While the Diet was thus holding its stormy session at Stantz, a conspiracy against Lucerne was discovered. The peasants of a rural district subject to the town were implicated in it; they had resolved to seize the occasion of an approaching festival for attacking the burghers, murdering the governor and council, and razing the city to the ground, so that in future nothing but a village, like their own, should exist on the spot. Tidings of the discovery of this conspiracy only aggravated the evil temper of the Diet. From invective and accusation both parties proceeded to the gravest threats. The deputies of Friburg and Soleure, in the hopes of restoring a better understanding, voluntarily withdrew their application, but in vain. Both parties were too highly exasperated. Reconciliation was held to be impossible. Disunion and civil war, that most wretched, most shameful warfare, were declared inevitable. The canton of Unterwalden was divided into two districts, each including one of the two great gorges of that region. Each of these valleys had its own towering mountains, with rocky summits, wooded heights, and green alpine pastures. Through each flowed a stream, or rather wild torrent, and the more level lands on their banks were thickly sprinkled with rustic dwellings, in near neighborhood. Stantz, the seat of the Diet, and a mere village, was the principal town of Lower Unterwalden. The sister valley of Upper Unterwalden was the most fertile and beautiful. Its chief village was Sarnen. A stream called the Melch ran through a branch of the valley, to which it gave its name of Melchthal. This dale was already noted ground in Swiss history, as the native spot of two of their heroes. Arnold von Melchthal, the companion of Tell, was a peasant of this valley, as his name denotes; and Arnold von Winkelried, to whose heroic self-sacrifice they owed the victory of Sempach, was also born and lived on the banks of the Melch. During the time of the critical Diet of Stantz, there lived in this valley a family by the name of Loewenbrugger. They were among the most important peasants of the dale. Ten children, five sons and five daughters, had been born in the paternal cottage. Some were living there at the time, with their mother, others had married and gone to different homes. The father was absent. Nicholas Loewenbrugger had for many years held a conspicuous position in his native district. He had served his country faithfully on many occasions by his wisdom and his courage. During their wars he had distinguished himself highly, not only for bravery, but also for humanity. When still in middle life, however, he had retired from the little world about him, leaving his paternal estate to the care of his wife, and choosing a cliff on one of the neighboring mountains, he there built himself a hermitage, in which he gave up his whole time to devotion and religious services. So great was the simplicity of his