“Miss Lind,” said he, with some surprise, “do you play the zither?”

“Oh yes, Natalie will play you something,” her father said, carelessly; and forthwith the girl sat down to the small table.

George Brand retired into a corner of the room.  He was passionately fond of zither music.  He thought no more about that examination of the lutes.

“Do you know one who can play the zither well?” says the proverb. “If so, rejoice, for there are not two in the world.” However that might be, Natalie Lind could play the zither, as one eager listener soon discovered.  He, in that far corner, could only see the profile of the girl (just touched with a faint red from the shade of the nearest candle, as she leaned over the instrument), and the shapely wrists and fingers as they moved on the metallic strings.  But was that what he really did see when the first low tremulous notes struck the prelude to one of the old pathetic Volkslieder that many a time he had heard in the morning, when the fresh wind blew in from the pines; that many a time he had heard in the evening, when the little blue-eyed Kathchen and her mother sung together as they sat and knitted on the bench in front of the inn?  Suddenly the air changes.  What is this louder tramp?  Is it not the joyous chorus of the home-returning huntsmen; the lads with the slain roedeer slung round their necks; that stalwart Bavarian keeper hauling at his mighty black hound; old father Keinitz, with his three beagles and his ancient breech-loader, hurrying forward to get the first cool, vast, splendid bath of the clear, white wine?  How the young fellows come swinging along through the dust, their faces ablaze against the sunset!  Listen to the far, hoarse chorus!—­

       “Dann kehr ich von der Haide,
        Zur hauslich stillen Freude,
        Ein frommer Jagersmann! 
        Ein frommer Jagersmann! 
    Halli, hallo! halli, hallo! 
        Ein frommer Jagersmann!”

White wine now, and likewise the richer red!—­for there is a great hand-shaking because of the Mr. Englishman’s good fortune in having shot three bucks:  and the little Kathchen’s eyes grow full, because they have brought home a gentle-faced hind, likewise cruelly slain.  And Kathchen’s mother has whisked inside, and here are the tall schoppen on the table; and speedily the long, low room is filled with the tobacco-smoke.  What! another song, you thirsty old Keinitz, with the quavering voice?  But there is a lusty chorus to that too; and a great clinking of glasses; and the Englishman laughs and does his part too, and he has called for six more schoppen of red....  But hush, now!  Have we come out from the din and the smoke to the cool evening air?  What is that one hears afar in the garden?  Surely it is the little Kathchen and her mother singing together, in beautiful harmony, the old, familiar, tender Lorelei!  The zither is a strange instrument—­it speaks.