The Bells of Freiburg, by Austin Clare

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1880. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER II. NEXT TIME. EXT time came sooner even than I could have expected, much as I was longing for it. Uncle Karl announced his intention of taking the journeybreakfast on a Saturday morning, and long before sunset we were driving through the Schwabenthor, seated in the little one-horse chaise which the uncle generally hired for his excursions. It was one of those afternoons which sometimes come in autumn, and which seem to have absorbed into themselves the sunshine, the warmth, and richness of colour, which are the joint prosperity of many days. The whole country round Freiburg lay like a ripe peach mellowing in the sunshine. The deep red Minster spire, with its delicate perforations, rose like a jasper needle against the dark greenbackground of the distant pine-woods, and behind us lay the great Rhine plains, bathed in golden light, with the blue Vosges Mountains like a hazy line on the far horizon. Our little grey horse went at a rapid pace, and we had soon left the Schloszberg far in the rear, had crossed the Dreisam, and sighted the tower on the Feldberg, before the first hour was well over. Uncle Karl was very silent, and I was too much taken up with the scene around, with the rapid motion, and with trying to count the sharp beats of our little horse's hoofs, to care for talk. Trot, trot, he went along the hard road smoothly and regularly as clockwork; but presently the hoof-beats took a hollower sound, and I was roused from my calculations to find we were entering a mountainous country, and that the great Black Forest was closing in around us. On each side of the road rose rocky precipices crowned with pines, their dark pointed spires rising one above another, as it seemed, to the very sky. The rich sunset light slanted in here and there amo...