The baron mounted the highest tower
and strained his eyes in hopes of catching a distant sight of the
count and his attendants. Once he thought he beheld them; the
sound of horns came floating from the valley, prolonged by the
mountain-echoes. A number of horsemen were seen far below slowly
advancing along the road; but when they had nearly reached the
foot of the mountain they suddenly struck off in a different
direction. The last ray of sunshine departed, the bats began to
flit by in the twilight, the road grew dimmer and dimmer to the
view, and nothing appeared stirring in it but now and then a
peasant lagging homeward from his labor.
While the old castle of Landshort was in this state of perplexity
a very interesting scene was transacting in a different part of
the Odenwald.
The young Count Von Altenburg was tranquilly pursuing his route
in that sober jog-trot way in which a man travels toward
matrimony when his friends have taken all the trouble and
uncertainty of courtship off his hands and a bride is waiting for
him as certainly as a dinner at the end of his journey. He had
encountered at Wurtzburg a youthful companion-in-arms with whom
he had seen some service on the frontiers--Herman Von
Starkenfaust, one of the stoutest hands and worthiest hearts of
German chivalry--who was now returning from the army.
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