forests of the Spessart, and as the latest sunbeams sank in the waters of the Kinzig, he mounted the steep path towards the castle, and rode over the lowered drawbridge into the court.

Was it really the stags and boars in the vast forests, or the treasure of rare old manuscripts of the castle archives, which drew the young prince again and again to the small and lonely fortress? So his father and uncle thought, but they knew not of his deep unconquerable love for the beautiful Gela, the daughter of a humble retainer. He had seen her while resting from the chase in the forest of the Kinzig Valley, and so great had his love for her become that he was willing to renounce all dreams of future power and greatness to live in blissful retirement with the beloved one whom he could not raise to his own rank.

But the lovers had to guard their secret carefully; they dared trust no confidant, lest their paradise should be laid waste before its gates had been fully opened to admit them. So they breathed their love to none but each other. The prince passed Gela with cold indifference if he met her in the castle court or at her work about the house, and Gela made lowly reverence, as if she were the meanest of his maids, to him who counted it his greatest honour to do her service.

But at evening, when Frederick had roamed the forest since early morning, his bow on his shoulder and his faithful hounds by his side, the fair Gela might be seen walking along the high-road with a basket on her arm, or with a stock of newly-spun yarn, as if she were going to seek purchasers in the nearest town. But in the forest she would leave the broad path, and make her way through briars and underwood to a height on which her young prince awaited her beneath the shelter of a giant oak.

There they would talk happily and innocently till the last sunbeam was quenched in the Kinzig stream, and the convent bell resounded through the arches of the forest; then they would fold their hands in prayer before saying farewell, in hope of a meeting on the morrow.

So had it been for many a year. Their love remained unbetrayed, their hope unquenched, their faith unshaken. In the splendid halls of the palace, amid the proud and lovely ladies who surrounded the young prince with flattering marks of favour, the longing after the lonely forest in the Kinzig Valley and the fair and gentle loved one never died from his heart.They had met thus one evening with the old, yet ever new tenderness. Frederick drew Gela's fair head to his breast, and spoke to her of the near and blissful future, which would 

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