“’Your mother the she-wolf has bequeathed you her claws; her blood flows, mingled with mine, in your veins.  In you the wolf’s blood will flow from generation to generation; it shall weep and howl among the snows of the Black Forest.  Some will say, “Hark!  The wind howls!” others, “No, it is the owl hooting!” But not so; it is your blood, mine and the blood of the she-wolf who drove me to murder Hedwige, my wife before God and the Church.  She died under my bloody hands!  Cursed be the she-wolf! for it is written, “I will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children.”  The crime of the father shall be visited upon the children until justice shall have been satisfied!’

“Then old Hugh the Wolf died.

“From that dreary day the north wind has howled across the wilds, and the owl has hooted in the dark, and travellers by night know not that it is the blood of the she-wolf weeping for the day of vengeance that will come, whose blood will be renewed from generation to generation—­so says Hertzog—­until the day when the first wife of Hugh, Hedwige the Fair, shall reappear at Nideck under the form of an angel to comfort and to forgive!”

Then Sperver, rising from his seat, took a lamp and demanded of Knapwurst the keys of the library, and beckoned to me to follow him.

We rapidly traversed the long dark gallery, then the armoury, and soon the archive-chamber appeared at the end of the great corridor.

All noises had died away in the distance.  The place seemed quite deserted.

Once or twice I turned round, and could then see with a creeping feeling of dread our two long fantastic shadows in ghostly fashion writhing in strange distortions upon the high tapestry.

Sperver quickly opened the old oak door, and with torch uplifted, his hair all bristling in disorder, and excited features, walked in the first.  Standing before the portrait of Hedwige, whose likeness to the young countess had struck me at our first visit to the library, he addressed me in these solemn words:—­

“Here is she who was to return to comfort and pity me!  She has returned!  At this moment she is downstairs with the old count.  Look well, Fritz; do you recognise her?  Is it not Odile?”

Then turning to the picture of Hugh’s second wife—­

“There,” he said, “is Huldine, the she-wolf.  For a thousand years she has wept in the deep gorges amongst the pine forests of the Schwartzwald; she was the cause of the death of poor Lieverle; but henceforward the lords of Nideck may rest securely, for justice is done, and the good angel of this lordly house has returned!”

MYRTLE.

CHAPTER I.

Just at the end of the village of Dosenheim, in Alsace, about fifty yards from the gravelly road that leads into the wood, is a pretty cottage surrounded with an orchard, the flat roof loaded with boulder-stones, the gable-end looking down the valley.