"The Hohenwalds," Karl began, "have furnished food for gossip to the Saxon aristocracy for many years. They are a singular race; their peculiarities have been inherited for generations, but the haughty Barons troubled themselves little as to what the world might say of them, and lived out their convictions with unshaken fidelity. It was a Hohenwald who, in Augustus the Strong's time, stood forth at the Saxon Court as the champion of good old German morality in social life, scourging with bitter words the wanton frivolity of the lovely court dames, and denouncing the extravagant luxury that ruined poor Saxony. All that saved him from persecution and perhaps imprisonment in Koenigstein was Augustus the Strong's own declaration that the Hohenwalds had always been fools--it was best to let them wag their tongues and pay them no heed. So Werner von Hohenwald was not sent to Koenigstein, but to his own castle, which he never left for many years, leading much the same hermit-life there as is led by his great-grandson to-day. Another Hohenwald, the father of the present Baron, distinguished himself in the early part of this century as a warm friend of Prussia and a bitter opponent of the Franco-Saxon alliance and of the first Napoleon, who would have had him shot but for the interposition of the king, who declared, as Augustus the Strong had done, that the Hohenwalds were fools, not to be too severely dealt with. He, too, was sent to live in undisturbed retirement in his own castle. The present lord, Baron Werner, resembles his forbears; like them he is unyielding, keen in word and in action, a steadfast, severe man, living according to his own convictions, and holding himself aloof from a world that does not share them. I do not know him personally, but I have heard so much of him from my friend Arno and from my own father, who was intimate with him many years ago, that I have a very vivid idea of him, I can see him in my mind's eye,--a tall, stout old man, his stern face framed in beard and hair of silver, from which the black eyes can flash terribly when he is angry, although they beam mildly enough when their gaze rests upon his darling, his daughter. It is said that in his youth, departing from the traditions of his family, he was a gay and genial man of fashion. As a wealthy landed proprietor, he passed his summers at Hohenwald, his winters in Dresden. At that time my father knew him well, and their friendship lasted for a number of years after the Baron married a Countess Harrangow. He seemed to live very happily with his beautiful wife, keeping open house, as well in Dresden in the winter as in summer upon his estate of Hohenwald, which is not far from the Prussian boundary. His wife's relatives visited him frequently, and often spent weeks beneath his roof, where they were upon the best of terms with the lord of the castle, although they were Prussians, and he a bitter enemy of Prussia and a great