THE SPECTRE BRIDEGROOM.
A TRAVELLER'S TALE.*
He that supper for is dight,
He lyes full cold, I trow, this night!
Yestreen to chamber I him led,
This night Gray-steel has made his bed!
SIR EGER, SIR GRAHAME, and SIR GRAY-STEEL.
ON the summit of one of the heights of the Odenwald, a wild and
romantic tract of Upper Germany that lies not far from the
confluence of the Main and the Rhine, there stood many, many
years since the castle of the Baron Von Landshort. It is now
quite fallen to decay, and almost buried among beech trees and
dark firs; above which, however, its old watch-tower may still be
seen struggling, like the former possessor I have mentioned, to
carry a high head and look down upon the neighboring country.
The baron was a dry branch of the great family of
Katzenellenbogen,+ and inherited the relics of the property and
all the pride, of his ancestors. Though the warlike disposition
of his predecessors had much impaired the family possessions, yet
the baron still endeavored to keep up some show of former state.
The times were peaceable, and the German nobles in general had
abandoned their inconvenient old castles, perched like eagles'
nests among the mountains, and had built more convenient
residences in the valleys; still, the baron remained proudly
drawn up in his little fortress, cherishing with hereditary
inveteracy all the old family feuds, so that he was on ill terms
with some of his nearest neighbors, on account of disputes that
had happened between their great-great-grandfathers.
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