A few hours later, mounted horsemen rode out into the night, and telegraphs and letters spread the news of the Count's sudden death far and wide. In the big drawing-room heavy silver candelabra, with their myriad candles, are burning at the head of the couch where Count Eichhof is lying sunk in his last sleep. His head is turned slightly to one side, so as entirely to conceal the fatal wound in the right temple, and the smile that the excitement of the hunt had called to his face still lingers there. "Can this be? Is it really true?" murmurs the Countess, seated in an arm-chair beside the couch, and gazing fixedly with dry eyes at the smiling face; while the old servant, kneeling at the dead man's feet, slowly shakes his white head. He cannot believe it, it is so unlike his master to die; it must all be an evil dream. But below-stairs all are fully convinced of its reality. The huntsman in the kitchen is telling circumstantially, for the twelfth time, the whole terrible story,--how the Count jumped across the ditch and the gun went off. Nor does he forget to mention the black rabbit that crossed their path when the chase had just begun, or his own frightful dream of the previous night, which had caused him to say to his wife when he left her, "Look out for some accident to-day!" And the cook listens with the same shudder that he felt the first time the story was told, only it passes off rather more quickly, and he is able to find consolation not only in the tankard to which he has frequent recourse, but also in the thought that he stands very well "with the young master" and will in all probability retain his position. At last the huntsman goes home, the kitchen is gradually deserted, and the lights are extinguished, leaving the castle in darkness, save for the broad glare out into the night from the windows of the big drawing-room, where he who was the castle's lord now lies at rest. CHAPTER VIII. AT THE TOMB. The Count's three sons hurried to Eichhof immediately upon the receipt of the sad news, and the obsequies were performed with all the gloomy pomp demanded by the occasion and by the rank of the deceased. The sarcophagus, in accordance with a traditionary custom of the family, was placed before the altar in the Eichhof monumental chapel, where it was to remain three years before it should be finally consigned to the tomb. The road to the chapel was still strewn with cut hemlock boughs, when Walter Eichhof slowly walked along it some days after the funeral ceremonies, while Bernhard and Lothar were busied over the affairs of the estate and the settlement of the Count's testamentary dispositions.