The Argosy — page 325: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

300 By the Vulture’s Nest. Graham almost dropped her hand at those words, but he mustered up his courage, and bade her tell him all. She heaved a sigh, bent her head low, and whispered her heart’s secret to him. ‘““T always liked Johann from the castle, long before he entered the Count’s service, but I never knew I cared for him so very much until yesterday. I had seen him go to the post by the Vulture’s Nest with the Frenchman, and he did not return past my chalet; so when I heard that shot and the fall, 1 for a moment imagined it might have been Johann, and not till the evening could I be quite sure that he was safe. 1 have never passed such anxious hours in all my life, not even at my mother’s deathbed, which although it grieved us all so deeply, was to her a release from suffering.” She had been silent for some time, and yet not a word came from the lips of the man whom she had honoured with her con- fidence. At last she timidly looked up into his face. He was smiling sadly ; then he kissed her hand before she could withdraw it, and after another pause, he murmured : ‘Do you know what I was going to say before you told me about Johann from the castle?” Louise looked frightened, and then with a forced smile and with much hesitation she managed to answer: ‘Do you not think you had better not say it now that I have told you all?” “You are right, Louise; but you will ot forget that your name is inscribed in my heart for all time! Good-bye, if I stay I shall dis- obey you and say too much. Good-bye!” | He did not see the tears that started to the girl’s eyes, nor how she turned to hide them, lest he should look back once more. A very short time afterwards Louise married Johann, who was no longer Johann from the castle, but a forester, with a pretty house of his own, surmounted by a splendid deer’s antlers, a “‘ sixteenender ” whom Johann killed the day he won his bride. The house is handsomer and much more comfortable than those of the other foresters, and yet Douglas Graham is in despair because Louise will not allow him to do her the least kindness. But Louise is right ; if she gave way to the generous Englishman’s fancies her forester’s house would be changed into a small palace in a very short time. On the day of the wedding, at which Graham was not present, the Count signed a document which was to be preserved in the Castle- library, and which enjoined all the future proprietors of the place never again to place a hunter upon the Post by the Vulture’s West. Gomicbooks.com