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 will communicate its virtues to all the other articles made to match it. This is my purpose; I will have the set made entire; and you now understand why I can give Bertha no other fortune, since mine will be all consumed by the purchase of the jewels with which I am resolved to adorn her on her wedding-day.”

At the close of this wonderful story, the knight’s hearers began to discuss the Countess Ursula and her midnight adventure with no little merriment and freedom. Some declared that the ancestress must have had a lively imagination—that she dreamed the thing, and then invented the jewels afterwards. Others asserted that her ladyship must have been fond of a frolic, more especially as the Mountain-King himself figured upon the scene: but these were the freethinking reprobates. The true believers were shocked by their impiety, and gravely produced many instances of similar facts in support of their opinion. Sir Baldwin took no part at all in the discussion; he sat, in very ill humour, looking extremely grim, in the corner, and wishing, from his inmost soul, the bridal ornaments, which had thus robbed him of a bride, at the devil.

The autumn days now began to shorten, and the period of the equinox approached. The wind whistled frostily over the stubbles, and the rain and hail beat (without much difficulty, it must be confessed) through the windows of Sir Baldwin’s castle. The coldness of his home determined him to quit it; and having formed his resolution, he hastened to the knight of Aarburg, to entreat his