rom a hill which overlooks the smiling little town of Eisenach, frowns the grim old castle of the Wartburg. It is a gloomy-looking place, with its vast chambers, and long, winding corridors of stone; and yet, that it has held at least one bit of brightness, all would agree who had ever seen the smile of Katrina, the caretaker’s little daughter.

It was Katrina’s chief delight to stand at her father’s side when he unlocked the huge iron portals, and admitted visitors into the castle court; while not a few of these would stop and say some pleasant word to the child, or else stroke her golden hair in passing.

To many persons the life of this nine-year-old girl might perhaps seem very dull; but in Katrina’s happy nature was the spirit of contentment. However, she had one keen desire,—it was to see inside the ancient castle. And sometimes, when there were visitors going in, she would beg her father to take her with him, but he always shook his head, saying:

“No, my child, the chill air of the Wartburg is not for such a tender plant as thou.” So she would wait outside, she and the sunbeams together, until her father’s rounds were finished.

It was a simple, wholesome life that Katrina led, even though it was within the walls of one of the most noted of all the ancient castles. Her parents, good, honest folk, were poor, and realized that their child would have to face the sterner side of life. She was, they said, already too dreamful and imaginative, so they taught her to be practical, and, as far as possible, hid the romance of the castle from her view.

But by degrees much that was weird, as well as romantic, began to weave itself about the child’s more practical existence like bright threads woven into gray. And little by little, through a means singularly strange, she came to be familiar with many of the legends and historic tales relating to this old Thuringian fortress.

Now, living, as she did, far up on this lonely hilltop, Katrina had few companions. But there was one who had been her playmate always, and that was Fritz Albrecht, of Eisenach, the toymaker’s son.

Fritz, to be sure, was five years older than Katrina, but this only served to make the lad feel responsible as her protector. When a very little boy, his mother had read to him tales of knighthood and valour; and now, even though the mother he had loved so dearly had been taken from him, the seeds of chivalry she had sown in his heart promised to be fruitful.

It was a quaint little house in which Fritz and his father lived, and where the latter had his workshop. But quainter still was the house that faced them across the narrow street paved with cobblestones, and on which Fritz was accustomed to look daily.

From his frequent visits to it, the boy knew every room in this old house with its queer gables and red-tiled roof. But never would he forget the day, not long before she died, when his mother had taken him into a certain small room over the entrance, and, holding his chubby hand in hers, had said, in her gentle fashion:

“My little Fritz, thou art in the room which sheltered the great Martin Luther when he was a lad scarcely older than thyself. Ponder well what I am telling thee, and when thou art older thou must learn about the splendid work that Luther did. And there,” the mother added, as she pointed to the portrait of a sweet-faced woman, “is the good Widow Cotta. It was she who heard little Martin Luther singing in the streets, and, out of the goodness of her mother-heart, for she had children of her own, took him in and gave him a home here with her own family.”

That was all his mother had told him about Martin Luther, but it aroused in Fritz a desire to know more about the boy who had earned the money to go to school by singing carols in these same streets where he, Fritz, walked every day.

For many months, as he passed some of the more ancient-looking houses, Fritz would often stop and gaze up at the windows with their tiny panes, saying, as he did so:

“I wonder if the people who lived here long ago heard him singing, and if they threw money to him out of these same windows.”

Very often he had talked about it to Katrina, and she never tired of listening.

“Some day I’ll take thee there, Katrina, indeed I will, and show thee the very bed little Martin Luther slept in.”

“Yes,” was Katrina’s answer, eagerness shining in her big blue eyes. “I want to go and see it all, and,” she added, thoughtfully, “when I’m grown to be a woman like my own, dear mÜtterchen, I’m going to give money to every little boy I can. It might help them to be great, too, some day. The people who gave little Martin Luther money didn’t know what a great man he was going to be. But,” she added, after a moment’s pause, “maybe it was the home the good Frau Cotta gave him more than the money that helped to make him great.”

The two children, as they talked together, were seated on a bench in the castle courtyard. It was a beautiful summer evening, and Fritz had begged Katrina to come outside and see the splendid colours of the sunset: for this boy of fourteen years was even then an artist in his heart.

For a long while they had been sitting there, their faces toward the western sky, when suddenly both gave a start, while into Katrina’s eyes came a look of wonder. But Fritz laid a calming hand on hers.

“It’s the voice, Katrina, the same voice we heard that other evening! Have no fear; dost thou not remember what it told us?”