Here, as he perceived us, he halted in his strain and walked demurely by his cart. In a few words it was determined among us that we should inquire of him the road to the castle; but as each one declined the honor of gaining the information, upon the plea that perhaps his style of German might be unintelligible to the unpolite ears of the rustic, I volunteered the undertaking. “Good morning, my friend?” I hailed him. “Be so good as to tell us the way to the castle.” “Do you wish to see the castle?” “That is what we have come especially for.” “O, ’tis a magnificent sight!” (and he gazed fixedly on one of the ladies, a gay young beauty, as he spoke.) “O ’tis a magnificent sight! No one can tell better than I how beautiful it is. I have seen it in the morning when the sun was rising on it, making its red walls look like gold. I have seen it in the day, in the evening, and (I’ll tell you) I have seen it by the bright moonlight when—O, I have loved every old stone of it dearer than I do my life! But if you wish to see it, keep the right-hand road at the first fork, and follow it as far as you can, and when you come to the bower—Ah, I’ve seen it in the dark nights, too, curse it! curses on it! “Ho! for the bowers where his merry voice rings! Ho! for the billows where——” Here I lost the words of the boisterous music as he swung off and hurried to overtake his cart, leaving us all not a little astonished. “What an eccentric person!” whispered Miss Thornton to me, the lady who had attracted his gaze in so marked a manner, and the only lady in the company who understood German. “Ah! I see,” said I, “that admiration is never lost upon a lady, no matter from how humble a source it come. He was put beside himself, poor fellow! no wonder he appeared eccentric.” “It was not that,” she said. “Did you not see how he changed when he spoke of the arbor, as if some remembrance associated with it excited him? No—I think there is or was some one that I look like. I _would_ like to see any one that looks like me, no matter who she be. It’s so unusual, is it not?” “Vain puss!” “Then how merry he got again,” she continued, unheeding me. “No, I don’t understand such sudden changes—without any cause, too. He’s remarkably fine-looking for one in his condition—I beg pardon, sir, I wonder what bower he can mean; I never heard of any on the way to the castle.” “Nor I, but we shall surely find one; and when we do, I fear this little incident will engage my imagination more than the historic associations of the castle.”