The strangers looked from their high position with warm interest on the chimneys and towers behind the old discolored and patched walls that lay before them. In that place had once been preserved a treasure, which, if found again, would interest the whole civilized world and excite hundreds to intellectual labor. The landscape looked exactly like other German landscapes, and the village was exactly like other German villages; and yet there was an attraction about the place that inspired a joyful hope in the travelers. Was it the globe-like ornament that crowned the stout old tower? or was it the arch of the gate which just veiled from the travelers in alluring darkness the entrance to the town? or the stillness of the empty valley, in which the place lay without suburbs and outhouses, as the towns are portrayed on old maps? or the herds of cattle that went out of the gate into the open space, and bounded merrily on the pasture ground? or was it perhaps the keen morning air which blew about the temples of the wanderers? Both felt that something remarkable and promising hovered over the valley in which, as searchers of the past, they were entering. "Imagine the landscape as it once appeared to the eye," began the Professor; "the forest, in olden times, encircled the town more closely; the hills seemed higher, the valley deeper; the monastery then lay, with the dwellings of its dependants, as in a deep basin. There, to the south, where the country sharply rises, the monks had their vineyards. Gradually the houses of the town drew about the monastery. Take from those towers beyond us the caps that were placed upon them a century ago, give them back their old pinnacles, place here and there a turret on the walls, and you have an ideal, wondrously beautiful picture of mediaeval days." "And upon the same road that leads us thither, a learned monk once strode with his precious manuscripts towards the quiet valley; there to teach his companions, or to shield himself, perhaps, from powerful enemies," the Doctor said, with enthusiasm.