“Thereupon Prince Melchior and Prince Otto rode away in anger, for they coveted the golden road as well as the lady.  Prince Melchior, who loved fighting, went home to collect an army and avenge the insult, as he called it.  Prince Otto, whose mind worked more subtly, set himself by secret means to stir up disaffection among the Carinthians, telling them that their labour and suffering had gone to make the splendid useless avenue of gold; and he persuaded them the more easily because it was perfectly true. (He forbore to add that ho coveted it for his own.) But Prince Caspar, having seen his lady-love, could find no room in his heart either for anger or even for schemes to prove his valour.  He could think of her and of her only, day and night.  And finding that his thoughts brought her nearer to him the nearer he rode to the stars, he turned his horse towards the Alps, and there, on the summit, among the snows, lived solitary in a little hut.

“His mountain overlooked the plain of Carinthia, but from such a height that no news ever came to him of the Grand Duchess or her people.  From his hut, to which never a woodman climbed, nor even a stray hunter, he saw only a few villages shining when they took the sun, a lake or two, and a belt of forest through which—­for it hid the palace—­sometimes at daybreak a light glinted from the golden avenue.  But one night the whole plain broke out far and wide with bonfires, and from the grand-ducal park—­over which the sky shone reddest—­he caught the sound of a bell ringing.  Then he bethought him that the three years were past, and that these illuminations were for the wedding; and he crept to bed, ashamed and sorrowful that he had failed and another deserved.

“Towards daybreak, as he tossed on his straw, he seemed to hear the bells drawing nearer and nearer, until they sounded close at hand.  He sprang up, and from the door of his hut he saw a rider on muleback coming up the mountain track through the snow.  The rider was a woman, and as she alighted and tottered towards him, he recognized the Grand Duchess.  He carried her in and set her before his fire; and there, while he spread food before her, she told him that the Princes Melchior and Otto had harried her lands and burnt her palace, and were even now fighting with each other for the golden avenue.

“Then,” said Caspar, pulling his rusty sword from under a heap of faggots, “I will go down and win it from them; for I see my hour coming at last.”

But the Princess said, “Foolish man, it is here!  And as for the golden avenue, that too is here, or all that was ever worth your winning.”  And thereupon she drew aside her cloak, shaking the snow from it; and when the folds parted and the firelight fell on her bosom, he saw a breastplate gleaming—­a single plate of gold—­and in the centre of it the imprint of a horse’s hoof.

“So these two, Cavalier—­or so the story reached me—­lived content in their silly hut, nor ever thought it worth their while to descend to the plain and lose what they had found. . . .  But you were good enough just now to inquire concerning my own poor adventures.”