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244
MARIA FELICIA

opposite side and ended at the foot of a cliff seemingly inaccessible. It was a secret exit from the Castle, which the Brethren ages ago had themselves made, when their persecution began and the masters of Hlohov became their protectors. Here they held their meetings; and more than once the cave was their refuge when the fires prepared for them were flaming. The cave was the meeting-place of the Union after the Brethren had been publicly suppressed; and the echoes of their psalms, too loudly poured forth in religious enthusiasm, often found their way out of the cave, and were thought by the superstitious servants to be the song of the Hlohov lutanist; and whoever heard it fled in affright, thinking it was his death song.

It was a long while before the eyes of the harper could endure the smoky flame of the pine, before he could see that he was surrounded by sturdy men with grave, expressive faces, marked by the same mournful lines as those on Andrew’s countenance, and that they also were clothed in the same coarse