friends, with the whole city of Klosterheim, in a feverish state of insecurity. This state of things lasted for nearly three weeks; but at length a morning of unexpected pleasure dawned upon the city. The prisoners were in one night all released. In half an hour the news ran over the town and the university; multitudes hastened to the college, anxious to congratulate the prisoners on their deliverance from the double afflictions of a dungeon and of continual insecurity. Mere curiosity also prompted some, who took but little interest in the prisoners or their cause, to inquire into the circumstances of so abrupt and unexpected an act of grace. One principal court in the college was filled with those who had come upon this errand of friendly interest or curiosity. Nothing was to be seen but earnest and delighted faces, offering or acknowledging congratulation; nothing to be heard but the language of joy and pleasure--friendly or affectionate, according to the sex or relation of the speaker. Some were talking of procuring passports for leaving the town; some anticipating that this course would not be left to their own choice, but imposed, as the price of his clemency, by the Landgrave. All, in short, was hubbub and joyous uproar, when suddenly a file of the city guard, commanded by an officer, made their way rudely and violently through the crowd, advancing evidently to the spot where the liberated prisoners were collected in a group. At that moment the Count St. Aldenheim was offering his congratulations. The friends to whom he spoke were too confident in his honor and integrity to have felt even one moment's misgiving upon the true causes which had sheltered him from the Landgrave's wrath, and had thus given him a privilege so invidious in the eyes of those who knew him not, and on that account so hateful in his own. They knew his unimpeachable fidelity to the cause and themselves, and were anxiously expressing their sense of it by the warmth of their salutations at the very moment when the city guard appeared. The count, on his part, was gayly reminding them to come that evening and fulfil their engagement to drink his aunt of jovial memory in her own Johannisberg, when the guard, shouldering aside the crowd, advanced, and, surrounding the group of students, in an instant laid the hands of summary arrest each upon the gentleman who stood next him. The petty officer who commanded made a grasp at one of the most distinguished in dress, and seized rudely upon the gold chain depending from his neck. St. Aldenheim, who happened at the moment to be in conversation with this individual, stung with a sudden indignation at the ruffian eagerness of the men in thus abusing the privileges of their office, and unable to control the generous ardor of his nature, met this brutal outrage with a sudden blow at the officer's face, levelled with so true an aim, that it stretched him at his length upon the ground.