[3] The parts of Germany subjected to the operation of the Secret Tribunal were called, from the blood which it spilt, or from some other reason (Mr. Palgrave suggests the ground tincture of the ancient banner of the district), the Red Soil. Westphalia, as the limits of that country were understood in the Middle Ages, which are considerably different from the present boundaries, was the principal theatre of the Vehme. CHAPTER III. Away with these!--True Wisdom's world will be Within its own creation, or in thine, Maternal Nature! for who teems like thee Thus on the banks of thy majestic Rhine? There Harold gazes on a work divine, A blending of all beauties, streams, and dells-- Fruit, foliage, crag, wood, cornfield, mountain, vine, And chiefless castles breathing stern farewells, From grey but leafy walls, where ruin greenly dwells. _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto III._ When Arthur Philipson left his father, to go on board the bark which was to waft him across the Rhine, he took but few precautions for his own subsistence, during a separation of which he calculated the duration to be very brief. Some necessary change of raiment, and a very few pieces of gold, were all which he thought it needful to withdraw from the general stock; the rest of the baggage and money he left with the sumpter-horse, which he concluded his father might need, in order to sustain his character as an English trader. Having embarked with his horse and his slender appointments on board a fishing-skiff, she instantly raised her temporary mast, spread a sail across the yard, and, supported by the force of the wind against the downward power of the current, moved across the river obliquely in the direction of Kirch-hoff, which, as we have said, lies somewhat lower on the river than Hans-Kapelle. Their passage was so favourable that they reached the opposite side in a few minutes, but not until Arthur, whose eye and thoughts were on the left bank, had seen his father depart from the Chapel of the Ferry, accompanied by two horsemen, whom he readily concluded to be the guide Bartholomew, and some chance traveller who had joined him; but the second of whom was in truth the Black Priest of St. Paul's, as has been already mentioned.