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
Copyrights
The Mysterious Stranger from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
