From his hut, to which never a woodman climbed, nor even a
stray hunter, he saw only a few villages shining when they took the
sun, a lake or two, and a belt of forest through which--for it hid
the palace--sometimes at daybreak a light glinted from the golden
avenue. But one night the whole plain broke out far and wide with
bonfires, and from the grand-ducal park--over which the sky shone
reddest--he caught the sound of a bell ringing. Then he bethought
him that the three years were past, and that these illuminations were
for the wedding; and he crept to bed, ashamed and sorrowful that he
had failed and another deserved.
"Towards daybreak, as he tossed on his straw, he seemed to hear the
bells drawing nearer and nearer, until they sounded close at hand.
He sprang up, and from the door of his hut he saw a rider on muleback
coming up the mountain track through the snow. The rider was a
woman, and as she alighted and tottered towards him, he recognized
the Grand Duchess. He carried her in and set her before his fire;
and there, while he spread food before her, she told him that the
Princes Melchior and Otto had harried her lands and burnt her palace,
and were even now fighting with each other for the golden avenue.
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