Now and then he permitted the children to sing a hymn, and when the old walls sent back the echoes the hymn was as full of meaning as a fugue, and the days of old with their men of blood and iron rose before him, while the discord in the shrill voices of the children ascended to the skies like songs of praise. Of all hymns Philip loved best Luther’s “_A mighty fortress is our God!_” When the hymn was ended, when the last thin cry of the children had died away upon the air, Balzer would explain to them that the stronghold, or fortress, was man’s best type of the power and eternal protection of God; and that God’s fidelity to man could not be represented better than by the image of a stronghold. Once when an impertinent pupil reminded him that their own stronghold, the fortress of Neideck, was going to ruin, and that new ravages were visible every spring, Philip answered: “If our stronghold shows weakness here and there, it does so that we may see by the contrasting strength of its main walls and its foundations that it was built for all eternity. That is why a stronghold is a true image of the eternal being of God. It was in strongholds that Luther worked; he wrote his hymn in the fortress of Coburg and translated the Bible in the fortress of Wartburg.” When the day was fine he took his flute, and played it as he went down the east side of the mountain, followed by the children. Often the teacher and his pupils wandered into the woods opposite the castle. There Philip played his flute and the children sang and the echoes answered, and there the schoolmaster told the stories of all the strongholds in the country; not one of them was as remarkable as that of Neideck! On rainy days he kept school in the small dark lodge; the lessons were then short, and when the children had gone home, Balzer would go down into the dungeon or up into the watch-towers. The towers rose high above the mass of stone and overlooked the country. A rotten bridge stretched from the top of one tower to the top of the other. To reach the first Philip had to go to an upper story of the adjoining building; and to reach the second, where the tormented husband had cut his throat, he was forced to cross this bridge. Balancing his thin body on the decaying timbers, far above the broken roof of the castle, buffeted by the tempest and in peril of his life, Burg Balzer would shout strange and meaningless words, which he supposed were in the language of the ancient Teutons: “_Heia, Weia, Weigala, Waia!_” In his mind he was a warder of the far-off bygone days; the enemy was on its way to Neideck, winding up through the ravines of the Dill Mountains, and his cry was raised to warn the men within his castle. It was as difficult to get back to reality as it was to climb the bridge! * * * * *