beside the lamp until she fell asleep in the arm-chair. It might be somewhat past midnight, when Drost Aagé awoke, strengthened in body, and refreshed by the deep sleep, caused by exhaustion, which seemed to have given a favourable turn to his illness. He was still, however, in a feverish state; he looked around him with surprise, and appeared not to know where was. The pale sleeping nurse, beside the lamp, seemed to him, as the light faintly lit up her emaciated visage, like a sitting corpse. He half arose and stared fixedly at her; he remarked signs of strong agitation in her deathlike face; her toothless gums mumbled, but without any sound; it appeared as though she wished to speak, but had not the power to utter a word. It seemed to him, as if he now beheld what he had often heard and read of in ancient sagas and poems of olden time. The dark vaulted chamber in his imagination was a subterranean prophet's cave, and the old mumbling crone a dead prophetess, on whose tongue Runic letters had been laid to cause her to prophesy.[3] He tried to rise and the attempt succeeded; his shattered limbs were strengthened and pliant. He wrapped the white woollen coverlet around him, and soon stood listening on the floor, and gazing on the old woman's visage. "Whom talkest thou with?--corpse! what dost mumble of in thy grave?" he whispered, and she moved her mouth still faster. "Murder, murder!" she exclaimed, at length, in audible words. "Hark, hark! now his head falls before the axe." At the same instant Aagé actually heard with dismay a sound outside the window, as of the stroke of an axe; he rushed forward, and pulled aside the curtain. The light of a number of torches glared on him from the back court of the castle. He saw with horror, a body of men-at-arms surrounding a scaffold, on which stood an executioner with a bloody head in his hand. A cold shudder came over Aagé; he knew not, as yet, whether he waked or dreamed; he stood speechless, as if rooted to the spot, and gazed on the horrid sight; a low chant fell on his ear, and he beheld a crowd of Franciscan monks advance under the scaffold with a black coffin. Among the spectators he recognised Junker Christopher's dark countenance, strongly lit up by a torch. The bloody head fell from the executioner's hand, and it seemed to him, to his inexpressible horror, to be the king's; he staggered back and overturned the table with the lamp. The old woman waked in affright, and shrieked loudly; but Aagé rushed out of the chamber, into the dark passage, in indescribable consternation. "Murdered!--the king murdered!" was the cry of his inmost soul; but no word passed his lips; he went on, like a sleep-walker, with staring eyes, not knowing whither he was going. "Here he was to sleep--here close by me,"--he thought, and stopped at a side door. He had already extended his hand to open it, when he saw a light, and heard footsteps at a distance in the passage. The door