Maître Bernard Hertzog had slept a couple of hours, and the boiling of the water in the millrace alone competed with the noise of his loud snoring, when suddenly a guttural voice, arising in the midst of the deep silence, cried—  
"Dröckteufel! Dröckteufel! have you forgotten everything?"
 
The voice was so piercing that Maître Bernard, waking with a sudden start, felt his hair creeping with horror. He raised himself upon his elbow and listened again with eyes starting with . The hut was as dark as a cellar; he listened, but not a breath, not a sound, came; only far away, far beyond the ruins, a dull, distant roar was heard among the mountains.
 
Bernard, with neck outstretched, heaved a deep sigh; in a minute he began to out—
 
"Who is there? What do you want?"
 
But no answer came.
 
"It was a dream," he said, falling back upon his heather couch. "I must have been lying upon my back. There is nothing at all in dreams and nightmares—nothing! nothing!"
 
But in the midst of the restored silence the same doleful cry was again repeated—
 
"Dröckteufel! Dröckteufel!"
 
And as Maître Bernard, fairly beside himself, was preparing for instant flight, but with his face to the wall, and unable to move from his couch, the voice, in a chant, with pauses and strange accents, went on—
 
"The Queen Faileube, to our king, Chilperic—Queen Faileube, learning that Septimanie, the governess of the young princes, had against the king's life—Queen Faileube said to the lord, 'My lord, the waits until you are asleep to give you a mortal wound. She has conspired with Sinnégisile and Gallomagus against your life! She has poisoned her husband, your faithful Jovius, to live with Dröckteufel. Let your anger come down upon her like lightning, and your with a sword!' And Chilperic, assembling all his council in the castle of Nideck, said, 'We have cherished a viper; she has plotted our death. Let her be cut into three pieces. Let Dröckteufel, Sinnégisile, and Gallomagus perish with her! Let the rejoice!' And the cried, 'So let it be! The of Chilperic is an abyss into which his enemies fall and perish!' Then Septimanie was brought to be put to the torture and examined; a ring of iron was bound around her temples; it was ; her eyes started; her blood-dropping mouth murmured, 'Lord king, I have offended. Dröckteufel, Gallomagus, and Sinnégisile have also conspired!' And the following night a festoon of and swung from the towers of Nideck! The birds of rejoiced over the rich spoil. Dröckteufel, what would I not have done for thee? I would have had thee King of Austrasia, and thou hast forgotten me!"
 
The guttural voice sank down, and my uncle Bernard, more dead than alive, breathing a sigh of terror, murmured—
 
"Oh, I have never done anybody any wrong! I am only a poor old chronicler! Let me not die without absolution, far from the succour of the Church!"
 
The great wooden box full of heather seemed at every effort to escape to sink deeper and deeper. The poor man thought he was going down into a , when, happily, reappeared, crying—
 
"Well, Maître Bernard, what did I say? here is the storm."
 
And now the hut was for an instant full of dazzling light, and my uncle, who was lying facing the door, could see the whole valley lighted up, with its innumerable fir-trees crowded along the slopes down the valley as close as the grass of the fields, its rocks piled up on the banks of the river, which was rolling its sulphurous blue waves over the rounded of the ravine, and the towers of Nideck rising proudly in the air fifteen hundred feet above.
 
Then the darkness covered all up again. That was the first flash.
 
But in that instant of time he caught sight of a strange figure at the end of the hut without being able to make out what it really was.
 
Great drops were beginning to patter on the roof. Christian lighted a rush, and seeing Maître Bernard with his hands convulsively clutching the edge of his box of heather, and his face covered with of cold sweat, he cried—
 
"Why! Master Bernard! what is the matter with you?"
 
But, without answering, he merely to the figure up in the corner; it was an old woman, so very advanced in extreme old age, so yellow and wrinkled, with such a hooked nose, fingers so skinny, and lips so lean, that she looked like an old with all its feathers gone. There were only a few hairs left on the back of her head; the rest of her was as bare of covering as an egg. A threadbare gown covered her poor skeleton figure. She was sightless, and the expression of her face was one of constant reverie.
 
Christian, noticing my uncle's inquiring look, turned his head and said quietly—
 
"It's old Irmengarde, the old of legends. She is waiting to die till the old tower falls into the ."
 
Uncle Bernard, stupefied, looked at the woodman; he did not seem inclined to joke; on the contrary, he looked serious.
 
"Come, Christian," said the good man, "you mean to have your joke."
 
"Joke! no indeed, old and feeble as you see her, that old woman knows everything; the spirit of the ruins is in her. She was living when the old lords of the castle lived."
 
Now my old uncle was very nearly falling at this disclosure.
 
"But what do you mean?" he cried; "the castle of Nideck has been down these thousand years!"
 
"What if it was two thousand years?" said the woodman, making the sign of the cross as a new flash lighted up the valley; "what does that prove? The spirit of the ruins lives in her. A hundred and eight years Irmengarde has lived with this spirit in her. Before her it was in old Edith of Haslach; before Edith in some other—"
 
"Do you believe that?"
 
"Do I believe it! It is as sure, Master Bernard, as that the sun will be back in three hours' time. Death is night, life is day. After night comes day, then night again, and so on without end. The sun is the soul of the sky, the great spirit that is in us all, and the souls of the saints are like the stars which shine in the night, and which will never cease to return."
 
Bernard Hertzog replied not another word, but having risen, he began suspiciously to consider the aspect of that woman, who sat still in a carved out of the rock. He noticed above the niche some rough on the stone representing three trees with their branches , and forming a sort of crown; lower down were three cut in the . Three trees are the arms of the Tribocci (dreien büchen), three toads are the arms of the Merovingian kings.
 
What was the surprise of the old chronicler! now took the place of alarm.
 
"Here," thought he, "is the oldest monument of the Frankish race in Gaul. That old woman reminds me of some fallen queen, left here a of ages long gone by. But how am I to carry the niche away?"
 
He began to consider.
 
Then was heard far away in the woods the of the of many cattle and deep . The rain fell faster; the flashes of lightning, like flights of frightened birds in the dark, touched each other by the tips of their wings;............