rich estates and populous villages. In course of time trees and shrubs again covered the cleared places, and now there was nothing left of the lively villages except here and there a collection of miserable huts in which only the poorest classes of people corroded, managing in some way to exist upon the products of goat-rearing and coal-digging.
The castle fell in the storms of the Thirty Years’ War, and at the same time the ancient, famous family of the Hlohovskys, its founders and lords, disappeared. For valuable services Ferdinand II. presented the castle to the knight of Skalnicky, conferring upon him at the same time the title of Count Felsenburk.
The appearance of Hlohov Castle was now so sad that even winds sweeping through it seemed to moan with sympathy, and the forests answered the mournful wail. Even the hard rock on whose bosom it was slowly falling to ruin, grieved, and poured from its bosom, like streams of sympathy, a luxuriant green, with which it wreathed the ancient walls. The banks of the moat were emerald
