"His is a hard fate!" replied Albert, casting his eye at the sleeping man. "Driven from house and home--an outcast--a price offered to any villain who chooses to level his gun at him--under the earth by day, and by night wandering about like a thief! Truly, it is hard; and all this because he is faithful to his lord!" "That man has suffered much in his lifetime," said Lichtenstein, with a serious look. "I have known him from the days of his childhood, and I can vouch for his having always wished to do what is right and just. The means indeed he applied to attain his object were at times not fitted to further his purpose; on other occasions his intentions were misunderstood, and he too often allowed himself to be carried away by the violence of passion--but where lives the man of which this might not be said? Truly, he has wofully repented himself." He stopt short, fearing he had said more than he ought before Albert, who asked in vain to hear something further of his character. The old man sank into silence and deep thought. The sun having risen over the mountains and dispersed the mist which hung about the vallies, invited Albert to the window to enjoy the splendid view. A lovely valley, surrounded by wooded heights, with three smiling villages scattered over its surface, and a rapid stream running through it, lay at the foot of the rock of Lichtenstein. It was like beholding the earth from a point in the heavens. Leaving the valley and looking to the wooded heights, his eye rested with delight upon picturesque groups of rocks and the mountain of the Alb, behind which rises the castle of Achalm, and forms the boundary of the immediate surrounding country. Beyond the walls of Achalm, the distant hills were visible to the right and left. The rock of Lichtenstein, reaching, as it were, into the clouds, commands an extensive view of Würtemberg, free and unbroken, into the far lowland. The morning sun throwing its oblique rays across the landscape, Albert was transported with the beauty of its scenery. The fertile fields spread before him, surrounded by the wooded hills, he compared to variegated carpets, edged, as it were, with borders of dark green and brown, deriving their different shades and colours from the tints thrown over them by the dawning day. And then turning to the country between Lichtenstein and the distant Asperg, he exclaimed, "What charms for the lover of the picturesque! No continuous uninterrupted plain to weary the beholder, the eye ranges from hill to mountain in pleasing variety, and rests on the luxuriant valley, with its meandering stream gently rippling along in its course."