"My promise," he murmured with a last attempt to gather strength. "Father will look at me with contempt if----"
"If you have reached a great, proud future?" Zalika interrupted him passionately. "Then you can go before him and ask if he dares consider you with contempt. He would keep you upon the ground while you have wings which will carry you high up. He does not understand a nature like yours; he will never learn to understand it. Will you languish and go to ruin for only a word's sake? Go with me, my Hartmut--with me, to whom you are all in all--out into freedom."
She drew him along, slowly but irresistibly. He still resisted, but did not tear himself away; and amidst the prayers and caresses of his mother this resistance slowly gave way--he followed.
A few moments later the pond lay wholly deserted; mother and son had disappeared; the sound of their steps died away. Night and silence brooded alone. Only over yonder in the fog of the marsh fluttered that noiseless spectral life. It floated and vanished, rose and sank again in restless play--the mysterious sign of flame.
PART II.
CHAPTER VIII.
The warm, golden light of a clear September day lay over the green ocean of forest, which stretched as far as the eye could reach. These immense forests had covered this part of Southern Germany for countless years; trees one hundred years old were no rarity among them. The whole bore the character of a mountainous forest, for hills and dales succeeded one another.
While the railroads spun their web all around the country, drawing one place after another within their grasp, this "Wald," as these miles and miles of wooded land were briefly called by the people, lay still and deserted, like a green island, almost untouched by the life and strife around.
Here and there a village rose from the forest green, or an old castle, almost in ruins, gray and dilapidated. There was one exception to it, in a powerful, old, gray edifice which stood upon a height and overlooked the whole vicinity. This was "Furstenstein," once the hunting lodge of the sovereign, but at present the habitation of the Chief of all the foresters.
The castle dated from the beginning of the last century and had been built with all the waste of space of that epoch when the hunting lodge of the Prince had to accommodate for weeks the whole court suite.