"We are at our goal," said the sportsman, "a few more steps and at a turn of the road you will see the roof of the forester's lodge." "I thank you, my Herr!" "But you shall not escape me thus! You penetrated much too far into the Royal Forest; I am a sort of assistant to the chief Forester, and must enquire about your antecedents. If I have understood the echo of these beech-aisles correctly, your name reminds one of Paradise, and it shall also remind me of it." "I am called Eva, my Herr." "Yet we no longer live in those primitive days when a Christian name sufficed to prove our identity before the Creator and created." "My name is Eva Kalzow!" "And your father?" "Regierungsrath." "How prosaic! One meets a fairy in the wood, and her father is a Regierungsrath! And now, you live--" "In Warnicken, my Herr!" "Thank you; the enquiry is closed, so far as I am concerned. I am an official personage, who has neither the duty nor the right to introduce himself by name. Think that I am the wild huntsman who traverses the woods at night with black hounds and halloes, but by day escorts lovely women. I shall not, however, place the campanula in my herbarium, but in a vase of fresh water, where bouquets of sweet recollections bloom. Farewell, my Fräulein!" The stranger took leave with a courteous inclination. Eva's glances followed him into the thicket, while the Kanzleiräthin, with her round, buxom daughter drew near from the other side. "You were surely not alone, Eva?" said the latter. "I heard the bushes rustle over there." "And how we have sought you; it is late already," remarked the Kanzleiräthin, as she put on her spectacles, in order to examine the girl from head to foot and see whether some adventure did not peep out of the folds of her dress. "I had lost my way," said Eva, "and had fallen asleep beneath the weeping willows! There I dreamed of a wild huntsman; he took me upon his steed, and we sped through the air like a whirlwind." "Eva, where are you?" resounded the Regierungsrath's voice. "The mists are beginning to rise from the marshes; we shall take cold on our way home." "I have seen the Erl-king, papa, with the golden hoop; yet I am still alive, and you will take me home safe and sound, and not as a dying child." And, beginning to warble Schubert's song of the Erl-King, Eva walked on with firm steps and exalted demeanour, in front of the home-bound party. CHAPTER III. DUAL LOVE AND EVIL REPUTE.