Her guilty spirit cannot rest, but wanders in Orlamunde and Blankenburg. Her appearance always betokens death in the family.
Frau Berta is also called the White Lady. She haunts the imperial royal palaces, and also Darmstadt and Carlsruhe.
As family ghost she harms no one, greets every one she meets, never speaks, and always wears a white veil and carries a bunch of keys in her girdle.
The Chapel of Roses.
It was a stormy, dismal winter night, when a teamster drove with a heavy load of wine along the almost impassable road near the little mountain church of Elend, at the foot of the Brocken.
The disc of the moon blinked only seldom through the dark clouds, which, restless, and ever succeeded by new ones, chased each other across the heavens.
A sharp north wind shook the bare branches of the trees that grew thick on both sides of the way, blew the snow in the ravines, and heaped it to huge snow-drifts, which threatened the traveller unacquainted with the locality with danger.
The wind grew every moment more sharp and cutting, the snow deeper, and the difficulty greater for the tired horses to draw their weary load.
Often the teamster stood and listened, and gazed into the darkness in search of some shelter, and called for help, and heard the echoes of his own voice ring deep in the snowy wood, but all remained desolate, dumb, and awful.