Those had been hard years for the old priest and Marget.  They had been favorites, but of course that changed when they came under the shadow of the bishop’s frown.  Many of their friends fell away entirely, and the rest became cool and distant.  Marget was a lovely girl of eighteen when the trouble came, and she had the best head in the village, and the most in it.  She taught the harp, and earned all her clothes and pocket money by her own industry.  But her scholars fell off one by one now; she was forgotten when there were dances and parties among the youth of the village; the young fellows stopped coming to the house, all except Wilhelm Meidling—­and he could have been spared; she and her uncle were sad and forlorn in their neglect and disgrace, and the sunshine was gone out of their lives.  Matters went worse and worse, all through the two years.  Clothes were wearing out, bread was harder and harder to get.  And now, at last, the very end was come.  Solomon Isaacs had lent all the money he was willing to put on the house, and gave notice that to-morrow he would foreclose.

Chapter 2

Three of us boys were always together, and had been so from the cradle, being fond of one another from the beginning, and this affection deepened as the years went on—­Nikolaus Bauman, son of the principal judge of the local court; Seppi Wohlmeyer, son of the keeper of the principal inn, the “Golden Stag,” which had a nice garden, with shade trees reaching down to the riverside, and pleasure boats for hire; and I was the third—­Theodor Fischer, son of the church organist, who was also leader of the village musicians, teacher of the violin, composer, tax-collector of the commune, sexton, and in other ways a useful citizen, and respected by all.  We knew the hills and the woods as well as the birds knew them; for we were always roaming them when we had leisure—­at least, when we were not swimming or boating or fishing, or playing on the ice or sliding down hill.

And we had the run of the castle park, and very few had that.  It was because we were pets of the oldest servingman in the castle—­Felix Brandt; and often we went there, nights, to hear him talk about old times and strange things, and to smoke with him (he taught us that) and to drink coffee; for he had served in the wars, and was at the siege of Vienna; and there, when the Turks were defeated and driven away, among the captured things were bags of coffee, and the Turkish prisoners explained the character of it and how to make a pleasant drink out of it, and now he always kept coffee by him, to drink himself and also to astonish the ignorant with.  When it stormed he kept us all night; and while it thundered and lightened outside he told us about ghosts and horrors of every kind, and of battles and murders and mutilations, and such things, and made it pleasant and cozy inside; and he told these things from his own experience largely.  He had seen many ghosts