Page:In a Glass Darkly - v3.djvu/237

Rh the wide, undulating expanse of forest.

"It was a bad family, and here its bloodstained annals were written," he continued.

"It is hard that they should, after death, continue to plague the human race with their atrocious lusts. That is the chapel of the Karnsteins, down there."

He pointed down to the grey walls of the gothic building, partly visible through the foliage, a little way down the steep.

"And I hear the axe of a woodman," he added, "busy among the trees that surround it; he possibly may give us the information of which I am in search, and point out the grave of Mircalla, Countess of Karnstein. These rustics preserve the local traditions of great families, whose stories die out among the rich and titled so soon as the families themselves become extinct."