who is very soft-hearted, she begins to cry. Then I say, 'Frau Amtshauptmann, why do you cry? Can we help it if he will live like a heathen? Leave off crying, we have a good conscience.' But Herr Droi it's very hard for me, a lone person, to sit here and listen to the storm raging round the Schloss, and the rain beating against the windows, and the owls hooting, and the winds whistling along the passages, as if all the evil spirits were let loose. Just listen! what weather it is again!--Herr Droi, are you at all afraid?"

"Oh, non!" replied Herr Droi; but he sat still and listened to the weather outside and said at last: "Leesten, Mamsell, du tonnerre!"

"What! Pommes de terre?" asked Mamsell Westphalen, "what have potatoes to do with the weather at this season?"

"I not mean ze leetle boys wid ze brown jack'ts, I mean"--and here he made a rapid gesture with his hand indicating forked lightning--"I mean ze bright tsick-tsack wid rumpel, pumpel, rat-tat-te-tah."

"Then you are right, Herr Droi, for it really does go rumpel, pumpel, rat-tat-te-tah, out of doors."

"Ah!" said Herr Droi, "zat are ze tambours, zat are my camerades, ze grenadier." And he jumped up and marched up and down with his bearskin on his head, for here it was high enough; and then he stood still again: "Écoutez, zey march on ze marché, on ze market, and écoutez, zat are ze grand canons!"

And Mamsell Westphalen sat there with her hands folded in her lap and looked at him and shook her head and said: "How his soldiering does cling to him! He's generally a well-behaved man, what does he want to be looking so fierce for now? It's just like the old coachmen, when they can drive no longer, they are still always cracking their whips."

Presently the wife of Stalsch the weaver came in at the door,--she was Mamsell Westphalen's oracle and newspaper, bringing her the news of the town, and for every mouthful of news she brought to the castle, she took away a plateful of food,--she had turned her gown up over her head and the rain was streaming off her as from the roof of a house. She shook herself once, twice--

"Br-r-r, what a night it is," she said.

"That it is, Frau Meister," answered Mamsell Westphalen;--she always called her Frau Meister to show that she was the wife of a master weaver, "not for Stalsch's sake" she would say, "no, for my own sake, for what would people say if I were to be intimate with a woman of no standing. I can be proud like other folk."

"Mamsell," said the Frau Meister, "I came up to tell you the market-place is full of Frenchmen, and they've brought with them ever so many great cannons, and the Burmeister has sent for my husband, and has ordered him this dark night and in this weather to the villages round about to tell the peasants to be here with their waggons at noon tomorrow, and you see if you don't get some one quartered on you to-night."

"Heaven preserve us!" exclaimed Mamsell Westphalen, and went to the door and called to Hanchen and Corlin (the maids) and told them to light the fire in the blue room next hers, and to put up a couple of bedsteads for the Devil would soon send a bigmouthed French Colonel and a chattering ape of an adjutant up to the Schloss, and turning round to her company: "There they may lie," she said, "and if the ghost in the blue room is a Christian ghost it's not much sleep they'll get to-night and that's the best luck I wish them. For, Herr Droi," she went on, "the next room to this is haunted. Do you believe in ghosts?"

Herr Droi said, no.

Presently there was a noise outside and as Mamsell Westphalen looked out at the window, yes, there was a French Colonel with his adjutant coming in at the gate, and a couple of orderlies were following them. They were taken into the blue room where they put on dry clothes, and then they went up to the Amtshauptmann's room and had supper.

Herr Droi in the meantime sat deep in thought, muttering over and over again "Diable" and "Diantre", and on their questioning him it came out that he was in great fear; it might be his death he said, for if he were to go out in his uniform and the bearskin and sword and gun, he might be seen by one of the orderlies or one of the French sentries or some ruffian or other of a Frenchman and they might ask him where he came from and where he was going to, and then if he could not give a satisfactory account of himself, there would be the devil's own work, and the story of this afternoon might come out, and what would happen then?

"Herr Droi," said Mamsell Westphalen, "that's a bad business. You couldn't put on that imp Fritz Sahlmann's things, for if you did manage to squeeze yourself into them, they would be much too short for you. And the Herr Amtshauptmann's clothes? No, Herr Droi, you mustn't ask that of me. It would be just as if I were to set fire to the Schloss with my own hands. And, heaven be praised, we have no other men here. But Herr Droi you saved us when we were in danger this afternoon, and so I will save you in return. Your wife knows that you're up here amongst Christian folk. You shall sleep to-night in my four-post bedstead, and I will sleep with the housemaid; I'll put on fresh linen. Come, Frau Meister." So saying she went out, and presently she came back again, put fresh sheets on the bed and asked once more: "Herr Droi, are you not afraid?"

And Herr Droi again replied that he was not.

"That's all right," said she; "for it often goes tap--tap--tap, in a curious way close by. But it never comes into the room. I have had a horseshoe nailed over the door.--Listen, just listen! The Frenchmen are going to bed now. Just listen to the chattering! Herr Droi can you understand it all?"

"Ah, yes," said Herr Droi.

"I can easily believe it, for the wall is very thin. This was one large room once, but now it's made into two. Well, good night, Herr Droi. Come, Frau Meister."

So saying she went out, followed by the Frau Meister, and shortly afterwards by Herr Droi too, who suddenly remembered he had a message for the Frau Meister to take to his wife. Scarcely were the three out of the room, when some one flew along the corridor where the night-lamp was burning, into Mamsell Westphalen's room. It was that young rogue Fritz Sahlmann, and under his arm he had a lump of ice as large as a pumpkin; he climbed up the bedpost like a cat, and laid the lump of ice on the top of the bed. "Wait a little while, you old termagant, this is for the box on the ears I got," he said to himself. "It will perhaps cool you a little." And he slid down again and was out of the door in a moment.

Herr Droi now came back again, undressed, laid "la grande nation" on a chair by the side of the bed, blew out his candle, lay down, and stretched himself out in the nice soft bed and said: "Ah! que c'est bon;" then listened to the storm outside and the rain pouring down and the jabbering of the Frenchmen. At last the chattering ceased; and Herr Droi was half asleep and half awake--when tap--tap--tap. "Haha," thought Herr Droi, in French, "that's the ghost in the next room;" and he listened to hear what his countrymen would have to say to it. They lay quite still; but tap--tap--tap--it goes again and now it seems to Herr Droi to be in his room. Yes, it is in his room; and if it's in the room, it must have come in at the door. How else could it get in? So he caught up one of his shoes and flung it at the door. Bang! went the shoe against the door; the noise resounded through the corridor as if a thunderbolt had fallen. The Frenchmen in the next room began to move and to speak to one another. All however was soon quiet again, but tap--tap--tap--it went once more, close to Herr Droi's bed. He raised himself up and bent over the