LEGEND OF SAGENFELD, IN GERMANY

--[Left out of "A Tramp Abroad" because its authenticity seemed doubtful,
and could not at that time be proved.--M. T.]


More than a thousand years ago this small district was a kingdom
--a little bit of a kingdom, a sort of dainty little toy kingdom, as one
might say. It was far removed from the jealousies, strifes, and turmoils
of that old warlike day, and so its life was a simple life, its people a
gentle and guileless race; it lay always in a deep dream of peace, a soft
Sabbath tranquillity; there was no malice, there was no envy, there was
no ambition, consequently there were no heart-burnings, there was no
unhappiness in the land.

In the course of time the old king died and his little son Hubert came to
the throne. The people's love for him grew daily; he was so good and so
pure and so noble, that by and by his love became a passion, almost a
worship. Now at his birth the soothsayers had diligently studied the
stars and found something written in that shining book to this effect:

In Hubert's fourteenth year a pregnant event will happen; the animal
whose singing shall sound sweetest in Hubert's ear shall save
Hubert's life. So long as the king and the nation shall honor this