but once more — only once, to bless me, even me, thy only son, now that I kiss thy dear hand after so many, many yCars ! " And it was with a tender and sorrowful earnestness that Albrecht performed this simple act of German reverence. But from the black bed, now more truly like a grave than ever, came no response, no sound, no sign that a living soul lay there; that the ear heard, or the heart felt the passionate adjuration addressed to it. Magda, as she looked and listened, felt still so utterly bewildered that she could only keep asking herself whether it was not all a dream — whether, in truth, it was her Albrecht whom she saw and heard. Yet, at the window where she lay, the night, with its myriad stars, was gone ; the pale opal light of morning was breaking in the east ; she could even hear the soft dewy twitter of awaking birds. It was no dream ; she could recall it all, the lonely, dreary evening, the terrible night — no, she was not dreaming, and that was her Albrecht in the flesh before her. But she felt an aching giddiness in her head ; she raised her hand, and withdrew it, covered with blood. In falling she had struck herself, and, concealed by the masses of \ unrolled hair, tbe wound bad escaped ] Bettine's attention. The old woman now ran to fetch the necessary means of staunching it, but the loss of blood had been considerable. Magda attempted to raise her head, but the room swam round with her ; a film gathered across her eyes, and before Bettine's return, her young mistress had again relapsed into unconsciousness. Many hours after, in another and very different room in the schloss, a room surrounded with implements 'of the chase, the walls bristling with antlers, the polished floor pleasantly islanded with siring of deer and cha- ! mois, the young grcifin lay upon the jager's bed, and her husband sat beside her. He had had her carried there, as being the most cheerful room in the house, and here he had been tending her, and (seeing her weak and excited condition) had enforced absolute silence, after her return to consciousness, and had answered her questions in monosyllables. But now, the day was far spent ; the darkness, that season of feverish terror during which she had suffered so acutely twenty-four hours before, was at hand ; it was well to tell her all, and to calm her mind by a knowledge of the truth. So there he sat, beside the little bed on which his young wife lay, holding her hand, and with a face on which could be clearly traced the impress of a recent and heavy trouble, he told her his story of the past in these words :

(To be continued.)

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