The groaning oak slipped open, pushing them
forward, and an apparition glided past, soft as the pallid silver of the
moon. She slid to the Baron, and put her arms about him, and sang to him.
Had the Water-Lady laid an iron hand on all those ruffians, she could not
have held them faster bound than did the fear of her presence. The
Goshawk drew his fair charge through them, followed by Farina, the Thier,
and Rothhals. A last glimpse of the hall showed them still as old
cathedral sculpture staring at white light on a fluted pillar of the
wall.
THE PASSAGE OF THE RHINE
Low among the swarthy sandhills behind the Abbey of Laach dropped the
round red moon. Soft lengths of misty yellow stole through the glens of
Rhineland. The nightingales still sang. Closer and closer the moon came
into the hushed valleys.
There is a dell behind Hammerstein Castle, a ring of basking sward,
girdled by a silver slate-brook, and guarded by four high-peaked hills
that slope down four long wooded corners to the grassy base.
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