Bertha led the new guest up three flights of uncarpeted wooden staircase, down a long passage to a light, clean, but sparely-furnished room.  The girl told him the hours of meals, brought some water, and left him alone.  He hung his knapsack on a hook on the wall, opened the little window, and gazed long at the view.  Underneath was the open space where he had been standing, to the left the tower, and behind, over the ruined walls, he could see the old, neglected castle yard full of weeds and heaps of rubbish—­a picture of decay and desolation.

“I have chosen well,” thought Wilhelm, for he loved solitude, and promised himself enjoyable hours of wandering in the ruins in company with luxuriant flowers and singing birds.

He barely gave himself time to freshen his face with cold water, and to change his thick walking shoes for lighter ones; immediately hurrying out to make acquaintance with the castle.  Before he could get there he had first to find in the tumbledown wall a hole large enough to enable him to get through.  He shortly found himself in a fairly large square space, the uneven ground being formed of a mass of rubbish, mounds of earth, and deep holes.  Woods protected the greater part of it, most of the trees stunted and choked by undergrowth and shrubs, with occasionally a high, solitary pine tree, and near to the west and south walls half-withered oaks and mighty beeches stood thickly.  Here and there from the bushes peeped up bare pieces of crumbling stone and broken pieces of mortar, in whose crevices hung long grasses, and where yellow, white, and red flowers nestled.  Climbing, stumbling, and slipping, he worked his way through this wilderness, the length and breath of which he wished to inspect so as to discover a place where he could rest quietly, when he suddenly came to a precipitous fall of the ground, concealed from him by a thick curtain of leaves.  Startled and taken by surprise, the ground seemed to him to sink under his feet.  He instinctively caught hold of some branches to keep himself from falling, pricking his hands with the thorns, and breaking a slender bough, finally rolling in company with dust and earth, torn-out bushes and stone, down a steep declivity of several feet to a little grass plot at the bottom.  He heard a slight scream near him, and a girlish form sprang up and cried in an anxious voice: 

“Have you hurt yourself?”

Wilhelm picked himself up as quickly as he could, brushed the earth from his clothes, and taking off his cap said, “Thanks, not much.  Only a piece of awkwardness.  But I am afraid I have frightened you?” he added.

“A little bit; but that is all right.”