My father said this gaily, but the General did not
recollect the laugh, or even the smile, which courtesy
exacts for a friend’s joke; on the contrary,
he looked grave and even fierce, ruminating on a matter
that stirred his anger and horror.
“Something very different,” he said, gruffly.
“I mean to unearth some of those fine people.
I hope, by God’s blessing, to accomplish a pious
sacrilege here, which will relieve our earth of certain
monsters, and enable honest people to sleep in their
beds without being assailed by murderers. I have
strange things to tell you, my dear friend, such as
I myself would have scouted as incredible a few months
since.”
My father looked at him again, but this time not with
a glance of suspicion—with an eye, rather,
of keen intelligence and alarm.
“The house of Karnstein,” he said, “has
been long extinct: a hundred years at least.
My dear wife was maternally descended from the Karnsteins.
But the name and title have long ceased to exist.
The castle is a ruin; the very village is deserted;
it is fifty years since the smoke of a chimney was
seen there; not a roof left.”
“Quite true. I have heard a great deal
about that since I last saw you; a great deal that
will astonish you. But I had better relate everything
in the order in which it occurred,” said the
General. “You saw my dear ward—my
child, I may call her. No creature could have
been more beautiful, and only three months ago none
more blooming.”
“Yes, poor thing! when I saw her last she certainly
was quite lovely,” said my father. “I
was grieved and shocked more than I can tell you, my
dear friend; I knew what a blow it was to you.”
He took the General’s hand, and they exchanged
a kind pressure. Tears gathered in the old soldier’s
eyes. He did not seek to conceal them. He
said:
“We have been very old friends; I knew you would
feel for me, childless as I am. She had become
an object of very near interest to me, and repaid
my care by an affection that cheered my home and made
my life happy. That is all gone. The years
that remain to me on earth may not be very long; but
by God’s mercy I hope to accomplish a service
to mankind before I die, and to subserve the vengeance
of Heaven upon the fiends who have murdered my poor
child in the spring of her hopes and beauty!”
“You said, just now, that you intended relating
everything as it occurred,” said my father.
“Pray do; I assure you that it is not mere curiosity
that prompts me.”
By this time we had reached the point at which the
Drunstall road, by which the General had come, diverges
from the road which we were traveling to Karnstein.
“How far is it to the ruins?” inquired
the General, looking anxiously forward.
“About half a league,” answered my father.
“Pray let us hear the story you were so good
as to promise.”
