of a bloody future, rose from the gleaming waves? Was he thinking of Kriemhild's beauty and the passionate love which his now hard heart had once felt for the beautiful princess, and which, when rejected, changed into anger and hatred that moved his arm to the murder of Siegfried and the robbery of the Nibelungen treasure? Or did he see with prophetic eye that time in which the now helpless one should take revenge on all who had injured her--a revenge which should exterminate the heroes of Burgundy to the last man.       

Many hundred years had passed over the world since that night robbery; blood and tears had been shed, dried, and forgotten; new nations had arisen and the old ones fallen, so that there was scarcely a page of the world's chronicle to tell of their struggles, hopes, and tears. All things had changed. The new had taken the place of the old, only to yield in its turn to a newer order still. Nothing was the same but ever young, ever beautiful, ever innocent nature, and the human heart with its love and hate. The Rhine still flowed and the Wonnegau on its banks still bloomed as of old, but its name was changed; the Cathedral of Worms still pointed to the sky, but it was not the same building in the shadow of which Kriemhild's palace used to stand. The generation that now trod the same soil knew nothing of the Nibelungen--the tradition of those heroes lived only in some half-forgotten songs. The sunken treasure had long since been thought a myth, and with an incredulous smile the wise men of those days pointed to the stream which was said to hide such a "golden secret."

Nevertheless, it was no myth; the treasure still lay beneath the waters. Not a crown, not a bracelet was lost; not a diamond had fallen from the brilliant setting; for, as if held together by magic hand, the jewels had remained firmly united; but wave after wave had rolled on unceasingly, day and night, from year's end to year's end, and softly and gradually the treasure had been pressed on further into the bed of the river. The Wonnegau lay behind it; there the waves foamed, whirling over the hidden reefs beneath, and further on towards the sea they roared loudly against the walls of the Pfalzburg, then flowed caressingly past the blooming vines which wound their clustered garlands round the white cottages of the vine-dressers.

The treasure of the Nibelungen had been carried in safety, though without any guiding hand, past all these different scenes, and the waves had borne it further and further into the shadow of the bank, bit by bit, until, after many years, it lay at the foot of a rock that rose high and bold above 

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