Greifensteins had dwelt in security through many generations, in the
stormy days of the robber barons. So sure were they of their safety,
that they had built their dwelling-place on the other side of the
bulwark in a manner that offered no suggestion of war or danger. The
house was Gothic in style, full of windows and ornamented with spacious
balconies and much fine stonework. The three-cornered platform was
converted into a flower-garden, surrounded by a parapet. Protected on
the north side by the huge wall, and fully exposed to the southern sun,
the plants throve in an almost artificial spring, and in the summer
jets of water played in the marble basins and cooled the hot,
pine-scented air.

One narrow gate, barely wide enough for two persons to pass abreast,
gave access to this paradise through the grey, window-less mass of
masonry by which it was separated from the melancholy forest without.
One small building only was visible on the side of the woods, scarcely
fifty yards from the gate. This was a small, square, stone tower,
half overgrown with brush and creepers, and evidently abandoned to
decay. It was known in the family and neighbourhood as the 'Hunger-
Thurm,' or Hunger Tower, as having been used as a place for starving
prisoners to death, in the fine old days when the lords of Greifenstein
did as they judged good in their own eyes. Frau von Sigmundskron used
to look curiously at the grey building when she was staying with her
relations. She could have described the sufferings of the poor wretches
who had perished there as well as any one of themselves or better. Not
twenty miles from all the luxury that dwelt behind that lofty bulwark,
she had been starving herself for years in order that her only child
might live. And yet the well-fed woodmen touched their caps and their
rosy wives and daughters curtsied to the 'Lady Baroness' who, as they
told each other, spent her life in the towers of Sigmundskron hoarding