"'They know nothing positively, Herr Baron,' he said. 'At midnight, as the last dance was being played down in the inn--the judge's son was holding his wedding feast--they suddenly heard the fire-bells ring from the towers, and, rushing out, they saw Mother Lamitz's old hut up on the forest edge in bright flames. The fire streamed as quietly into the sky as if from a wood-pile, and although half the village was on foot, and the fire engine was dragged up the mountain, they could do nothing whatever, the flames having already devoured the last corner of the old rookery. It was only when there was nothing left to save that they mastered the fire; the ground walls, about a man's height, alone remain standing, if they too have not fallen by this time. At first there seemed to be nothing left of the women and the child. At length some one discovered in the corner where the loom had stood a ghastly heap of ashes and blackened bones, undoubtedly the remains of old Betsey, who, as old women can never be warm enough, probably heated the oven so hot that the rotten thing burst and the flames reached the rafters of the loom. She must have been quickly suffocated by the smoke and have died without further pain. But what became of her daughter and the little one nobody knows, and as for the donkey, which she esteemed so highly, not the smallest piece of its hide or bones can be discovered!'" ROTHENBURG ON THE TAUBER ROTHENBURG ON THE TAUBER. It was Easter Tuesday. The people who had celebrated this feast of resurrection by an open-air excursion in the gayly blossoming springtime were thronging back to their houses and the work-day troubles of the morrow. All the highroads swarmed with carriages and pedestrians, and the railroads were overcrowded in spite of the extra trains; for it was many years since there had been such continuously lovely Easter weather. The evening express, standing in the Ansbach station ready to depart in the direction of Würzburg, was twice as long as usual. Nevertheless, every seat appeared to be occupied, when a straggler of the second class, trying to enter at the last moment, knocked in vain at every door, and peered into each _coupé_, meeting everywhere a more or less ungracious or mischievous shrug of the shoulders. Finally, the guard at his side made a sudden decision, opened a _coupé_ of the first class, shoved the late-comer into the dim interior, and slammed the door just as the train began to move. A woman who, curled up like a black lizard, had been slumbering in the opposite corner suddenly started up and cast an angry look at the unwelcome disturber of her solitude.