THE SPECTRE KNIGHT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9142, 25 August 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE SPECTRE KNIGHT.

According to Dr. Griisse, an indefatigable investigator of matters mysterious, Castle Rodenstoin, near to Darmstadt, was. once inhabited by a knight who was the terror of his neighbours, and passed all his time hunting, and never bestowed a thought upon the fair sex. On one occasion the Palatine gave a tournament, to which he invited all the knights resident on the Rhine, the Necker, and the Maine. Von Rodenstein made his appearance, looking very magnificent, unhorsed every adversary, and received the prize from the hand of the noble Lady Marie von Hochberg, with whom he at once fell desperately in love. She readily became his wife, and for some time they lived happily together in Castle Rodenstein, when one unlucky day he became involved in a quarrel with one of his neighbours. He was already tired of the calm enjoyment of domestic life, and the opportunity of a return to his old habits was by no means unwelcome. In vain did his wife, who undoubtedly thought that matters might be amicably settled, entreat him to abstain from broil and battle ; in vain did she fling heiself on her knees before him, and implore him, for the sake of herself and her child yet unborn, not to leave the castle. He coldly thrust her aside, and rode off on his courser with all possible speed. Almost immediately afterwards the poor lady gave birth to a child and died. At night, while the knight lay in ambush near Schnellert, watching for his enemy, he saw a white figure approaching him from his own castle. She was the spectre of his wife, who, bearing her child in her arms, reproached him with her death, and told him that he was doomed to wander about as the herald of war in Germany. Not long afterwards he was mortally wounded in a skirmish, and died in Castle Schnellert, in front of which he has since made his appearance whenever a war is about to break out.