THE GOLDEN NECKLACE The Chancellor Leopold von Dessauer, High Councillor of the Prince, with his head still bound up, was pacing the sparred gallery outside the private apartments of his master.

It was in the heats of the late summer, before the ripening of the orchard fruits had had time to culminate, or the russet to come out slowly upon the apples, like a blush upon a woman's soft, dusky cheek.
The High Councillor was in a bad humor.

For he had been kept waiting, and that by a man of no account.

At last a forester in a uniform of dark green, with the Prince's bugle and sparrow-hawk in silver everywhere about him, made his appearance at the foot of the gallery, and stood waiting Dessauer's summons with his plumed hat of soft cloth in his hand.
"Hither, man!" cried the High Councillor, sharply.

"What has kept you?
Why were you not here half an hour ago?
If this be the way you keep the Prince's forests, no wonder there are many deer taken by reiving rascals and the forest laws daily broken." "High Mightiness," said the man, humbly, looking down, "it was my daughter--she would not give up the necklace.