It was easy to see that the young man and young lady were lovers.

See it in his ardent looks and serious lips parted but for whispers only to be heard by her; see it in her downcast eyes and heightened colour.

"'Alas! regardless of their doom,'" muttered Kenelm, "what trouble those 'little victims' are preparing for themselves and their progeny! Would I could lend them Decimus Roach's 'Approach to the Angels'!" The road now for some minutes became solitary and still, when there was heard to the right a sprightly sort of carol, half sung, half recited, in musical voice, with a singularly clear enunciation, so that the words reached Kenelm's ear distinctly.

They ran thus:-- "Black Karl looked forth from his cottage door, He looked on the forest green; And down the path, with his dogs before, Came the Ritter of Neirestein: Singing, singing, lustily singing, Down the path with his dogs before, Came the Ritter of Neirestein." At a voice so English, attuned to a strain so Germanic, Kenelm pricked up attentive ears, and, turning his eye down the road, beheld, emerging from the shade of beeches that overhung the park pales, a figure that did not altogether harmonize with the idea of a Ritter of Neirestein.

It was, nevertheless, a picturesque figure enough.