"As fast as my horse can carry me," answered the young man, and galloped on, along one of the narrow hill paths that led towards Anweiler, with an unrivalled view of the whole Palatinate below him on the left, and, on the right, the mountains of the Haard, with their innumerable castles, abbeys, and monasteries, crowning every peak, and barring every gorge. When he reached the road from Landau to Zweibrücken, near Anweiler, instead of following it far, he turned away again before he had gone on a quarter of a mile, in the direction of Weissenburg, and entered a dark and gloomy looking valley, where rocks and trees were far more plentiful than churches or human habitations. Closing in on either side, the high hills left but a narrow space for the dell as it wound on, till at length, at a spot where the basin extended a little, a tall rock rose up in the centre, covered with wood wherever the roots could find earth to bear them, and crowned with walls and towers above. Ferdinand gave his horse the spur, and in a few minutes more stood before the gates of Eppenfeld. CHAPTER XIV. Before the small chapel in the wood, below the castle of Ehrenstein, there was, as I have said, an open space of about half an acre. The trees encroached upon it here and there, rendering the boundary-line broken and irregular, detracting nought from the sylvan beauty of the scene. On the contrary, the variety was pleasant to the eye; and the old oaks and beeches, which, starting out before their fellows, obtruded on the soft dry turf, rendered the sight more agreeable by depriving it of all formality. It looked like a space for fairy revels; and in truth, though the fathers, if they had seen any of the little good people present, might have sent them roughly to some other quarters, took no slight pleasure, as was commonly the case with the monks, in the charms of the spot where they had fixed one of their buildings, and would rather have forfeited a great deal than have cut down one of the trees which formed the great ornament of the place. The varied colours of the spring, the summer, and the autumn, afforded much delight to the good old men. The sunshine, streaming through the green leaves, was like the return of the summer of life to the winter of their age; and it was the boast of the Lord Abbot--though he was not otherwise than fond of venison--that neither stag, nor roe, nor fallow-deer, had ever been slaughtered in those woods by his command. Thus the wild creatures of the forest, who have more sense than we give them credit for, looked upon the wood, within two or three hundred yards of the chapel, as a place of refuge, a sort of sanctuary; and the open space between the trees and the building as a play-ground for their evening hours. The beams of the full day, however, were pouring over the blades of grass, and tinging with bright yellow the beech leaves above, when Count Frederick of Leiningen, with a small party behind him, drew in his rein at the