his fierce and gloomy fits came over him, he looked so old, and also so wild and formidable, that no one would willingly have met him alone in the woods. He would often remain whole nights in the forest, with his gun over his shoulder, whistling or singing Italian airs in the moonlight, especially when autumnal gales whirled the leaves around him, and the lake was dark and agitated.

While he thus wandered in the deep woods or by the lonely lake, his only child, the beautiful Giuliana, who was born in Italy, sat, a solitary being in the forest lodge, and gazed at the charming pictures of Capri, Torrento, and Ischia, and many other lovely spots, views of which her father had brought with him from her enchanting native land, and which she in vain tried to recall to memory, for she had left it at so early an age that she retained but a very faint recollection of it, and to her its beauties were almost ideal. She did not remember her mother at all; her father could never be induced to speak of her; and from the time she first began to notice what was going on around her, she had always felt inclined to cry when other children spoke of their mothers, because she had none herself.

She was about three years of age when the Countess R. took her from Salerno on her journey home from Italy, accompanied by her father, who had attended the noble family on a previous journey; and thenceforth Giuliana had never seen her beautiful unknown native land. During the two years, over which period their travels had extended, her infantine mind had opened considerably; and of that time she preserved many reminiscences. She had always been a pet of the beautiful countess, and had travelled in the inside of the carriage with her and the two young counts Otto and Wilhelm, while her father went outside with the servants, though he was by no means always their companion, for when the party arrived at inns in towns where they knew no one, it was always Jæger Franzesco who enlivened them, and amused the whole party. Giuliana well remembered how the countess and both her sons had wept when her father, ten years back, took leave of them, and carried her, then only five years of age, to the forest lodge at Soröe, while the young counts, who were then nearly grown up, accompanied their invalid and melancholy mother to some German watering-place.

From that time, no year had passed over Giuliana's head without her having received several kind and costly souvenirs--dresses, and other gifts--from the countess. She always wore, however, the simple dress of a peasant girl, not to seem peculiar or arrogant amongst her neighbours; and she looked much prettier on Sundays, in her knitted red sleeves and flowered bodice, than the smartest country girls, who, instead of appearing in their national costume, awkwardly attempted to sport what they thought fashionable attire. It was only at weddings, and on other great occasions, that she drew forth from her stores some pearls, or other precious stones, to adorn herself; and occasionally when she was alone, or on her father's or her own birthday, she could not resist the childish temptation to put on the pretty foreign garb which she knew was worn in her native country, and which, copying from her father's Italian pictures, she had amused herself by making up out of the foreign silks and other materials the bountiful countess had sent her.

Jæger Franz bad acquired more knowledge from his foreign travels than was usually possessed by men in his situation of life. He had been a great favourite of the deceased count, and had been treated by him more as a friend than as a servant. Being the companion of so superior and well-informed a man as the count, had improved him greatly. Up to the last hour of the count's life, Franz had been, next to the countess and their two children, his chosen associate; and when, on his return from a scientific tour in Sicily and the coasts of Barbary, he was attacked by a fever at Naples, which put an end to his life, the countess, being at that time confined to her bed by illness, Franz was the only one from whose hands he would take the medicines prescribed for him; and his last request to his wife was, that she would provide for the future days of his faithful Franz.

The many foreign countries Franz had visited, and the intercourse in which he had so long lived with his superiors, had much improved his mind and tastes, and he was able to give his daughter a much better education than the generality of country girls could aspire to. Italian Franz's pretty daughter was, therefore, well known over the whole district of Soröe, and the daughters of the principal burghers in the town did not think it beneath them to visit her. If ever they took upon themselves the least airs of superiority, she soon put them down in a gay and seemingly whimsical manner. She was a favourite, also, among the peasant girls, and they were not a little proud that she generally classed herself amongst them, notwithstanding her intimacy with the daughters of the clergyman and other young ladies in the neighbourhood. Within the last few months, however, her numerous young female friends had evinced some lukewarmness towards her, and she was left more to solitude in her father's somewhat lonely house; but if those of her own sex partly deserted her, the young gentlemen of the neighbourhood, both those who belonged to town and country, began to pay much attention to the little Italian, who was now fifteen years of age, and had been confirmed the last Easter.

Franz had secretly embraced Roman Catholicism in Italy, but had not found it possible to avoid letting his daughter be brought up in the Lutheran religion, although in her early childhood she had learnt the Ave Maria, and treasured the Holy Virgin and all the saints in her heart.

In a small side-chamber in the forest lodge, into which no one entered but the father and daughter, there hung over a little domestic altar, made of oak-tree, a beautiful picture of the Queen of Heaven, before which a lamp burned day and night, and Giuliana never forgot to keep the lamp always trimmed, and to ornament the little altar with fresh flowers on every festival day. Her father often retired to solitary meditation, or prayer, in this little oratory; but on one particular day every year he locked himself in there for twenty-four hours, and always issued from it in a state of great agitation, and as pale as a corpse, exhausted by fasting and earnest prayer. This was always on the 2nd of November, All Souls' Day.

Giuliana had once asked her father why he kept that particular day so strictly, but she never ventured to repeat the inquiry, she had been so frightened by the terribly withering look he cast upon her. There also lay an impenetrable veil of mystery over her mother's fate, and the history of her own childish years, which she never dared to attempt to raise. She was always glad when her moody father seemed for a little while to forget the past and the future. He also appeared to enjoy these short intervals of forgetfulness, and many people thought him the gayest and happiest man breathing. However, whenever All Souls' Day approached, he avoided the society of his fellow-beings, and plunged into the depths of the forest night and day, apparently in quest of game; but he frequently returned on these occasions without having shot anything, and often without having once discharged his gun.

It was on just such an evening in the beginning of October that Giuliana, in her loneliness, had taken out her dear Italian costume, to please herself by putting it on, and perhaps amuse her father when he came home. She was sitting with the silver ornaments in her dark hair, with the rose-coloured bodice and skirt of which she had read, and with the little pictures she loved so much before her, fancying herself amidst the charming scenes her imagination so often portrayed. It was late in the evening when she