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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Dove in the Eagle's Nest, by Charlotte M.
+Yonge, Illustrated by W. J. Hennessy
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Dove in the Eagle's Nest
+
+
+Author: Charlotte M. Yonge
+
+
+
+Release Date: April 21, 2013  [eBook #3139]
+[This file was first posted on December 30, 2000]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DOVE IN THE EAGLE'S NEST***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1890 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+THE
+DOVE IN THE EAGLE’S NEST
+
+
+                                    BY
+
+                            CHARLOTTE M. YONGE
+
+                      [Picture: Sitting at the desk]
+
+                     _ILLUSTRATED BY W. J. HENNESSY_
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                  London
+                            MACMILLAN AND CO.
+                               AND NEW YORK
+                                   1890
+
+                  _The Right of Translation is Reserved_
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+_First Edition_ (2 vols.  Crown 8vo), 1866.  _New Edition_ (1 vol.  Crown
+                               8vo), 1869.
+
+   _Reprinted_ 1871; January and November 1873; 1875; 1876; 1879; 1882;
+                                  1883;
+           1884; 1888.  _New Edition_, 1889.  _Reprinted_ 1890.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+IN sending forth this little book, I am inclined to add a few explanatory
+words as to the use I have made of historical personages.  The origin of
+the whole story was probably Freytag’s first series of pictures of German
+Life: probably, I say, for its first commencement was a dream, dreamt
+some weeks after reading that most interesting collection of sketches.
+The return of the squire with the tidings of the death of the two knights
+was vividly depicted in sleep; and, though without local habitation or
+name, the scene was most likely to have been a reflection from the wild
+scenes so lately read of.
+
+In fact, waking thoughts decided that such a catastrophe could hardly
+have happened anywhere but in Germany, or in Scotland; and the contrast
+between the cultivation in the free cities and the savagery of the
+independent barons made the former the more suitable region for the
+adventures.  The time could only be before the taming and bringing into
+order of the empire, when the Imperial cities were in their greatest
+splendour, the last free nobles in course of being reduced from their
+lawless liberty, and the House of Austria beginning to acquire its
+preponderance over the other princely families.
+
+M. Freytag’s books, and Hegewisch’s History of Maximilian, will, I think,
+be found fully to bear out the picture I have tried to give of the state
+of things in the reign of the Emperor Friedrich III., when, for want of
+any other law, _Faust recht_, or fist right, ruled; _i.e._ an offended
+nobleman, having once sent a _Fehde-brief_ to his adversary, was
+thenceforth at liberty to revenge himself by a private war, in which, for
+the wrong inflicted, no justice was exacted.
+
+Hegewisch remarks that the only benefit of this custom was, that the
+honour of subscribing a feud-brief was so highly esteemed that it induced
+the nobles to learn to write!  The League of St. George and the Swabian
+League were the means of gradually putting down this authorized condition
+of deadly feud.
+
+This was in the days of Maximilian’s youth.  He is a prince who seems to
+have been almost as inferior in his foreign to what he was in his
+domestic policy as was Queen Elizabeth.  He is chiefly familiar to us as
+failing to keep up his authority in Flanders after the death of Mary of
+Burgundy, as lingering to fulfil his engagement with Anne of Brittany
+till he lost her and her duchy, as incurring ridicule by his ill-managed
+schemes in Italy, and the vast projects that he was always forming
+without either means or steadiness to carry them out, by his perpetual
+impecuniosity and slippery dealing; and in his old age he has become
+rather the laughing-stock of historians.
+
+But there is much that is melancholy in the sight of a man endowed with
+genius, unbalanced by the force of character that secures success, and
+with an ardent nature whose intention overleapt obstacles that in
+practice he found insuperable.  At home Maximilian raised the Imperial
+power from a mere cipher to considerable weight.  We judge him as if he
+had been born in the purple and succeeded to a defined power like his
+descendants.  We forget that the head of the Holy Roman Empire had been,
+ever since the extinction of the Swabian line, a mere mark for ambitious
+princes to shoot at, with everything expected from him, and no means to
+do anything.  Maximilian’s own father was an avaricious, undignified old
+man, not until near his death Archduke of even all Austria, and with
+anarchy prevailing everywhere under his nominal rule.  It was in the time
+of Maximilian that the Empire became as compact and united a body as
+could be hoped of anything so unwieldy, that law was at least
+acknowledged, _Faust recht_ for ever abolished, and the Emperor became
+once more a real power.
+
+The man under whom all this was effected could have been no fool; yet, as
+he said himself, he reigned over a nation of kings, who each chose to
+rule for himself; and the uncertainty of supplies of men or money to be
+gained from them made him so often fail necessarily in his engagements,
+that he acquired a shiftiness and callousness to breaches of promise,
+which became the worst flaw in his character.  But of the fascination of
+his manner there can be no doubt.  Even Henry VIII.’s English
+ambassadors, when forced to own how little they could depend on him, and
+how dangerous it was to let subsidies pass through his fingers, still
+show themselves under a sort of enchantment of devotion to his person,
+and this in his old age, and when his conduct was most inexcusable and
+provoking.
+
+His variety of powers was wonderful.  He was learned in many languages—in
+all those of his empire or hereditary states, and in many besides; and he
+had an ardent love of books, both classical and modern.  He delighted in
+music, painting, architecture, and many arts of a more mechanical
+description; wrote treatises on all these, and on other subjects,
+especially gardening and gunnery.  He was the inventor of an improved
+lock to the arquebus, and first divined how to adapt the disposition of
+his troops to the use of the newly-discovered fire-arms.  And in all
+these things his versatile head and ready hand were personally employed,
+not by deputy; while coupled with so much artistic taste was a violent
+passion for hunting, which carried him through many hairbreadth ’scapes.
+“It was plain,” he used to say, “that God Almighty ruled the world, or
+how could things go on with a rogue like Alexander VI. at the head of the
+Church, and a mere huntsman like himself at the head of the Empire.”  His
+_bon-mots_ are numerous, all thoroughly characteristic, and showing that
+brilliancy in conversation must have been one of his greatest charms.  It
+seems as if only self-control and resolution were wanting to have made
+him a Charles, or an Alfred, the Great.
+
+The romance of his marriage with the heiress of Burgundy is one of the
+best known parts of his life.  He was scarcely two-and-twenty when he
+lost her, who perhaps would have given him the stability he wanted; but
+his tender hove for her endured through life.  It is not improbable that
+it was this still abiding attachment that made him slack in overcoming
+difficulties in the way of other contracts, and that he may have hoped
+that his engagement to Bianca Sforza would come to nothing, like so many
+others.
+
+The most curious record of him is, however, in two books, the materials
+for which he furnished, and whose composition and illustration he
+superintended, _Der Weise King_, and _Theurdank_, of both of which he is
+well known to be the hero.  The White, or the Wise King, it is uncertain
+which, is a history of his education and exploits, in prose.  Every
+alternate page has its engraving, showing how the Young White King
+obtains instruction in painting, architecture, language, and all arts and
+sciences, the latter including magic—which he learns of an old woman with
+a long-tailed demon sitting, like Mother Hubbard’s cat, on her
+shoulder—and astrology.  In the illustration of this study an
+extraordinary figure of a cross within a circle appears in the sky, which
+probably has some connection with his scheme of nativity, for it also
+appears on the breast of Ehrenhold, his constant companion in the
+metrical history of his career, under the name of Theurdank.
+
+The poetry of _Theurdank_ was composed by Maximilian’s old
+writing-master, Melchior Pfinznig; but the adventures were the Kaisar’s
+own, communicated by himself, and he superintended the wood-cuts.  The
+name is explained to mean “craving glory,”—Gloriæmemor.  The Germans
+laugh to scorn a French translator, who rendered it “Chermerci.”  It was
+annotated very soon after its publication, and each exploit explained and
+accounted for.  It is remarkable and touching in a man who married at
+eighteen, and was a widower at twenty-two, that, in both books, the happy
+union with his lady love is placed at the end—not at the beginning of the
+book; and in _Theurdank_, at least, the eternal reunion is clearly meant.
+
+In this curious book, König Römreich, by whom every contemporary
+understood poor Charles of Burgundy—thus posthumously made King of Rome
+by Maximilian, as the only honour in his power, betroths his daughter
+Ehrenreich (rich in honour) to the Ritter Theurdank.  Soon after, by a
+most mild version of Duke Charles’s frightful end, König Römreich is seen
+on his back dying in a garden, and Ehrenreich (as Mary really did)
+despatches a ring to summon her betrothed.
+
+But here Theurdank returns for answer that he means first to win honour
+by his exploits, and sets out with his comrade, Ehrenhold, in search
+thereof.  Ehrenhold never appears of the smallest use to him in any of
+the dire adventures into which he falls, but only stands complacently by,
+and in effect may represent Fame, or perhaps that literary sage whom Don
+Quixote always supposed to be at hand to record his deeds of prowess.
+
+Next we are presented with the German impersonation of Satan as a wise
+old magician, only with claws instead of feet, commissioning his three
+captains (_hauptleutern_), Fürwitz, Umfallo, and Neidelhard, to beset and
+ruin Theurdank.  They are interpreted as the dangers of youth, middle
+life, and old age—Rashness, Disaster, and Distress (or Envy).  One at a
+time they encounter him,—not once, but again and again; and he has ranged
+under each head, in entire contempt of real order of time, the perils he
+thinks owing to each foe.  Fürwitz most justly gets the credit of
+Maximilian’s perils on the steeple of Ulm, though, unfortunately, the
+artist has represented the daring climber as standing not much above the
+shoulders of Fürwitz and Ehrenhold; and although the annotation tells us
+that his “hinder half foot” overhung the scaffold, the danger in the
+print is not appalling.  Fürwitz likewise inveigles him into putting the
+point (_schnäbel_) of his shoe into the wheel of a mill for turning stone
+balls, where he certainly hardly deserved to lose nothing but the beak of
+his shoe.  This enemy also brings him into numerous unpleasant
+predicaments on precipices, where he hangs by one hand; while the chamois
+stand delighted on every available peak, Fürwitz grins malevolently, and
+Ehrenhold stands pointing at him over his shoulder.  Time and place are
+given in the notes for all these escapes.  After some twenty adventures
+Fürwitz is beaten off, and Umfallo tries his powers.  Here the
+misadventures do not involve so much folly on the hero’s part—though, to
+be sure, he ventures into a lion’s den unarmed, and has to beat off the
+inmates with a shovel.  But the other adventures are more rational.  He
+catches a jester—of admirably foolish expression—putting a match to a
+powder-magazine; he is wonderfully preserved in mountain avalanches and
+hurricanes; reins up his horse on the verge of an abyss; falls through
+ice in Holland and shows nothing but his head above it; cures himself of
+a fever by draughts of water, to the great disgust of his physicians, and
+escapes a fire bursting out of a tall stove.
+
+Neidelhard brings his real battles and perils.  From this last he is in
+danger of shipwreck, of assassination, of poison, in single combat, or in
+battle; tumults of the people beset him; he is imprisoned as at Ghent.
+But finally Neidelhard is beaten back; and the hero is presented to
+Ehrenreich.  Ehrenhold recounts his triumphs, and accuses the three
+captains.  One is hung, another beheaded, the third thrown headlong from
+a tower, and a guardian angel then summons Theurdank to his union with
+his Queen.  No doubt this reunion was the life-dream of the harassed,
+busy, inconsistent man, who flashed through the turmoils of the early
+sixteenth century.
+
+The adventures of Maximilian which have been adverted to in the story are
+all to be found in Theurdank, and in his early life he was probably the
+brilliant eager person we have tried in some degree to describe.  In his
+latter years it is well known that he was much struck by Luther’s
+arguments; and, indeed, he had long been conscious of need of Church
+reform, though his plans took the grotesque form of getting himself made
+Pope, and taking all into his own hands.
+
+Perhaps it was unwise to have ever so faintly sketched Ebbo’s career
+through the ensuing troubles; but the history of the star and of the
+spark in the stubble seemed to need completion; and the working out of
+the character of the survivor was unfinished till his course had been
+thought over from the dawn of the Wittenberg teaching, which must have
+seemed no novelty to an heir of the doctrine of Tauler, and of the
+veritably Catholic divines of old times.  The idea is of the supposed
+course of a thoughtful, refined, conscientious man through the earlier
+times of the Reformation, glad of the hope of cleansing the Church, but
+hoping to cleanse, not to break away from her—a hope that Luther himself
+long cherished, and which was not entirely frustrated till the
+re-assembly at Trent in the next generation.  Justice has never been done
+to the men who feared to loose their hold on the Church Catholic as the
+one body to which the promises were made.  Their loyalty has been treated
+as blindness, timidity, or superstition; but that there were many such
+persons, and those among the very highest minds of their time, no one can
+have any doubt after reading such lives as those of Friedrich the Wise of
+Saxony, of Erasmus, of Vittoria Colonna, or of Cardinal Giustiniani.
+
+_April_ 9, 1836.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+“She was too young and too delicate to reject                _Page_ 37
+civilization, and she let Christina braid her hair, bathe
+her, and arrange her dress, with sensations of comfort
+that were almost like health”  _Front_
+Henceforth mine own lady-mother is the mistress of this            126
+castle, and whoever speaks a rude word to her offends the
+Freiherr von Adlerstein
+“‘No; only I saw that you stayed here all alone,’ she              269
+said, clasping her hands”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+MASTER GOTTFRIED’S WORKSHOP
+
+
+THE upper lattices of a tall, narrow window were open, and admitted the
+view, of first some richly-tinted vine leaves and purpling grapes, then,
+in dazzling freshness of new white stone, the lacework fabric of a
+half-built minster spire, with a mason’s crane on the summit, bending as
+though craving for a further supply of materials; and beyond, peeping
+through every crevice of the exquisite open fretwork, was the intensely
+blue sky of early autumn.
+
+The lower longer panes of the window were closed, and the glass, divided
+into circles and quarrels, made the scene less distinct; but still the
+huge stone tower was traceable, and, farther off, the slope of a
+gently-rising hill, clothed with vineyards blushing into autumn richness.
+Below, the view was closed by the gray wall of a court-yard, laden with
+fruit-trees in full bearing, and inclosing paved paths that radiated from
+a central fountain, and left spaces between, where a few summer flowers
+still lingered, and the remains of others showed what their past glory
+had been.
+
+The interior of the room was wainscoted, the floor paved with bright red
+and cream-coloured tiles, and the tall stove in one corner decorated with
+the same.  The eastern end of the apartment was adorned with an exquisite
+small group carved in oak, representing the carpenter’s shop at Nazareth,
+with the Holy Child instructed by Joseph in the use of tools, and the
+Mother sitting with her book, “pondering these things in her heart.”  All
+around were blocks of wood and carvings in varying states of
+progress—some scarcely shaped out, and others in perfect completion.  And
+the subjects were equally various.  Here was an adoring angel with folded
+wings, clasped hands, and rapt face; here a majestic head of an apostle
+or prophet; here a lovely virgin saint, seeming to play smilingly with
+the instrument of her martyrdom; here a grotesque _miserere_ group,
+illustrating a fairy tale, or caricaturing a popular fable here a
+beauteous festoon of flowers and fruit, emulating nature in all save
+colour; and on the work-table itself, growing under the master’s hand,
+was a long wreath, entirely composed of leaves and seed-vessels in their
+quaint and beauteous forms—the heart-shaped shepherd’s purse, the
+mask-like skull-cap, and the crowned urn of the henbane.  The starred cap
+of the poppy was actually being shaped under the tool, copied from a
+green capsule, surmounted with purple velvety rays, which, together with
+its rough and wavy leaf, was held in the hand of a young maiden who knelt
+by the table, watching the work with eager interest.
+
+She was not a beautiful girl—not one of those whose “bright eyes rain
+influence, and judge the prize.”  She was too small, too slight, too
+retiring for such a position.  If there was something lily-like in her
+drooping grace, it was not the queen-lily of the garden that she
+resembled, but the retiring lily of the valley—so purely, transparently
+white was her skin, scarcely tinted by a roseate blush on the cheek, so
+tender and modest the whole effect of her slender figure, and the soft,
+downcast, pensive brown eyes, utterly dissimilar in hue from those of all
+her friends and kindred, except perhaps the bright, quick ones of her
+uncle, the master-carver.  Otherwise, his portly form, open visage, and
+good-natured stateliness, as well as his furred cap and gold chain, were
+thoroughly those of the German burgomaster of the fifteenth century; but
+those glittering black eyes had not ceased to betray their French, or
+rather Walloon, origin, though for several generations back the family
+had been settled at Ulm.  Perhaps, too, it was Walloon quickness and
+readiness of wit that had made them, so soon as they became affiliated,
+so prominent in all the councils of the good free city, and so noted for
+excellence in art and learning.  Indeed the present head of the family,
+Master Gottfried Sorel, was so much esteemed for his learning that he had
+once had serious thoughts of terming himself Magister Gothofredus
+Oxalicus, and might have carried it out but for the very decided
+objections of his wife, Dame Johanna, and his little niece, Christina, to
+being dubbed by any such surname.
+
+Master Gottfried had had a scapegrace younger brother named Hugh, who had
+scorned both books and tools, had been the plague of the workshop, and,
+instead of coming back from his wandering year of improvement, had joined
+a band of roving Lanzknechts.  No more had been heard of him for a dozen
+or fifteen years, when he suddenly arrived at the paternal mansion at
+Ulm, half dead with intermittent fever, and with a young, broken-hearted,
+and nearly expiring wife, his spoil in his Italian campaigns.  His rude
+affection had utterly failed to console her for her desolated home and
+slaughtered kindred, and it had so soon turned to brutality that, when
+brought to comparative peace and rest in his brother’s home, there was
+nothing left for the poor Italian but to lie down and die, commending her
+babe in broken German to Hausfrau Johanna, and blessing Master Gottfried
+for his flowing Latin assurances that the child should be to them even as
+the little maiden who was lying in the God’s acre upon the hillside.
+
+And verily the little Christina had been a precious gift to the bereaved
+couple.  Her father had no sooner recovered than he returned to his
+roving life, and, except for a report that he had been seen among the
+retainers of one of the robber barons of the Swabian Alps, nothing had
+been heard of him; and Master Gottfried only hoped to be spared the
+actual pain and scandal of knowing when his eyes were blinded and his
+head swept off at a blow, or when he was tumbled headlong into a moat,
+suspended from a tree, or broken on the wheel: a choice of fates that was
+sure sooner or later to befall him.  Meantime, both the burgomeister and
+burgomeisterinn did their utmost to forget that the gentle little girl
+was not their own; they set all their hopes and joys on her, and, making
+her supply the place at once of son and daughter, they bred her up in all
+the refinements and accomplishments in which the free citizens of Germany
+took the lead in the middle and latter part of the fifteenth century.  To
+aid her aunt in all house-wifely arts, to prepare dainty food and varied
+liquors, and to spin, weave, and broider, was only a part of Christina’s
+training; her uncle likewise set great store by her sweet Italian voice,
+and caused her to be carefully taught to sing and play on the lute, and
+he likewise delighted in hearing her read aloud to him from the
+hereditary store of MSS. and from the dark volumes that began to proceed
+from the press.  Nay, Master Gottfried had made experiments in printing
+and wood-engraving on his own account, and had found no head so
+intelligent, no hand so desirous to aid him, as his little Christina’s,
+who, in all that needed taste and skill rather than strength, was worth
+all his prentices and journeymen together.  Some fine bold wood-cuts had
+been produced by their joint efforts; but these less important
+occupations had of late been set aside by the engrossing interest of the
+interior fittings of the great “Dome Kirk,” which for nearly a century
+had been rising by the united exertions of the burghers, without any
+assistance from without.  The foundation had been laid in 1377; and at
+length, in the year of grace 1472, the crown of the apse had been closed
+in, and matters were so forward that Master Gottfried’s stall work was
+already in requisition for the choir.
+
+“Three cubits more,” he reckoned.  “Child, hast thou found me fruits
+enough for the completing of this border?”
+
+“O yes, mine uncle.  I have the wild rosehip, and the flat shield of the
+moonwort, and a pea-pod, and more whose names I know not.  But should
+they all be seed and fruit?”
+
+“Yea, truly, my Stina, for this wreath shall speak of the goodly fruits
+of a completed life.”
+
+“Even as that which you carved in spring told of the blossom and fair
+promise of youth,” returned the maiden.  “Methinks the one is the most
+beautiful, as it ought to be;” then, after a little pause, and some
+reckoning, “I have scarce seed-pods enough in store, uncle; might we not
+seek some rarer shapes in the herb-garden of Master Gerhard, the
+physician?  He, too, might tell me the names of some of these.”
+
+“True, child; or we might ride into the country beyond the walls, and
+seek them.  What, little one, wouldst thou not?”
+
+“So we go not far,” faltered Christina, colouring.
+
+“Ha, thou hast not forgotten the fright thy companions had from the
+Schlangenwald reitern when gathering Maydew?  Fear not, little coward; if
+we go beyond the suburbs we will take Hans and Peter with their halberts.
+But I believe thy silly little heart can scarce be free for enjoyment if
+it can fancy a Reiter within a dozen leagues of thee.”
+
+“At your side I would not fear.  That is, I would not vex thee by my
+folly, and I might forget it,” replied Christina, looking down.
+
+“My gentle child!” the old man said approvingly.  “Moreover, if our good
+Raiser has his way, we shall soon be free of the reitern of
+Schlangenwald, and Adlerstein, and all the rest of the mouse-trap barons.
+He is hoping to form a league of us free imperial cities with all the
+more reasonable and honest nobles, to preserve the peace of the country.
+Even now a letter from him was read in the Town Hall to that effect; and,
+when all are united against them, my lords-mousers must needs become
+pledged to the league, or go down before it.”
+
+“Ah! that will be well,” cried Christina.  “Then will our wagons be no
+longer set upon at the Debateable Ford by Schlangenwald or Adlerstein;
+and our wares will come safely, and there will be wealth enough to raise
+our spire!  O uncle, what a day of joy will that be when Our Lady’s great
+statue will be set on the summit!”
+
+“A day that I shall scarce see, and it will be well if thou dost,”
+returned her uncle, “unless the hearts of the burghers of Ulm return to
+the liberality of their fathers, who devised that spire!  But what
+trampling do I hear?”
+
+There was indeed a sudden confusion in the house, and, before the uncle
+and niece could rise, the door was opened by a prosperous apple-faced
+dame, exclaiming in a hasty whisper, “Housefather, O Housefather, there
+are a troop of reitern at the door, dismounting already;” and, as the
+master came forward, brushing from his furred vest the shavings and dust
+of his work, she added in a more furtive, startled accent, “and, if I
+mistake not, one is thy brother!”
+
+“He is welcome,” replied Master Gottfried, in his cheery fearless voice;
+“he brought us a choice gift last time he came; and it may be he is ready
+to seek peace among us after his wanderings.  Come hither, Christina, my
+little one; it is well to be abashed, but thou art not a child who need
+fear to meet a father.”
+
+Christina’s extreme timidity, however, made her pale and crimson by
+turns, perhaps by the infection of anxiety from her aunt, who could not
+conceal a certain dissatisfaction and alarm, as the maiden, led on either
+side by her adopted parents, thus advanced from the little studio into a
+handsomely-carved wooden gallery, projecting into a great wainscoated
+room, with a broad carved stair leading down into it.  Down this stair
+the three proceeded, and reached the stone hall that lay beyond it, just
+as there entered from the trellised porch, that covered the steps into
+the street, a thin wiry man, in a worn and greasy buff suit, guarded on
+the breast and arms with rusty steel, and a battered helmet with the
+vizor up, disclosing a weather-beaten bronzed face, with somewhat wild
+dark eyes, and a huge grizzled moustache forming a straight line over his
+lips.  Altogether he was a complete model of the lawless Reiter or
+Lanzknecht, the terror of Swabia, and the bugbear of Christina’s
+imagination.  The poor child’s heart died within her as she perceived the
+mutual recognition between her uncle and the new comer; and, while Master
+Gottfried held out his hands with a cordial greeting of “Welcome, home,
+brother Hugh,” she trembled from head to foot, as she sank on her knees,
+and murmured, “Your blessing, honoured father.”
+
+“Ha?  What, this is my girl?  What says she?  My blessing, eh?  There
+then, thou hast it, child, such as I have to give, though they’ll tell
+thee at Adlerstein that I am more wont to give the other sort of
+blessing!  Now, give me a kiss, girl, and let me see thee!  How now!” as
+he folded her in his rough arms; “thou art a mere feather, as slight as
+our sick Jungfrau herself.”  And then, regarding her, as she stood
+drooping, “Thou art not half the woman thy mother was—she was stately and
+straight as a column, and tall withal.”
+
+“True!” replied Hausfrau Johanna, in a marked tone; “but both she and her
+poor babe had been so harassed and wasted with long journeys and
+hardships, that with all our care of our Christina, she has never been
+strong or well-grown.  The marvel is that she lived at all.”
+
+“Our Christina is not beautiful, we know,” added her uncle, reassuringly
+taking her hand; “but she is a good and meek maiden.”
+
+“Well, well,” returned the Lanzknecht, “she will answer the purpose well
+enough, or better than if she were fair enough to set all our fellows
+together by the ears for her.  Camilla, I say—no, what’s her name,
+Christina?—put up thy gear and be ready to start with me to-morrow
+morning for Adlerstein.”
+
+“For Adlerstein?” re-echoed the housemother, in a tone of horrified
+dismay; and Christina would have dropped on the floor but for her uncle’s
+sustaining hand, and the cheering glance with which he met her imploring
+look.
+
+“Let us come up to the gallery, and understand what you desire, brother,”
+said Master Gottfried, gravely.  “Fill the cup of greeting, Hans.  Your
+followers shall be entertained in the hall,” he added.
+
+“Ay, ay,” quoth Hugh, “I will show you reason over a goblet of the old
+Rosenburg.  Is it all gone yet, brother Goetz?  No?  I reckon there would
+not be the scouring of a glass left of it in a week if it were at
+Adlerstein.”
+
+So saying, the trooper crossed the lower room, which contained a huge
+tiled baking oven, various brilliantly-burnished cooking utensils, and a
+great carved cupboard like a wooden bedstead, and, passing the door of
+the bathroom, clanked up the oaken stairs to the gallery, the
+reception-room of the house.  It had tapestry hangings to the wall, and
+cushions both to the carved chairs and deep windows, which looked out
+into the street, the whole storey projecting into close proximity with
+the corresponding apartment of the Syndic Moritz, the goldsmith on the
+opposite side.  An oaken table stood in the centre, and the gallery was
+adorned with a dresser, displaying not only bright pewter, but goblets
+and drinking cups of beautifully-shaped and coloured glass, and
+saltcellars, tankards, &c. of gold and silver.
+
+“Just as it was in the old man’s time,” said the soldier, throwing
+himself into the housefather’s chair.  “A handful of Lanzknechts would
+make short work with your pots and pans, good sister Johanna.”
+
+“Heaven forbid!” said poor Johanna under her breath.  “Much good they do
+you, up in a row there, making you a slave to furbishing them.  There’s
+more sense in a chair like this—that does rest a man’s bones.  Here,
+Camilla, girl, unlace my helmet!  What, know’st not how?  What is a woman
+made for but to let a soldier free of his trappings?  Thou hast done it!
+There!  Now my boots,” stretching out his legs.
+
+“Hans shall draw off your boots, fair brother,” began the dame; but poor
+Christina, the more anxious to propitiate him in little things, because
+of the horror and dread with which his main purpose inspired her, was
+already on her knees, pulling with her small quivering hands at the long
+steel-guarded boot—a task to which she would have been utterly
+inadequate, but for some lazy assistance from her father’s other foot.
+She further brought a pair of her uncle’s furred slippers, while Reiter
+Hugh proceeded to dangle one of the boots in the air, expatiating on its
+frail condition, and expressing his intention of getting a new pair from
+Master Matthias, the sutor, ere he should leave Ulm on the morrow.  Then,
+again, came the dreaded subject; his daughter must go with him.
+
+“What would you with Christina, brother?” gravely asked Master Gottfried,
+seating himself on the opposite side of the stove, while out of sight the
+frightened girl herself knelt on the floor, her head on her aunt’s knees,
+trying to derive comfort from Dame Johanna’s clasping hands, and vehement
+murmurs that they would not let their child be taken from them.  Alas!
+these assurances were little in accordance with Hugh’s rough reply, “And
+what is it to you what I do with mine own?”
+
+“Only this, that, having bred her up as my child and intended heiress, I
+might have some voice.”
+
+“Oh! in choosing her mate!  Some mincing artificer, I trow, fiddling away
+with wood and wire to make gauds for the fair-day!  Hast got him here?
+If I like him, and she likes him, I’ll bring her back when her work is
+done.”
+
+“There is no such person as yet in the case,” said Gottfried.  “Christina
+is not yet seventeen, and I would take my time to find an honest, pious
+burgher, who will value this precious jewel of mine.”
+
+“And let her polish his flagons to the end of her days,” laughed Hugh
+grimly, but manifestly somewhat influenced by the notion of his brother’s
+wealth.  “What, hast no child of thine own?” he added.
+
+“None, save in Paradise,” answered Gottfried, crossing himself.  “And
+thus, if Christina should remain with me, and be such as I would have
+her, then, brother, my wealth, after myself and my good housewife, shall
+be hers, with due provision for thee, if thou shouldst weary of thy wild
+life.  Otherwise,” he added, looking down, and speaking in an under tone,
+“my poor savings should go to the completion of the Dome Kirk.”
+
+“And who told thee, Goetz, that I would do ought with the girl that
+should hinder her from being the very same fat, sourkrout-cooking,
+pewter-scrubbing housewife of thy mind’s eye?”
+
+“I have heard nothing of thy designs as yet, brother Hugh, save that thou
+wouldst take her to Adlerstein, which men greatly belie if it be not a
+nest of robbers.”
+
+“Aha! thou hast heard of Adlerstein!  We have made the backs of your
+jolly merchants tingle as well as they could through their well-lined
+doublets!  Ulm knows of Adlerstein, and the Debateable Ford!”
+
+“It knows little to its credit,” said Gottfried, gravely; “and it knows
+also that the Emperor is about to make a combination against all the
+Swabian robber-holds, and that such as join not in it will fare the
+worse.”
+
+“Let Kaiser Fritz catch his bear ere he sells its hide!  He has never
+tried to mount the Eagle’s Ladder!  Why, man, Adlerstein might be held
+against five hundred men by sister Johanna with her rock and spindle!
+’Tis a free barony, Master Gottfried, I tell thee—has never sworn
+allegiance to Kaiser or Duke of Swabia either!  Freiherr Eberhard is as
+much a king on his own rock as Kaiser Fritz ever was of the Romans, and
+more too, for I never could find out that they thought much of our king
+at Rome; and, as to gainsaying our old Freiherr, one might as well leap
+over the abyss at once.”
+
+“Yes, those old free barons are pitiless tyrants,” said Gottfried, “and I
+scarce think I can understand thee aright when I hear thee say thou
+wouldst carry thy daughter to such an abode.”
+
+“It is the Freiherr’s command,” returned Hugh.  “Look you, they have had
+wondrous ill-luck with their children; the Freiherrinn Kunigunde has had
+a dozen at least, and only two are alive, my young Freiherr and my young
+Lady Ermentrude; and no wonder, you would say, if you could see the
+gracious Freiherrinn, for surely Dame Holda made a blunder when she
+fished her out of the fountain woman instead of man.  She is Adlerstein
+herself by birth, married her cousin, and is prouder and more dour than
+our old Freiherr himself—fitter far to handle shield than swaddled babe.
+And now our Jungfrau has fallen into a pining waste, that ’tis a pity to
+see how her cheeks have fallen away, and how she mopes and fades.  Now,
+the old Freiherr and her brother, they both dote on her, and would do
+anything for her.  They thought she was bewitched, so we took old Mother
+Ilsebill and tried her with the ordeal of water; but, look you, she sank
+as innocent as a puppy dog, and Ursel was at fault to fix on any one
+else.  Then one day, when I looked into the chamber, I saw the poor
+maiden sitting, with her head hanging down, as if ’twas too heavy for
+her, on a high-backed chair, no rest for her feet, and the wind blowing
+keen all round her, and nothing to taste but scorched beef, or black
+bread and sour wine, and her mother rating her for foolish fancies that
+gave trouble.  And, when my young Freiherr was bemoaning himself that we
+could not hear of a Jew physician passing our way to catch and bring up
+to cure her, I said to him at last that no doctor could do for her what
+gentle tendance and nursing would, for what the poor maiden needed was to
+be cosseted and laid down softly, and fed with broths and possets, and
+all that women know how to do with one another.  A proper scowl and hard
+words I got from my gracious Lady, for wanting to put burgher softness
+into an Adlerstein; but my old lord and his son opened on the scent at
+once.  ‘Thou hast a daughter?’ quoth the Freiherr.  ‘So please your
+gracious lordship,’ quoth I; ‘that is, if she still lives, for I left her
+a puny infant.’  ‘Well,’ said my lord, ‘if thou wilt bring her here, and
+her care restores my daughter to health and strength, then will I make
+thee my body squire, with a right to a fourth part of all the spoil, and
+feed for two horses in my stable.’  And young Freiherr Eberhard gave his
+word upon it.”
+
+Gottfried suggested that a sick nurse was the person required rather than
+a child like Christina; but, as Hugh truly observed, no nurse would
+voluntarily go to Adlerstein, and it was no use to wait for the hopes of
+capturing one by raid or foray.  His daughter was at his own disposal,
+and her services would be repaid by personal advantages to himself which
+he was not disposed to forego; in effect these were the only means that
+the baron had of requiting any attendance upon his daughter.
+
+The citizens of old Germany had the strongest and most stringent ideas of
+parental authority, and regarded daughters as absolute chattels of their
+father; and Master Gottfried Sorel, though he alone had done the part of
+a parent to his niece, felt entirely unable to withstand the nearer
+claim, except by representations; and these fell utterly disregarded, as
+in truth every counsel had hitherto done, upon the ears of Reiter Hugh,
+ever since he had emerged from his swaddling clothes.  The plentiful
+supper, full cup of wine, the confections, the soft chair, together
+perhaps with his brother’s grave speech, soon, however, had the effect of
+sending him into a doze, whence he started to accept civilly the proposal
+of being installed in the stranger’s room, where he was speedily snoring
+between two feather beds.
+
+Then there could be freedom of speech in the gallery, where the uncle and
+aunt held anxious counsel over the poor little dark-tressed head that
+still lay upon good Johanna’s knees.  The dame was indignant and
+resolute: “Take the child back with him into a very nest of robbers!—her
+own innocent dove whom they had shielded from all evil like a very nun in
+a cloister!  She should as soon think of yielding her up to be borne off
+by the great Satan himself with his horns and hoofs.”
+
+“Hugh is her father, housewife,” said the master-carver.
+
+“The right of parents is with those that have done the duty of parents,”
+returned Johanna.  “What said the kid in the fable to the goat that
+claimed her from the sheep that bred her up?  I am ashamed of you,
+housefather, for not better loving your own niece.”
+
+“Heaven knows how I love her,” said Gottfried, as the sweet face was
+raised up to him with a look acquitting him of the charge, and he bent to
+smooth back the silken hair, and kiss the ivory brow; “but Heaven also
+knows that I see no means of withholding her from one whose claim is
+closer than my own—none save one; and to that even thou, housemother,
+wouldst not have me resort.”
+
+“What is it?” asked the dame, sharply, yet with some fear.
+
+“To denounce him to the burgomasters as one of the Adlerstein retainers
+who robbed Philipp der Schmidt, and have him fast laid by the heels.”
+
+Christina shuddered, and Dame Johanna herself recoiled; but presently
+exclaimed, “Nay, you could not do that, good man, but wherefore not
+threaten him therewith?  Stand at his bedside in early dawn, and tell him
+that, if he be not off ere daylight with both his cut-throats, the
+halberdiers will be upon him.”
+
+“Threaten what I neither could nor would perform, mother?  That were a
+shrewish resource.”
+
+“Yet would it save the child,” muttered Johanna.  But, in the meantime,
+Christina was rising from the floor, and stood before them with loose
+hair, tearful eyes, and wet, flushed cheeks.  “It must be thus,” she
+said, in a low, but not unsteady voice.  “I can bear it better since I
+have heard of the poor young lady, sick and with none to care for her.  I
+will go with my father; it is my duty.  I will do my best; but oh! uncle,
+so work with him that he may bring me back again.”
+
+“This from thee, Stina!” exclaimed her aunt; “from thee who art sick for
+fear of a lanzknecht!”
+
+“The saints will be with me, and you will pray for me,” said Christina,
+still trembling.
+
+“I tell thee, child, thou knowst not what these vile dens are.  Heaven
+forfend thou shouldst!” exclaimed her aunt.  “Go only to Father
+Balthazar, housefather, and see if he doth not call it a sending of a
+lamb among wolves.”
+
+“Mind’st thou the carving I did for Father Balthazar’s own oratory?”
+replied Master Gottfried.
+
+“I talk not of carving!  I talk of our child!” said the dame, petulantly.
+
+“_Ut agnus inter lupos_,” softly said Gottfried, looking tenderly, though
+sadly, at his niece, who not only understood the quotation, but well
+remembered the carving of the cross-marked lamb going forth from its fold
+among the howling wolves.
+
+“Alas!  I am not an apostle,” said she.
+
+“Nay, but, in the path of duty, ’tis the same hand that sends thee
+forth,” answered her uncle, “and the same will guard thee.”
+
+“Duty, indeed!” exclaimed Johanna.  “As if any duty could lead that silly
+helpless child among that herd of evil men, and women yet worse, with a
+good-for-nothing father, who would sell her for a good horse to the first
+dissolute Junker who fell in his way.”
+
+“I will take care that he knows it is worth his while to restore her safe
+to us.  Nor do I think so ill of Hugh as thou dost, mother.  And, for the
+rest, Heaven and the saints and her own discretion must be her guard till
+she shall return to us.”
+
+“How can Heaven be expected to protect her when you are flying in its
+face by not taking counsel with Father Balthazar?”
+
+“That shalt thou do,” replied Gottfried, readily, secure that Father
+Balthazar would see the matter in the same light as himself, and
+tranquillize the good woman.  It was not yet so late but that a servant
+could be despatched with a request that Father Balthazar, who lived not
+many houses off in the same street, would favour the Burgomeisterinn
+Sorel by coming to speak with her.  In a few minutes he appeared,—an aged
+man, with a sensible face, of the fresh pure bloom preserved by a
+temperate life.  He was a secular parish-priest, and, as well as his
+friend Master Gottfried, held greatly by the views left by the famous
+Strasburg preacher, Master John Tauler.  After the good housemother had,
+in strong terms, laid the case before him, she expected a trenchant
+decision on her own side, but, to her surprise and disappointment, he
+declared that Master Gottfried was right, and that, unless Hugh Sorel
+demanded anything absolutely sinful of his daughter, it was needful that
+she should submit.  He repeated, in stronger terms, the assurance that
+she would be protected in the endeavour to do right, and the Divine
+promises which he quoted from the Latin Scriptures gave some comfort to
+the niece, who understood them, while they impressed the aunt, who did
+not.  There was always the hope that, whether the young lady died or
+recovered, the conclusion of her illness would be the term of Christina’s
+stay at Adlerstein, and with this trust Johanna must content herself.
+The priest took leave, after appointing with Christina to meet her in the
+confessional early in the morning before mass; and half the night was
+spent by the aunt and niece in preparing Christina’s wardrobe for her
+sudden journey.
+
+Many a tear was shed over the tokens of the little services she was wont
+to render, her half-done works, and pleasant studies so suddenly broken
+off, and all the time Hausfrau Johanna was running on with a lecture on
+the diligent preservation of her maiden discretion, with plentiful
+warnings against swaggering men-at-arms, drunken lanzknechts, and, above
+all, against young barons, who most assuredly could mean no good by any
+burgher maiden.  The good aunt blessed the saints that her Stina was
+likely only to be lovely in affectionate home eyes; but, for that matter,
+idle men, shut up in a castle, with nothing but mischief to think of,
+would be dangerous to Little Three Eyes herself, and Christina had best
+never stir a yard from her lady’s chair, when forced to meet them.  All
+this was interspersed with motherly advice how to treat the sick lady,
+and receipts for cordials and possets; for Johanna began to regard the
+case as a sort of second-hand one of her own.  Nay, she even turned it
+over in her mind whether she should not offer herself as the Lady
+Ermentrude’s sick-nurse, as being a less dangerous commodity than her
+little niece: but fears for the well-being of the master-carver, and his
+Wirthschaft, and still more the notion of gossip Gertrude Grundt hearing
+that she had ridden off with a wild lanzknecht, made her at once reject
+the plan, without even mentioning it to her husband or his niece.
+
+By the time Hugh Sorel rolled out from between his feather beds, and was
+about to don his greasy buff, a handsome new suit, finished point device,
+and a pair of huge boots to correspond, had been laid by his bedside.
+
+“Ho, ho!  Master Goetz,” said he, as he stumbled into the Stube, “I see
+thy game.  Thou wouldst make it worth my while to visit the father-house
+at Ulm?”
+
+“It shall be worth thy while, indeed, if thou bringest me back my white
+dove,” was Gottfried’s answer.
+
+“And how if I bring her back with a strapping reiter son-in-law?” laughed
+Hugh.  “What welcome should the fellow receive?”
+
+“That would depend on what he might be,” replied Gottfried; and Hugh, his
+love of tormenting a little allayed by satisfaction in his buff suit, and
+by an eye to a heavy purse that lay by his brother’s hand on the table,
+added, “Little fear of that.  Our fellows would look for lustier brides
+than yon little pale face.  ’Tis whiter than ever this morning,—but no
+tears.  That is my brave girl.”
+
+“Yes, father, I am ready to do your bidding,” replied Christina, meekly.
+
+“That is well, child.  Mark me, no tears.  Thy mother wept day and night,
+and, when she had wept out her tears, she was sullen, when I would have
+been friendly towards her.  It was the worse for her.  But, so long as
+thou art good daughter to me, thou shalt find me good father to thee;”
+and for a moment there was a kindliness in his eye which made it
+sufficiently like that of his brother to give some consolation to the
+shrinking heart that he was rending from all it loved; and she steadied
+her voice for another gentle profession of obedience, for which she felt
+strengthened by the morning’s orisons.
+
+“Well said, child.  Now canst sit on old Nibelung’s croup?  His back-bone
+is somewhat sharper than if he had battened in a citizen’s stall; but, if
+thine aunt can find thee some sort of pillion, I’ll promise thee the best
+ride thou hast had since we came from Innspruck, ere thou canst
+remember.”
+
+“Christina has her own mule,” replied her uncle, “without troubling
+Nibelung to carry double.”
+
+“Ho! her own!  An overfed burgomaster sort of a beast, that will turn
+restive at the first sight of the Eagle’s Ladder!  However, he may carry
+her so far, and, if we cannot get him up the mountain, I shall know what
+to do with him,” he muttered to himself.
+
+But Hugh, like many a gentleman after him, was recusant at the sight of
+his daughter’s luggage; and yet it only loaded one sumpter mule, besides
+forming a few bundles which could be easily bestowed upon the saddles of
+his two knappen, while her lute hung by a silken string on her arm.  Both
+she and her aunt thought she had been extremely moderate; but his cry
+was, What could she want with so much?  Her mother had never been allowed
+more than would go into a pair of saddle-bags; and his own Jungfrau—she
+had never seen so much gear together in her life; he would be laughed to
+scorn for his presumption in bringing such a fine lady into the castle;
+it would be well if Freiherr Eberhard’s bride brought half as much.
+
+Still he had a certain pride in it—he was, after all, by birth and
+breeding a burgher—and there had been evidently a softening and
+civilizing influence in the night spent beneath his paternal roof, and
+old habits, and perhaps likewise in the submission he had met with from
+his daughter.  The attendants, too, who had been pleased with their
+quarters, readily undertook to carry their share of the burthen, and,
+though he growled and muttered a little, he at length was won over to
+consent, chiefly, as it seemed, by Christina’s obliging readiness to
+leave behind the bundle that contained her holiday kirtle.
+
+He had been spared all needless irritation.  Before his waking, Christina
+had been at the priest’s cell, and had received his last blessings and
+counsels, and she had, on the way back, exchanged her farewells and tears
+with her two dearest friends, Barbara Schmidt, and Regina Grundt,
+confiding to the former her cage of doves, and to the latter the myrtle,
+which, like every German maiden, she cherished in her window, to supply
+her future bridal wreath.  Now pale as death, but so resolutely composed
+as to be almost disappointing to her demonstrative aunt, she quietly went
+through her home partings; while Hausfrau Johanna adjured her father by
+all that was sacred to be a true guardian and protector of the child, and
+he could not forbear from a few tormenting auguries about the lanzknecht
+son-in-law.  Their effect was to make the good dame more passionate in
+her embraces and admonitions to Christina to take care of herself.  She
+would have a mass said every day that Heaven might have a care of her!
+
+Master Gottfried was going to ride as far as the confines of the free
+city’s territory, and his round, sleek, cream-coloured palfrey, used to
+ambling in civic processions, was as great a contrast to raw-boned,
+wild-eyed Nibelung, all dappled with misty grey, as was the stately,
+substantial burgher to his lean, hungry-looking brother, or Dame
+Johanna’s dignified, curled, white poodle, which was forcibly withheld
+from following Christina, to the coarse-bristled, wolfish-looking hound
+who glared at the household pet with angry and contemptuous eyes, and
+made poor Christina’s heart throb with terror whenever it bounded near
+her.
+
+Close to her uncle she kept, as beneath the trellised porches that came
+down from the projecting gables of the burghers’ houses many a well-known
+face gazed and nodded, as they took their way through the crooked
+streets, many a beggar or poor widow waved her a blessing.  Out into the
+market-place, with its clear fountain adorned with arches and statues,
+past the rising Dome Kirk, where the swarms of workmen unbonneted to the
+master-carver, and the reiter paused with an irreverent sneer at the
+small progress made since he could first remember the building.  How poor
+little Christina’s soul clung to every cusp of the lacework spire, every
+arch of the window, each of which she had hailed as an achievement!  The
+tears had well-nigh blinded her in a gush of feeling that came on her
+unawares, and her mule had his own way as he carried her under the arch
+of the tall and beautifully-sculptured bridge tower, and over the noble
+bridge across the Danube.
+
+Her uncle spoke much, low and earnestly, to his brother.  She knew it was
+in commendation of her to his care, and an endeavour to impress him with
+a sense of the kind of protection she would require, and she kept out of
+earshot.  It was enough for her to see her uncle still, and feel that his
+tenderness was with her, and around her.  But at last he drew his rein.
+“And now, my little one, the daughter of my heart, I must bid thee
+farewell,” he said.
+
+Christina could not be restrained from springing from her mule, and
+kneeling on the grass to receive his blessing, her face hidden in her
+hands, that her father might not see her tears.
+
+“The good God bless thee, my child,” said Gottfried, who seldom invoked
+the saints; “bless thee, and bring thee back in His own good time.  Thou
+hast been a good child to us; be so to thine own father.  Do thy work,
+and come back to us again.”
+
+The tears rained down his cheeks, as Christina’s head lay on his bosom,
+and then with a last kiss he lifted her again on her mule, mounted his
+horse, and turned back to the city, with his servant.
+
+Hugh was merciful enough to let his daughter gaze long after the
+retreating figure ere he summoned her on.  All day they rode, at first
+through meadow lands and then through more broken, open ground, where at
+mid-day they halted, and dined upon the plentiful fare with which the
+housemother had provided them, over which Hugh smacked his lips, and
+owned that they did live well in the old town!  Could Christina make such
+sausages?
+
+“Not as well as my aunt.”
+
+“Well, do thy best, and thou wilt win favour with the baron.”
+
+The evening began to advance, and Christina was very weary, as the purple
+mountains that she had long watched with a mixture of fear and hope began
+to look more distinct, and the ground was often in abrupt ascents.  Her
+father, without giving space for complaints, hurried her on.  He must
+reach the Debateable Ford ere dark.  It was, however, twilight when they
+came to an open space, where, at the foot of thickly forest-clad rising
+ground, lay an expanse of turf and rich grass, through which a stream
+made its way, standing in a wide tranquil pool as if to rest after its
+rough course from the mountains.  Above rose, like a dark wall, crag upon
+crag, peak on peak, in purple masses, blending with the sky; and Hugh,
+pointing upwards to a turreted point, apparently close above their heads,
+where a star of light was burning, told her that there was Adlerstein,
+and this was the Debateable Ford.
+
+In fact, as he explained, while splashing through the shallow expanse,
+the stream had changed its course.  It was the boundary between the lands
+of Schlangenwald and Adlerstein, but it had within the last sixty years
+burst forth in a flood, and had then declined to return to its own bed,
+but had flowed in a fresh channel to the right of the former one.  The
+Freiherren von Adlerstein claimed the ground to the old channel, the
+Graffen von Schlangenwald held that the river was the landmark; and the
+dispute had a greater importance than seemed explained from the worth of
+the rushy space of ground in question, for this was the passage of the
+Italian merchants on their way from Constance, and every load that was
+overthrown in the river was regarded as the lawful prey of the noble on
+whose banks the catastrophe befell.
+
+Any freight of goods was anxiously watched by both nobles, and it was not
+their fault if no disaster befell the travellers.  Hugh talked of the
+Schlangenwald marauders with the bitterness of a deadly feud, but
+manifestly did not breathe freely till his whole convoy were safe across
+both the wet and the dry channel.
+
+Christina supposed they should now ascend to the castle; but her father
+laughed, saying that the castle was not such a step off as she fancied,
+and that they must have daylight for the Eagle’s Stairs.  He led the way
+through the trees, up ground that she thought mountain already, and
+finally arrived at a miserable little hut, which served the purpose of an
+inn.
+
+He was received there with much obsequiousness, and was plainly a great
+authority there.  Christina, weary and frightened, descended from her
+mule, and was put under the protection of a wild, rough-looking peasant
+woman, who stared at her like something from another world, but at length
+showed her a nook behind a mud partition, where she could spread her
+mantle, and at least lie down, and tell her beads unseen, if she could
+not sleep in the stifling, smoky atmosphere, amid the sounds of carousal
+among her father and his fellows.
+
+The great hound came up and smelt to her.  His outline was so-wolfish,
+that she had nearly screamed: but, more in terror at the men who might
+have helped her than even at the beast, she tried to smooth him with her
+trembling hand, whispered his name of “Festhold,” and found him licking
+her hand, and wagging his long rough tail.  And he finally lay down at
+her feet, as though to protect her.
+
+“Is it a sign that good angels will not let me be hurt?” she thought,
+and, wearied out, she slept.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+THE EYRIE
+
+
+CHRISTINA SOREL awoke to a scene most unlike that which had been wont to
+meet her eyes in her own little wainscoted chamber high in the gabled
+front of her uncle’s house.  It was a time when the imperial free towns
+of Germany had advanced nearly as far as those of Italy in civilization,
+and had reached a point whence they retrograded grievously during the
+Thirty Years’ War, even to an extent that they have never entirely
+recovered.  The country immediately around them shared the benefits of
+their civilization, and the free peasant-proprietors lived in great ease
+and prosperity, in beautiful and picturesque farmsteads, enjoying a
+careless abundance, and keeping numerous rural or religious feasts, where
+old Teutonic mythological observances had received a Christian colouring
+and adaptation.
+
+In the mountains, or around the castles, it was usually very different.
+The elective constitution of the empire, the frequent change of dynasty,
+the many disputed successions, had combined to render the sovereign
+authority uncertain and feeble, and it was seldom really felt save in the
+hereditary dominions of the Kaiser for the time being.  Thus, while the
+cities advanced in the power of self-government, and the education it
+conveyed, the nobles, especially those whose abodes were not easily
+accessible, were often practically under no government at all, and felt
+themselves accountable to no man.  The old wild freedom of the Suevi, and
+other Teutonic tribes, still technically, and in many cases practically,
+existed.  The Heretogen, Heerzogen, or, as we call them, Dukes, had
+indeed accepted employment from the Kaiser as his generals, and had
+received rewards from him; the Gerefen, or Graffen, of all kinds were his
+judges, the titles of both being proofs of their holding commissions
+from, and being thus dependent on, the court.  But the Freiherren, a word
+very inadequately represented by our French term of baron, were
+absolutely free, “never in bondage to any man,” holding their own, and
+owing no duty, no office; poorer, because unendowed by the royal
+authority, but holding themselves infinitely higher, than the pensioners
+of the court.  Left behind, however, by their neighbours, who did their
+part by society, and advanced with it, the Freiherren had been for the
+most part obliged to give up their independence and fall into the system,
+but so far in the rear, that they ranked, like the barons of France and
+England, as the last order of nobility.
+
+Still, however, in the wilder and more mountainous parts of the country,
+some of the old families of unreduced, truly free Freiherren lingered,
+their hand against every man, every man’s hand against them, and ever
+becoming more savage, both positively and still more proportionately, as
+their isolation and the general progress around them became greater.  The
+House of Austria, by gradually absorbing hereditary states into its own
+possessions, was, however, in the fifteenth century, acquiring a
+preponderance that rendered its possession of the imperial throne almost
+a matter of inheritance, and moreover rendered the supreme power far more
+effective than it had ever previously been.  Freidrich III. a man still
+in full vigour, and with an able and enterprising son already elected to
+the succession, was making his rule felt, and it was fast becoming
+apparent that the days of the independent baronies were numbered, and
+that the only choice that would soon be left them would be between making
+terms and being forcibly reduced.  Von Adlerstein was one of the oldest
+of these free families.  If the lords of the Eagle’s Stone had ever
+followed the great Konrads and Freidrichs of Swabia in their imperial
+days, their descendants had taken care to forget the weakness, and
+believed themselves absolutely free from all allegiance.
+
+And the wildness of their territory was what might be expected from their
+hostility to all outward influences.  The hostel, if it deserved the
+name, was little more than a charcoal-burner’s hut, hidden in the woods
+at the foot of the mountain, serving as a halting-place for the
+Freiherren’s retainers ere they attempted the ascent.  The inhabitants
+were allowed to ply their trade of charring wood in the forest on
+condition of supplying the castle with charcoal, and of affording a
+lodging to the followers on occasions like the present.
+
+Grimy, half-clad, and brawny, with the whites of his eyes gleaming out of
+his black face, Jobst the Kohler startled Christina terribly when she
+came into the outer room, and met him returning from his night’s work,
+with his long stoking-pole in his hand.  Her father shouted with laughter
+at her alarm.
+
+“Thou thinkest thyself in the land of the kobolds and dwarfs, my girl!
+Never mind, thou wilt see worse than honest Jobst before thou hast done.
+Now, eat a morsel and be ready—mountain air will make thee hungry ere
+thou art at the castle.  And, hark thee, Jobst, thou must give
+stable-room to yon sumpter-mule for the present, and let some of my
+daughter’s gear lie in the shed.”
+
+“O father!” exclaimed Christina, in dismay.
+
+“We’ll bring it up, child, by piecemeal,” he said in a low voice, “as we
+can; but if such a freight came to the castle at once, my lady would have
+her claws on it, and little more wouldst thou ever see thereof.
+Moreover, I shall have enough to do to look after thee up the ascent,
+without another of these city-bred beasts.”
+
+“I hope the poor mule will be well cared for.  I can pay for—” began
+Christina; but her father squeezed her arm, and drowned her soft voice in
+his loud tones.
+
+“Jobst will take care of the beast, as belonging to me.  Woe betide him,
+if I find it the worse!”—and his added imprecations seemed unnecessary,
+so earnest were the asseverations of both the man and his wife that the
+animal should be well cared for.
+
+“Look you, Christina,” said Hugh Sorel, as soon as he had placed her on
+her mule, and led her out of hearing, “if thou hast any gold about thee,
+let it be the last thing thou ownest to any living creature up there.”
+Then, as she was about to speak—“Do not even tell me.  I _will_ not
+know.”  The caution did not add much to Christina’s comfort; but she
+presently asked, “Where is thy steed, father?”
+
+“I sent him up to the castle with the Schneiderlein and Yellow Lorentz,”
+answered the father.  “I shall have ado enough on foot with thee before
+we are up the Ladder.”
+
+The father and daughter were meantime proceeding along a dark path
+through oak and birch woods, constantly ascending, until the oak grew
+stunted and disappeared, and the opening glades showed steep, stony,
+torrent-furrowed ramparts of hillside above them, looking to Christina’s
+eyes as if she were set to climb up the cathedral side like a snail or a
+fly.  She quite gasped for breath at the very sight, and was told in
+return to wait and see what she would yet say to the Adlerstreppe, or
+Eagle’s Ladder.  Poor child! she had no raptures for romantic scenery;
+she knew that jagged peaks made very pretty backgrounds in illuminations,
+but she had much rather have been in the smooth meadows of the environs
+of Ulm.  The Danube looked much more agreeable to her, silver-winding
+between its green banks, than did the same waters leaping down with noisy
+voices in their stony, worn beds to feed the river that she only knew in
+his grave breadth and majesty.  Yet, alarmed as she was, there was
+something in the exhilaration and elasticity of the mountain air that
+gave her an entirely new sensation of enjoyment and life, and seemed to
+brace her limbs and spirits for whatever might be before her; and,
+willing to show herself ready to be gratified, she observed on the
+freshness and sweetness of the air.
+
+“Thou find’st it out, child?  Ay, ’tis worth all the feather-beds and
+pouncet-boxes in Ulm; is it not?  That accursed Italian fever never left
+me till I came up here.  A man can scarce draw breath in your foggy
+meadows below there.  Now then, here is the view open.  What think you of
+the Eagle’s Nest?”
+
+For, having passed beyond the region of wood they had come forth upon the
+mountain-side.  A not immoderately steep slope of boggy, mossy-looking
+ground covered with bilberries, cranberries, &c. and with bare rocks here
+and there rising, went away above out of her ken; but the path she was
+upon turned round the shoulder of the mountain, and to the left, on a
+ledge of rock cut off apparently on their side by a deep ravine, and with
+a sheer precipice above and below it, stood a red stone pile, with one
+turret far above the rest.
+
+“And this is Schloss Adlerstein?” she exclaimed.
+
+“That is Schloss Adlerstein; and there shalt thou be in two hours’ time,
+unless the devil be more than usually busy, or thou mak’st a fool of
+thyself.  If so, not Satan himself could save thee.”
+
+It was well that Christina had resolution to prevent her making a fool of
+herself on the spot, for the thought of the pathway turned her so dizzy
+that she could only shut her eyes, trusting that her father did not see
+her terror.  Soon the turn round to the side of the mountain was made,
+and the road became a mere track worn out on the turf on the hillside,
+with an abyss beneath, close to the edge of which the mule, of course,
+walked.
+
+When she ventured to look again, she perceived that the ravine was like
+an enormous crack open on the mountain-side, and that the stream that
+formed the Debateable Ford flowed down the bottom of it.  The ravine
+itself went probably all the way up the mountain, growing shallower as it
+ascended higher; but here, where Christina beheld it, it was extremely
+deep, and savagely desolate and bare.  She now saw that the Eagle’s
+Ladder was a succession of bare gigantic terraces of rock, of which the
+opposite side of the ravine was composed, and on one of which stood the
+castle.  It was no small mystery to her how it had ever been built, or
+how she was ever to get there.  She saw in the opening of the ravine the
+green meadows and woods far below; and, when her father pointed out to
+her the Debateable Ford, apparently much nearer to the castle than they
+themselves were at present, she asked why they had so far overpassed the
+castle, and come by this circuitous course.
+
+“Because,” said Hugh, “we are not eagles outright.  Seest thou not, just
+beyond the castle court, this whole crag of ours breaks off short, falls
+like the town wall straight down into the plain?  Even this cleft that we
+are crossing by, the only road a horse can pass, breaks off short and
+sudden too, so that the river is obliged to take leaps which nought else
+but a chamois could compass.  A footpath there is, and Freiherr Eberhard
+takes it at all times, being born to it; but even I am too stiff for the
+like.  Ha! ha!  Thy uncle may talk of the Kaiser and his League, but he
+would change his note if we had him here.”
+
+“Yet castles have been taken by hunger,” said Christina.
+
+“What, knowest thou so much?—True!  But look you,” pointing to a white
+foamy thread that descended the opposite steeps, “yonder beck dashes
+through the castle court, and it never dries; and see you the ledge the
+castle stands on?  It winds on out of your sight, and forms a path which
+leads to the village of Adlerstein, out on the other slope of the
+mountains; and ill were it for the serfs if they victualled not the
+castle well.”
+
+The fearful steepness of the ground absorbed all Christina’s attention.
+The road, or rather stairs, came down to the stream at the bottom of the
+fissure, and then went again on the other side up still more tremendous
+steeps, which Hugh climbed with a staff, sometimes with his hand on the
+bridle, but more often only keeping a watchful eye on the sure-footed
+mule, and an arm to steady his daughter in the saddle when she grew
+absolutely faint with giddiness at the abyss around her.  She was too
+much in awe of him to utter cry or complaint, and, when he saw her effort
+to subdue her mortal terror, he was far from unkind, and let her feel his
+protecting strength.
+
+Presently a voice was heard above—“What, Sorel, hast brought her!
+Trudchen is wearying for her.”
+
+The words were in the most boorish dialect and pronunciation, the
+stranger to Christina’s ears, because intercourse with foreign merchants,
+and a growing affectation of Latinism, had much refined the city language
+to which she was accustomed; and she was surprised to perceive by her
+father’s gesture and address that the speaker must be one of the lords of
+the castle.  She looked up, and saw on the pathway above her a tall,
+large-framed young man, his skin dyed red with sun and wind, in odd
+contrast with his pale shaggy hair, moustache, and beard, as though the
+weather had tanned the one and bleached the other.  His dress was a still
+shabbier buff suit than her father had worn, but with a
+richly-embroidered belt sustaining a hunting-horn with finely-chased
+ornaments of tarnished silver, and an eagle’s plume was fastened into his
+cap with a large gold Italian coin.  He stared hard at the maiden, but
+vouchsafed her no token of greeting—only distressed her considerably by
+distracting her father’s attention from her mule by his questions about
+the journey, all in the same rude, coarse tone and phraseology.  Some
+amount of illusion was dispelled.  Christina was quite prepared to find
+the mountain lords dangerous ruffians, but she had expected the graces of
+courtesy and high birth; but, though there was certainly an air of
+command and freedom of bearing about the present specimen, his manners
+and speech were more uncouth than those of any newly-caught apprentice of
+her uncle, and she could not help thinking that her good aunt Johanna
+need not have troubled herself about the danger of her taking a liking to
+any such young Freiherr as she here beheld.
+
+By this time a last effort of the mule had climbed to the level of the
+castle.  As her father had shown her, there was precipice on two sides of
+the building; on the third, a sheer wall of rock going up to a huge
+height before it reached another of the Eagle’s Steps; and on the fourth,
+where the gateway was, the little beck had been made to flow in a deep
+channel that had been hollowed out to serve as a moat, before it bounded
+down to swell the larger water-course in the ravine.  A temporary bridge
+had been laid across; the drawbridge was out of order, and part of Hugh’s
+business had been to procure materials for mending its apparatus.
+Christina was told to dismount and cross on foot.  The unrailed board, so
+close to the abyss, and with the wild water foaming above and below, was
+dreadful to her; and, though she durst not speak, she hung back with an
+involuntary shudder, as her father, occupied with the mule, did not think
+of giving her a hand.  The young baron burst out into an unrestrained
+laugh—a still greater shock to her feelings; but at the same time he
+roughly took her hand, and almost dragged her across, saying, “City
+bred—ho, ho!”  “Thanks, sir,” she strove to say, but she was very near
+weeping with the terror and strangeness of all around.
+
+The low-browed gateway, barely high enough to admit a man on horseback,
+opened before her, almost to her feelings like the gate of the grave, and
+she could not help crossing herself, with a silent prayer for protection,
+as she stepped under it, and came into the castle court—not such a court
+as gave its name to fair courtesy, but, if truth must be told, far more
+resembling an ill-kept, ill-savoured stable-yard, with the piggeries
+opening into it.  In unpleasantly close quarters, the Schneiderlein, or
+little tailor, _i.e._ the biggest and fiercest of all the knappen, was
+grooming Nibelung; three long-backed, long-legged, frightful swine were
+grubbing in a heap of refuse; four or five gaunt ferocious-looking dogs
+came bounding up to greet their comrade Festhold; and a great old
+long-bearded goat stood on the top of the mixen, looking much disposed to
+butt at any newcomer.  The Sorel family had brought cleanliness from
+Flanders, and Hausfrau Johanna was scrupulously dainty in all her
+appointments.  Christina scarcely knew how she conveyed herself and her
+blue kirtle across the bemired stones to the next and still darker
+portal, under which a wide but rough ill-hewn stair ascended.  The
+stables, in fact, occupied the lower floor of the main building, and not
+till these stairs had ascended above them did they lead out into the
+castle hall.  Here were voices—voices rude and harsh, like those
+Christina had shrunk from in passing drinking booths.  There was a long
+table, with rough men-at-arms lounging about, and staring rudely at her;
+and at the upper end, by a great open chimney, sat, half-dozing, an
+elderly man, more rugged in feature than his son; and yet, when he roused
+himself and spoke to Hugh, there was a shade more of breeding, and less
+of clownishness in his voice and deportment, as if he had been less
+entirely devoid of training.  A tall darkly-robed woman stood beside
+him—it was her harsh tone of reproof and command that had so startled
+Christina as she entered—and her huge towering cap made her look gigantic
+in the dim light of the smoky hall.  Her features had been handsome, but
+had become hardened into a grim wooden aspect; and with sinking spirits
+Christina paused at the step of the daïs, and made her reverence, wishing
+she could sink beneath the stones of the pavement out of sight of these
+terrible personages.
+
+“So that’s the wench you have taken all this trouble for,” was
+Freiherrinn Kunigunde’s greeting.  “She looks like another sick baby to
+nurse; but I’ll have no trouble about her;—that is all.  Take her up to
+Ermentrude; and thou, girl, have a care thou dost her will, and puttest
+none of thy city fancies into her head.”
+
+“And hark thee, girl,” added the old Freiherr, sitting up.  “So thou
+canst nurse her well, thou shalt have a new gown and a stout husband.”
+
+“That way,” pointed the lady towards one of the four corner towers; and
+Christina moved doubtfully towards it, reluctant to quit her father, her
+only protector, and afraid to introduce herself.  The younger Freiherr,
+however, stepped before her, went striding two or three steps at a time
+up the turret stair, and, before Christina had wound her way up, she
+heard a thin, impatient voice say, “Thou saidst she was come, Ebbo.”
+
+“Yes, even so,” she heard Freiherr Eberhard return; “but she is slow and
+town-bred.  She was afraid of crossing the moat.”  And then both laughed,
+so that Christina’s cheeks tingled as she emerged from the turret into
+another vaulted room.  “Here she is,” quoth the brother; “now will she
+make thee quite well.”
+
+It was a very bare and desolate room, with no hangings to the rough stone
+walls, and scarcely any furniture, except a great carved bedstead, one
+wooden chair, a table, and some stools.  On the bare floor, in front of
+the fire, her arm under her head, and a profusion of long hair falling
+round her like flax from a distaff, lay wearily a little figure, beside
+whom Sir Eberhard was kneeling on one knee.
+
+“Here is my sisterling,” said he, looking up to the newcomer.  “They say
+you burgher women have ways of healing the sick.  Look at her.  Think you
+you can heal her?”
+
+In an excess of dumb shyness Ermentrude half rose, and effectually
+hindered any observations on her looks by hiding her face away upon her
+brother’s knee.  It was the gesture of a child of five years old, but
+Ermentrude’s length of limb forbade Christina to suppose her less than
+fourteen or fifteen.  “What, wilt not look at her?” he said, trying to
+raise her head; and then, holding out one of her wasted, feverish hands
+to Christina, he again asked, with a wistfulness that had a strange
+effect from the large, tall man, almost ten years her elder, “Canst thou
+cure her, maiden?”
+
+“I am no doctor, sir,” replied Christina; “but I could, at least, make
+her more comfortable.  The stone is too hard for her.”
+
+“I will not go away; I want the fire,” murmured the sick girl, holding
+out her hands towards it, and shivering.
+
+Christina quickly took off her own thick cloth mantle, well lined with
+dressed lambskins, laid it on the floor, rolled the collar of it over a
+small log of wood—the only substitute she could see for a pillow—and
+showed an inviting couch in an instant.  Ermentrude let her brother lay
+her down, and then was covered with the ample fold.  She smiled as she
+turned up her thin, wasted face, faded into the same whitey-brown tint as
+her hair.  “That is good,” she said, but without thanks; and, feeling the
+soft lambswool: “Is that what you burgher-women wear?  Father is to give
+me a furred mantle, if only some court dame would pass the Debateable
+Ford.  But the Schlangenwaldern got the last before ever we could get
+down.  Jobst was so stupid.  He did not give us warning in time; but he
+is to be hanged next time if he does not.”
+
+Christina’s blood curdled as she heard this speech in a weak little
+complaining tone, that otherwise put her sadly in mind of Barbara
+Schmidt’s little sister, who had pined and wasted to death.  “Never mind,
+Trudchen,” answered the brother kindly; “meantime I have kept all the
+wild catskins for thee, and may be this—this—_she_ could sew them up into
+a mantle for thee.”
+
+“O let me see,” cried the young lady eagerly; and Sir Eberhard, walking
+off, presently returned with an armful of the beautiful brindled furs of
+the mountain cat, reminding Christina of her aunt’s gentle domestic
+favourite.  Ermentrude sat up, and regarded the placing out of them with
+great interest; and thus her brother left her employed, and so much
+delighted that she had not flagged, when a great bell proclaimed that it
+was the time for the noontide meal, for which Christina, in spite of all
+her fears of the company below stairs, had been constrained by mountain
+air to look forward with satisfaction.
+
+Ermentrude, she found, meant to go down, but with no notion of the
+personal arrangements that Christina had been wont to think a needful
+preliminary.  With all her hair streaming, down she went, and was so
+gladly welcomed by her father that it was plain that her presence was
+regarded as an unusual advance towards recovery, and Christina feared
+lest he might already be looking out for the stout husband.  She had much
+to tell him about the catskin cloak, and then she was seized with eager
+curiosity at the sight of Christina’s bundles, and especially at her
+lute, which she must hear at once.
+
+“Not now,” said her mother, “there will be jangling and jingling enough
+by and by—meat now.”
+
+The whole establishment were taking their places—or rather tumbling into
+them.  A battered, shapeless metal vessel seemed to represent the
+salt-cellar, and next to it Hugh Sorel seated himself, and kept a place
+for her beside him.  Otherwise she would hardly have had seat or food.’
+She was now able to survey the inmates of the castle.  Besides the family
+themselves, there were about a dozen men, all ruffianly-looking, and of
+much lower grade than her father, and three women.  One, old Ursel, the
+wife of Hatto the forester, was a bent, worn, but not ill-looking woman,
+with a motherly face; the younger ones were hard, bold creatures, from
+whom Christina felt a shrinking recoil.  The meal was dressed by Ursel
+and her kitchen boy.  From a great cauldron, goat’s flesh and broth
+together were ladled out into wooden bowls.  That every one provided
+their own spoon and knife—no fork—was only what Christina was used to in
+the most refined society, and she had the implements in a pouch hanging
+to her girdle; but she was not prepared for the unwashed condition of the
+bowls, nor for being obliged to share that of her father—far less for the
+absence of all blessing on the meal, and the coarse boisterousness of
+manners prevailing thereat.  Hungry as she was, she did not find it easy
+to take food under these circumstances, and she was relieved when
+Ermentrude, overcome by the turmoil, grew giddy, and was carried upstairs
+by her father, who laid her down upon her great bed, and left her to the
+attendance of Christina.  Ursel had followed, but was petulantly repulsed
+by her young lady in favour of the newcomer, and went away grumbling.
+
+Nestled on her bed, Ermentrude insisted on hearing the lute, and
+Christina had to creep down to fetch it, with some other of her goods, in
+trembling haste, and redoubled disgust at the aspect of the meal, which
+looked even more repulsive in this later stage, and to one who was no
+longer partaking of it.
+
+Low and softly, with a voice whence she could scarcely banish tears, and
+in dread of attracting attention, Christina sung to the sick girl, who
+listened with a sort of rude wonder, and finally was lulled to sleep.
+Christina ventured to lay down her instrument and move towards the
+window, heavily mullioned with stone, barred with iron, and glazed with
+thick glass; being in fact the only glazed window in the castle.  To her
+great satisfaction it did not look out over the loathsome court, but over
+the opening of the ravine.  The apartment occupied the whole floor of the
+keep; it was stone-paved, but the roof was boarded, and there was a round
+turret at each angle.  One contained the staircase, and was that which
+ran up above the keep, served as a watch-tower, and supported the Eagle
+banner.  The other three were empty, and one of these, which had a strong
+door, and a long loophole window looking out over the open country,
+Christina hoped that she might appropriate.  The turret was immediately
+over the perpendicular cliff that descended into the plain.  A stone
+thrown from the window would have gone straight down, she knew not where.
+Close to her ears rushed the descending waterfall in its leap over the
+rock side, and her eyes could rest themselves on the green meadow land
+below, and the smooth water of the Debateable Ford; nay—far, far away
+beyond retreating ridges of wood and field—she thought she could track a
+silver line and, guided by it, a something that might be a city.  Her
+heart leapt towards it, but she was recalled by Ermentrude’s fretfully
+imperious voice.
+
+“I was only looking forth from the window, lady,” she said, returning.
+
+“Ah! thou saw’st no travellers at the Ford?” cried Ermentrude, starting
+up with lively interest.
+
+“No, lady; I was gazing at the far distance.  Know you if it be indeed
+Ulm that we see from these windows?”
+
+“Ulm?  That is where thou comest from?” said Ermentrude languidly.
+
+“My happy home, with my dear uncle and aunt!  O, if I can but see it
+hence, it will be joy!”
+
+“I do not know.  Let me see,” said Ermentrude, rising; but at the window
+her pale blue eyes gazed vacantly as if she did not know what she was
+looking at or for.
+
+“Ah! if the steeple of the Dome Kirk were but finished, I could not
+mistake it,” said Christina.  “How beauteous the white spire will look
+from hence!”
+
+“Dome Kirk?” repeated Ermentrude; “what is that?”
+
+Such an entire blank as the poor child’s mind seemed to be was
+inconceivable to the maiden, who had been bred up in the busy hum of men,
+where the constant resort of strange merchants, the daily interests of a
+self-governing municipality, and the numerous festivals, both secular and
+religious, were an unconscious education, even without that which had
+been bestowed upon her by teachers, as well as by her companionship with
+her uncle, and participation in his studies, taste and arts.
+
+Ermentrude von Adlerstein had, on the contrary, not only never gone
+beyond the Kohler’s hut on the one side, and the mountain village on the
+other, but she never seen more of life than the festival at the wake the
+hermitage chapel there on Midsummer-day.  The only strangers who ever
+came to the castle were disbanded lanzknechts who took service with her
+father, or now and then a captive whom he put to ransom.  She knew
+absolutely nothing of the world, except for a general belief that
+Freiherren lived there to do what they chose with other people, and that
+the House of Adlerstein was the freest and noblest in existence.  Also
+there was a very positive hatred to the house of Schlangenwald, and no
+less to that of Adlerstein Wildschloss, for no reason that Christina
+could discover save that, being a younger branch of the family, they had
+submitted to the Emperor.  To destroy either the Graf von Schlangenwald,
+or her Wildschloss cousin, was evidently the highest gratification
+Ermentrude could conceive; and, for the rest, that her father and brother
+should make successful captures at the Debateable Ford was the more
+abiding, because more practicable hope.  She had no further ideas, except
+perhaps to elude her mother’s severity, and to desire her brother’s
+success in chamois-hunting.  The only mental culture she had ever
+received was that old Ursel had taught her the Credo, Pater Noster, and
+Ave, as correctly as might be expected from a long course of traditionary
+repetitions of an incomprehensible language.  And she knew besides a few
+German rhymes and jingles, half Christian, half heathen, with a legend or
+two which, if the names were Christian, ran grossly wild from all
+Christian meaning or morality.  As to the amenities, nay, almost the
+proprieties, of life, they were less known in that baronial castle than
+in any artisan’s house at Ulm.  So little had the sick girl figured them
+to herself, that she did not even desire any greater means of ease than
+she possessed.  She moaned and fretted indeed, with aching limbs and
+blank weariness, but without the slightest formed desire for anything to
+remove her discomfort, except the few ameliorations she knew, such as
+sitting on her brother’s knee, with her head on his shoulder, or tasting
+the mountain berries that he gathered for her.  Any other desire she
+exerted herself to frame was for finery to be gained from the spoils of
+travellers.
+
+And this was Christina’s charge, whom she must look upon as the least
+alien spirit in this dreadful castle of banishment!  The young and old
+lords seemed to her savage bandits, who frightened her only less than did
+the proud sinister expression of the old lady, for she had not even the
+merit of showing any tenderness towards the sickly girl, of whom she was
+ashamed, and evidently regarded the town-bred attendant as a contemptible
+interloper.
+
+Long, long did the maiden weep and pray that night after Ermentrude had
+sunk to sleep.  She strained her eyes with home-sick longings to detect
+lights where she thought Ulm might be; and, as she thought of her uncle
+and aunt, the poodle and the cat round the stove, the maids spinning and
+the prentices knitting as her uncle read aloud some grave good book, most
+probably the legend of the saint of the day, and contrasted it with the
+rude gruff sounds of revelry that found their way up the turret stairs,
+she could hardly restrain her sobs from awakening the young lady whose
+bed she was to share.  She thought almost with envy of her own patroness,
+who was cast into the lake of Bolsena with a millstone about her neck—a
+better fate, thought she, than to live on in such an abode of
+loathsomeness and peril.
+
+But then had not St. Christina floated up alive, bearing up her millstone
+with her?  And had not she been put into a dungeon full of venomous
+reptiles who, when they approached her, had all been changed to harmless
+doves?  Christina had once asked Father Balthazar how this could be; and
+had he not replied that the Church did not teach these miracles as
+matters of faith, but that she might there discern in figure how meek
+Christian holiness rose above all crushing burthens, and transformed the
+rudest natures.  This poor maiden-dying, perhaps; and oh! how unfit to
+live or die!—might it be her part to do some good work by her, and infuse
+some Christian hope, some godly fear?  Could it be for this that the
+saints had led her hither?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+THE FLOTSAM AND JETSAM OF THE DEBATEABLE FORD
+
+
+LIFE in Schloss Adlerstein was little less intolerable than Christina’s
+imagination had depicted it.  It was entirely devoid of all the graces of
+chivalry, and its squalor and coarseness, magnified into absurdity by
+haughtiness and violence, were almost inconceivable.  Fortunately for
+her, the inmates of the castle resided almost wholly below stairs in the
+hall and kitchen, and in some dismal dens in the thickness of their
+walls.  The height of the keep was intended for dignity and defence,
+rather than for habitation; and the upper chamber, with its great
+state-bed, where everybody of the house of Adlerstein was born and died,
+was not otherwise used, except when Ermentrude, unable to bear the
+oppressive confusion below stairs, had escaped thither for quietness’
+sake.  No one else wished to inhabit it.  The chamber above was filled
+with the various appliances for the defence of the castle; and no one
+would have ever gone up the turret stairs had not a warder been usually
+kept on the roof to watch the roads leading to the Ford.  Otherwise the
+Adlersteiners had all the savage instinct of herding together in as small
+a space as possible.
+
+Freiherrin Kunigunde hardly ever mounted to her daughter’s chamber.  All
+her affection was centred on the strong and manly son, of whom she was
+proud, while the sickly pining girl, who would hardly find a mate of her
+own rank, and who had not even dowry enough for a convent, was such a
+shame and burthen to her as to be almost a distasteful object.  But
+perversely, as it seemed to her, the only daughter was the darling of
+both father and brother, who were ready to do anything to gratify the
+girl’s sick fancies, and hailed with delight her pleasure in her new
+attendant.  Old Ursel was at first rather envious and contemptuous of the
+childish, fragile stranger, but her gentleness disarmed the old woman;
+and, when it was plain that the young lady’s sufferings were greatly
+lessened by tender care, dislike gave way to attachment, and there was
+little more murmuring at the menial services that were needed by the two
+maidens, even when Ermentrude’s feeble fancies, or Christina’s views of
+dainty propriety, rendered them more onerous than before.  She was even
+heard to rejoice that some Christian care and tenderness had at last
+reached her poor neglected child.
+
+It was well for Christina that she had such an ally.  The poor child
+never crept down stairs to the dinner or supper, to fetch food for
+Ermentrude, or water for herself, without a trembling and shrinking of
+heart and nerves.  Her father’s authority guarded her from rude actions,
+but from rough tongues he neither could nor would guard her, nor
+understand that what to some would have been a compliment seemed to her
+an alarming insult; and her chief safeguard lay in her own insignificance
+and want of attraction, and still more in the modesty that concealed her
+terror at rude jests sufficiently to prevent frightening her from
+becoming an entertainment.
+
+Her father, whom she looked on as a cultivated person in comparison with
+the rest of the world, did his best for her after his own views, and
+gradually brought her all the properties she had left at the Kohler’s
+hut.  Therewith she made a great difference in the aspect of the chamber,
+under the full sanction of the lords of the castle.  Wolf, deer, and
+sheep skins abounded; and with these, assisted by her father and old
+Hatto, she tapestried the lower part of the bare grim walls, a great
+bear’s hide covered the neighbourhood of the hearth, and cushions were
+made of these skins, and stuffed from Ursel’s stores of feathers.  All
+these embellishments were watched with great delight by Ermentrude, who
+had never been made of so much importance, and was as much surprised as
+relieved by such attentions.  She was too young and too delicate to
+reject civilization, and she let Christina braid her hair, bathe her, and
+arrange her dress, with sensations of comfort that were almost like
+health.  To train her into occupying herself was however, as Christina
+soon found, in her present state, impossible.  She could spin and sew a
+little, but hated both; and her clumsy, listless fingers only soiled and
+wasted Christina’s needles, silk, and lute strings, and such damage was
+not so easily remedied as in the streets of Ulm.  She was best provided
+for when looking on at her attendant’s busy hands, and asking to be sung
+to, or to hear tales of the active, busy scenes of the city life—the
+dresses, fairs, festivals, and guild processions.
+
+[Picture: “She was too young and too delicate to reject civilization, and
+ she let Christina braid her hair, bathe her, and arrange her dress, with
+      sensations of comfort that were almost like health.”—Page 37]
+
+The gentle nursing and the new interests made her improve in health, so
+that her father was delighted, and Christina began to hope for a return
+home.  Sometimes the two girls would take the air, either, on still days,
+upon the battlements, where Ermentrude watched the Debateable Ford, and
+Christina gazed at the Danube and at Ulm; or they would find their way to
+a grassy nook on the mountain-side, where Christina gathered gentians and
+saxifrage, trying to teach her young lady that they were worth looking
+at, and sighing at the thought of Master Gottfried’s wreath when she met
+with the asphodel seed-vessels.  Once the quiet mule was brought into
+requisition; and, with her brother walking by her, and Sorel and his
+daughter in attendance, Ermentrude rode towards the village of
+Adlerstein.  It was a collection of miserable huts, on a sheltered slope
+towards the south, where there was earth enough to grow some wretched rye
+and buckwheat, subject to severe toll from the lord of the soil.  Perched
+on a hollow rock above the slope was a rude little church, over a cave
+where a hermit had once lived and died in such odour of sanctity that,
+his day happening to coincide with that of St. John the Baptist, the
+Blessed Freidmund had acquired the credit of the lion’s share both of the
+saint’s honours and of the old solstitial feast of Midsummer.  This wake
+was the one gaiety of the year, and attracted a fair which was the sole
+occasion of coming honestly by anything from the outer world; nor had his
+cell ever lacked a professional anchorite.
+
+The Freiherr of his day had been a devout man, who had gone a pilgrimage
+with Kaiser Friedrich of the Red Beard, and had brought home a bit of
+stone from the council chamber of Nicæa, which he had presented to the
+little church that he had built over the cavern.  He had named his son
+Friedmund; and there were dim memories of his days as of a golden age,
+before the Wildschlossen had carried off the best of the property, and
+when all went well.
+
+This was Christina’s first sight of a church since her arrival, except
+that in the chapel, which was a dismal neglected vault, where a ruinous
+altar and mouldering crucifix testified to its sacred purpose.  The old
+baron had been excommunicated for twenty years, ever since he had harried
+the wains of the Bishop of Augsburg on his way to the Diet; and, though
+his household and family were not under the same sentence, “Sunday didna
+come abune the pass.”  Christina’s entreaty obtained permission to enter
+the little building, but she had knelt there only a few moments before
+her father came to hurry her away, and her supplications that he would
+some day take her to mass there were whistled down the wind; and indeed
+the hermit was a layman, and the church was only served on great
+festivals by a monk from the convent of St. Ruprecht, on the distant side
+of the mountain, which was further supposed to be in the Schlangenwald
+interest.  Her best chance lay in infusing the desire into Ermentrude,
+who by watching her prayers and asking a few questions had begun to
+acquire a few clearer ideas.  And what Ermentrude wished had always
+hitherto been acquiesced in by the two lords.
+
+The elder baron came little into Christina’s way.  He meant to be kind to
+her, but she was dreadfully afraid of him, and, when he came to visit his
+daughter, shrank out of his notice as much as possible, shuddering most
+of all at his attempts at civilities.  His son she viewed as one of the
+thickwitted giants meant to be food for the heroism of good knights of
+romance.  Except that he was fairly conversant with the use of weapons,
+and had occasionally ridden beyond the shadow of his own mountain, his
+range was quite as limited as his sister’s; and he had an equal scorn for
+all beyond it.  His unfailing kindness to his sister was however in his
+favour, and he always eagerly followed up any suggestion Christina made
+for her pleasure.
+
+Much of his time was spent on the child, whose chief nurse and playmate
+he had been throughout her malady; and when she showed him the stranger’s
+arrangements, or repeated to him, in a wondering, blundering way, with
+constant appeals to her attendant, the new tales she had heard, he used
+to listen with a pleased awkward amazement at his little Ermentrude’s
+astonishing cleverness, joined sometimes with real interest, which was
+evinced by his inquiries of Christina.  He certainly did not admire the
+little, slight, pale bower-maiden, but he seemed to look upon her like
+some strange, almost uncanny, wise spirit out of some other sphere, and
+his manner towards her had none of the offensive freedom apparent in even
+the old man’s patronage.  It was, as Ermentrude once said, laughing,
+almost as if he feared that she might do something to him.
+
+Christina had expected to see a ruffian, and had found a boor; but she
+was to be convinced that the ruffian existed in him.  Notice came up to
+the castle of a convoy of waggons, and all was excitement.  Men-at-arms
+were mustered, horses led down the Eagle’s Ladder, and an ambush prepared
+in the woods.  The autumn rains were already swelling the floods, and the
+passage of the ford would be difficult enough to afford the assailants an
+easy prey.
+
+The Freiherrinn Kunigunde herself, and all the women of the castle,
+hurried into Ermentrude’s room to enjoy the view from her window.  The
+young lady herself was full of eager expectation, but she knew enough of
+her maiden to expect no sympathy from her, and loved her well enough not
+to bring down on her her mother’s attention; so Christina crept into her
+turret, unable to withdraw her eyes from the sight, trembling, weeping,
+praying, longing for power to give a warning signal.  Could they be her
+own townsmen stopped on the way to dear Ulm?
+
+She could see the waggons in mid-stream, the warriors on the bank; she
+heard the triumphant outcries of the mother and daughter in the outer
+room.  She saw the overthrow, the struggle, the flight of a few scattered
+dark figures on the farther side, the drawing out of the goods on the
+nearer.  Oh! were those leaping waves bearing down any good men’s corpses
+to the Danube, slain, foully slain by her own father and this gang of
+robbers?
+
+She was glad that Ermentrude went down with her mother to watch the
+return of the victors.  She crouched on the floor, sobbing, shuddering
+with grief and indignation, and telling her beads alike for murdered and
+murderers, till, after the sounds of welcome and exultation, she heard
+Sir Eberhard’s heavy tread, as he carried his sister up stairs.
+Ermentrude went up at once to Christina.
+
+“After all there was little for us!” she said.  “It was only a wain of
+wine barrels; and now will the drunkards down stairs make good cheer.
+But Ebbo could only win for me this gold chain and medal which was round
+the old merchant’s neck.”
+
+“Was he slain?” Christina asked with pale lips.
+
+“I only know I did not kill him,” returned the baron; “I had him down and
+got the prize, and that was enough for me.  What the rest of the fellows
+may have done, I cannot say.”
+
+“But he has brought thee something, Stina,” continued Ermentrude.  “Show
+it to her, brother.”
+
+“My father sends you this for your care of my sister,” said Eberhard,
+holding out a brooch that had doubtless fastened the band of the
+unfortunate wine-merchant’s bonnet.
+
+“Thanks, sir; but, indeed, I may not take it,” said Christina, turning
+crimson, and drawing back.
+
+“So!” he exclaimed, in amaze; then bethinking himself,—“They are no
+townsfolk of yours, but Constance cowards.”
+
+“Take it, take it, Stina, or you will anger my father,” added Ermentrude.
+
+“No, lady, I thank the barons both, but it were sin in me,” said
+Christina, with trembling voice.
+
+“Look you,” said Eberhard; “we have the full right—’tis a seignorial
+right—to all the goods of every wayfarer that may be overthrown in our
+river—as I am a true knight!” he added earnestly.
+
+“A true knight!” repeated Christina, pushed hard, and very indignant in
+all her terror.  “The true knight’s part is to aid, not rob, the weak.”
+And the dark eyes flashed a vivid light.
+
+“Christina!” exclaimed Ermentrude in the extremity of her amazement,
+“know you what you have said?—that Eberhard is no true knight!”
+
+He meanwhile stood silent, utterly taken by surprise, and letting his
+little sister fight his battles.
+
+“I cannot help it, Lady Ermentrude,” said Christina, with trembling lips,
+and eyes filling with tears.  “You may drive me from the castle—I only
+long to be away from it; but I cannot stain my soul by saying that spoil
+and rapine are the deeds of a true knight.”
+
+“My mother will beat you,” cried Ermentrude, passionately, ready to fly
+to the head of the stairs; but her brother laid his hand upon her.
+
+“Tush, Trudchen; keep thy tongue still, child!  What does it hurt me?”
+
+And he turned on his heels and went down stairs.  Christina crept into
+her turret, weeping bitterly and with many a wild thought.  Would they
+visit her offence on her father?  Would they turn them both out together?
+If so, would not her father hurl her down the rocks rather than return
+her to Ulm?  Could she escape?  Climb down the dizzy rocks, it might be,
+succour the merchant lying half dead on the meadows, protect and be
+protected, be once more among God-fearing Christians?  And as she felt
+her helplessness, the selfish thoughts passed into a gush of tears for
+the murdered man, lying suffering there, and for his possible wife and
+children watching for him.  Presently Ermentrude peeped in.
+
+“Stina, Stina, don’t cry; I will not tell my mother!  Come out, and
+finish my kerchief!  Come out!  No one shall beat you.”
+
+“That is not what I wept for, lady,” said Christina.  “I do not think you
+would bring harm on me.  But oh!  I would I were at home!  I grieve for
+the bloodshed that I must see and may not hinder, and for that poor
+merchant.”
+
+“Oh,” said Ermentrude, “you need not fear for him!  I saw his own folk
+return and lift him up.  But what is he to thee or to us?”
+
+“I am a burgher maid, lady,” said Christina, recovering herself, and
+aware that it was of little use to bear testimony to such an auditor as
+poor little Ermentrude against the deeds of her own father and brother,
+which had in reality the sort of sanction Sir Eberhard had mentioned,
+much akin to those coast rights that were the temptation of wreckers.
+
+Still she could not but tremble at the thought of her speech, and went
+down to supper in greater trepidation than usual, dreading that she
+should be expected to thank the Freiherr for his gift.  But, fortunately,
+manners were too rare at Adlerstein for any such omission to be
+remarkable, and the whole establishment was in a state of noisy triumph
+and merriment over the excellence of the French wine they had captured,
+so that she slipped into her seat unobserved.
+
+Every available drinking-horn and cup was full.  Ermentrude was eagerly
+presented with draughts by both father and brother, and presently Sir
+Eberhard exclaimed, turning towards the shrinking Christina with a rough
+laugh, “Maiden, I trow thou wilt not taste?”
+
+Christina shook her head, and framed a negative with her lips.
+
+“What’s this?” asked her father, close to whom she sat.  “Is’t a
+fast-day?”
+
+There was a pause.  Many were present who regarded a fast-day much more
+than the lives or goods of their neighbours.  Christina again shook her
+head.
+
+“No matter,” said good-natured Sir Eberhard, evidently wishing to avert
+any ill consequence from her.  “’Tis only her loss.”
+
+The mirth went on rough and loud, and Christina felt this the worst of
+all the miserable meals she had partaken of in fear and trembling at this
+place of her captivity.  Ermentrude, too, was soon in such a state of
+excitement, that not only was Christina’s womanhood bitterly ashamed and
+grieved for her, but there was serious danger that she might at any
+moment break out with some allusion to her maiden’s recusancy in her
+reply to Sir Eberhard.
+
+Presently however Ermentrude laid down her head and began to cry—violent
+headache had come on—and her brother took her in his arms to carry her up
+the stairs; but his potations had begun before hers, and his step was far
+from steady; he stumbled more than once on the steps, shook and
+frightened his sister, and set her down weeping petulantly.  And then
+came a more terrible moment; his awe of Christina had passed away; he
+swore that she was a lovely maiden, with only too free a tongue, and that
+a kiss must be the seal of her pardon.
+
+A house full of intoxicated men, no living creature who would care to
+protect her, scarce even her father!  But extremity of terror gave her
+strength.  She spoke resolutely—“Sir Eberhard, your sister is ill—you are
+in no state to be here.  Go down at once, nor insult a free maiden.”
+
+Probably the low-toned softness of the voice, so utterly different from
+the shrill wrangling notes of all the other women he had known, took him
+by surprise.  He was still sober enough to be subdued, almost cowed, by
+resistance of a description unlike all he had ever seen; his alarm at
+Christina’s superior power returned in full force, he staggered to the
+stairs, Christina rushed after him, closed the heavy door with all her
+force, fastened it inside, and would have sunk down to weep but for
+Ermentrude’s peevish wail of distress.
+
+Happily Ermentrude was still a child, and, neglected as she had been, she
+still had had no one to make her precocious in matters of this kind.  She
+was quite willing to take Christina’s view of the case, and not resent
+the exclusion of her brother; indeed, she was unwell enough to dread the
+loudness of his voice and rudeness of his revelry.
+
+So the door remained shut, and Christina’s resolve was taken that she
+would so keep it while the wine lasted.  And, indeed, Ermentrude had so
+much fever all that night and the next day that no going down could be
+thought of.  Nobody came near the maidens but Ursel, and she described
+one continued orgie that made Christina shudder again with fear and
+disgust.  Those below revelled without interval, except for sleep; and
+they took their sleep just where they happened to sink down, then
+returned again to the liquor.  The old baroness repaired to the kitchen
+when the revelry went beyond even her bearing; but all the time the wine
+held out, the swine in the court were, as Ursel averred, better company
+than the men in the hall.  Yet there might have been worse even than
+this; for old Ursel whispered that at the bottom of the stairs there was
+a trap-door.  Did the maiden know what it covered?  It was an oubliette.
+There was once a Strasburg armourer who had refused ransom, and talked of
+appealing to the Kaiser.  He trod on that door and—Ursel pointed
+downwards.  “But since that time,” she said, “my young lord has never
+brought home a prisoner.”
+
+No wonder that all this time Christina cowered at the discordant sounds
+below, trembled, and prayed while she waited on her poor young charge,
+who tossed and moaned in fever and suffering.  She was still far from
+recovered when the materials of the debauch failed, and the household
+began to return to its usual state.  She was soon restlessly pining for
+her brother; and when her father came up to see her, received him with
+scant welcome, and entreaties for Ebbo.  She knew she should be better if
+she might only sit on his knee, and lay her head on his shoulder.  The
+old Freiherr offered to accommodate her; but she rejected him petulantly,
+and still called for Ebbo, till he went down, promising that her brother
+should come.
+
+With a fluttering heart Christina awaited the noble whom she had perhaps
+insulted, and whose advances had more certainly insulted her.  Would he
+visit her with his anger, or return to that more offensive familiarity?
+She longed to flee out of sight, when, after a long interval, his heavy
+tread was heard; but she could not even take refuge in her turret, for
+Ermentrude was leaning against her.  Somehow, the step was less assured
+than usual; he absolutely knocked at the door; and, when he came in, he
+acknowledged her by a slight inclination of the head.  If she only had
+known it, this was the first time that head had ever been bent to any
+being, human or Divine; but all she did perceive was that Sir Eberhard
+was in neither of the moods she dreaded, only desperately shy and
+sheepish, and extremely ashamed, not indeed of his excess, which would
+have been, even to a much tamer German baron, only a happy accident, but
+of what had passed between himself and her.
+
+He was much grieved to perceive how much ground Ermentrude had lost, and
+gave himself up to fondling and comforting her; and in a few days more,
+in their common cares for the sister, Christina lost her newly-acquired
+horror of the brother, and could not but be grateful for his forbearance;
+while she was almost entertained by the increased awe of herself shown by
+this huge robber baron.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+SNOW-WREATHS WHEN ’TIS THAW
+
+
+ERMENTRUDE had by no means recovered the ground she had lost, before the
+winter set in; and blinding snow came drifting down day and night,
+rendering the whole view, above and below, one expanse of white, only
+broken by the peaks of rock which were too steep to sustain the snow.
+The waterfall lengthened its icicles daily, and the whole court was
+heaped with snow, up even to the top of the high steps to the hall; and
+thus, Christina was told, would it continue all the winter.  What had
+previously seemed to her a strangely door-like window above the porch now
+became the only mode of egress, when the barons went out bear or
+wolf-hunting, or the younger took his crossbow and hound to provide the
+wild-fowl, which, under Christina’s skilful hands, would tempt the feeble
+appetite of Ermentrude when she was utterly unable to touch the salted
+meats and sausages of the household.
+
+In spite of all endeavours to guard the windows and keep up the fire, the
+cold withered the poor child like a fading leaf, and she needed more and
+more of tenderness and amusement to distract her attention from her
+ailments.  Christina’s resources were unfailing.  Out of the softer pine
+and birch woods provided for the fire, she carved a set of draughtsmen,
+and made a board by ruling squares on the end of a settle, and painting
+the alternate ones with a compound of oil and charcoal.  Even the old
+Baron was delighted with this contrivance, and the pleasure it gave his
+daughter.  He remembered playing at draughts in that portion of his youth
+which had been a shade more polished, and he felt as if the game were
+making Ermentrude more hike a lady.  Christina was encouraged to proceed
+with a set of chessmen, and the shaping of their characteristic heads
+under her dexterous fingers was watched by Ermentrude like something
+magical.  Indeed, the young lady entertained the belief that there was no
+limit to her attendant’s knowledge or capacity.
+
+Truly there was a greater brightness and clearness beginning to dawn even
+upon poor little Ermentrude’s own dull mind.  She took more interest in
+everything: songs were not solely lullabies, but she cared to talk them
+over; tales to which she would once have been incapable of paying
+attention were eagerly sought after; and, above all, the spiritual
+vacancy that her mind had hitherto presented was beginning to be filled
+up.  Christina had brought her own books—a library of extraordinary
+extent for a maiden of the fifteenth century, but which she owed to her
+uncle’s connexion with the arts of wood-cutting and printing.  A Vulgate
+from Dr. Faustus’s own press, a mass book and breviary, Thomas à Kempis’s
+_Imitation_ and the _Nuremburg Chronicle_ all in Latin, and the poetry of
+the gentle Minnesinger and bird lover, Walther von Vogelweide, in the
+vernacular: these were her stock, which Hausfrau Johanna had viewed as a
+foolish encumbrance, and Hugh Sorel would never have transported to the
+castle unless they had been so well concealed in Christina’s kirtles that
+he had taken them for parts of her wardrobe.
+
+Most precious were they now, when, out of the reach of all teaching save
+her own, she had to infuse into the sinking girl’s mind the great
+mysteries of life and death, that so she might not leave the world
+without more hope or faith than her heathen forefathers.  For that
+Ermentrude would live Christina had never hoped, since that fleeting
+improvement had been cut short by the fever of the wine-cup; the look,
+voice, and tone had become so completely the same as those of Regina
+Grundt’s little sister who had pined and died.  She knew she could not
+cure, but she could, she felt she could, comfort, cheer, and soften, and
+she no longer repined at her enforced sojourn at Adlerstein.  She
+heartily loved her charge, and could not bear to think how desolate
+Ermentrude would be without her.  And now the poor girl had become
+responsive to her care.  She was infinitely softened in manner, and
+treated her parents with forms of respect new to them; she had learnt
+even to thank old Ursel, dropped her imperious tone, and struggled with
+her petulance; and, towards her brother, the domineering, uncouth
+adherence was becoming real, tender affection; while the dependent,
+reverent love she bestowed upon Christina was touching and endearing in
+the extreme.
+
+Freiherr von Adlerstein saw the change, and congratulated himself on the
+effect of having a town-bred bower woman; nay, spoke of the advantage it
+would be to his daughter, if he could persuade himself to make the
+submission to the Kaiser which the late improvements decided on at the
+Diet were rendering more and more inevitable.  _Now_ how happy would be
+the winner of his gentle Ermentrude!
+
+Freiherrinn von Adlerstein thought the alteration the mere change from
+child to woman, and felt insulted by the supposition that any one might
+not have been proud to match with a daughter of Adlerstein, be she what
+she might.  As to submission to the Kaiser, that was mere folly and
+weakness—kaisers, kings, dukes, and counts had broken their teeth against
+the rock of Adlerstein before now!  What had come over her husband and
+her son to make them cravens?
+
+For Freiherr Eberhard was more strongly convinced than was his father of
+the untenableness of their present position.  Hugh Sorel’s reports of
+what he heard at Ulm had shown that the league that had been discussed at
+Regensburg was far more formidable than anything that had ever previously
+threatened Schloss Adlerstein, and that if the Graf von Schlangenwald
+joined in the coalition, there would be private malice to direct its
+efforts against the Adlerstein family.  Feud-letters or challenges had
+been made unlawful for ten years, and was not Adlerstein at feud with the
+world?
+
+Nor did Eberhard look on the submission with the sullen rage and grief
+that his father felt in bringing himself to such a declension from the
+pride of his ancestors.  What the young Baron heard up stairs was
+awakening in him a sense of the poorness and narrowness of his present
+life.  Ermentrude never spared him what interested her; and, partly from
+her lips, partly through her appeals to her attendant, he had learnt that
+life had better things to offer than independence on these bare rocks,
+and that homage might open the way to higher and worthier exploits than
+preying upon overturned waggons.
+
+Dietrich of Berne and his two ancestors, whose lengthy legend Christina
+could sing in a low, soft recitative, were revelations to him of what she
+meant by a true knight—the lion in war, the lamb in peace; the quaint
+oft-repeated portraits, and still quainter cities, of the Chronicle, with
+her explanations and translations, opened his mind to aspirations for
+intercourse with his fellows, for an honourable name, and for esteem in
+its degree such as was paid to Sir Parzival, to Karl the Great, or to
+Rodolf of Hapsburgh, once a mountain lord like himself.  Nay, as
+Ermentrude said, stroking his cheek, and smoothing the flaxen beard, that
+somehow had become much less rough and tangled than it used to be, “Some
+day wilt thou be another Good Freiherr Eberhard, whom all the
+country-side loved, and who gave bread at the castle-gate to all that
+hungered.”
+
+Her brother believed nothing of her slow declension in strength,
+ascribing all the change he saw to the bitter cold, and seeing but little
+even of that alteration, though he spent many hours in her room, holding
+her in his arms, amusing her, or talking to her and to Christina.  All
+Christina’s fear of him was gone.  As long as there was no liquor in the
+house, and he was his true self, she felt him to be a kind friend, bound
+to her by strong sympathy in the love and care for his sister.  She could
+talk almost as freely before him as when alone with her young lady; and
+as Ermentrude’s religious feelings grew stronger, and were freely
+expressed to him, surely his attention was not merely kindness and
+patience with the sufferer.
+
+The girl’s soul ripened rapidly under the new influences during her
+bodily decay; and, as the days lengthened, and the stern hold of winter
+relaxed upon the mountains, Christina looked with strange admiration upon
+the expression that had dawned upon the features once so vacant and dull,
+and listened with the more depth of reverence to the sweet words of
+faith, hope and love, because she felt that a higher, deeper teaching
+than she could give must have come to mould the spirit for the new world
+to which it was hastening.
+
+    “Like an army defeated,
+    The snow had retreated,”
+
+out of the valley, whose rich green shone smiling round the pool into
+which the Debateable Ford spread.  The waterfall had burst its icy bonds,
+and dashed down with redoubled voice, roaring rather than babbling.  Blue
+and pink hepaticas—or, as Christina called them, liver-krauts—had pushed
+up their starry heads, and had even been gathered by Sir Eberhard, and
+laid on his sister’s pillow.  The dark peaks of rock came out all
+glistening with moisture, and the snow only retained possession of the
+deep hollows and crevices, into which however its retreat was far more
+graceful than when, in the city, it was trodden by horse and man, and
+soiled with smoke.
+
+Christina dreaded indeed that the roads should be open, but she could not
+love the snow; it spoke to her of dreariness, savagery, and captivity,
+and she watched the dwindling stripes with satisfaction, and hailed the
+fall of the petty avalanches from one Eagle’s Step to another as her
+forefathers might have rejoiced in the defeat of the Frost giants.
+
+But Ermentrude had a love for the white sheet that lay covering a gorge
+running up from the ravine.  She watched its diminution day by day with a
+fancy that she was melting away with it; and indeed it was on the very
+day that a succession of drifting showers had left the sheet alone, and
+separated it from the masses of white above, that it first fully dawned
+upon the rest of the family that, for the little daughter of the house,
+spring was only bringing languor and sinking instead of recovery.
+
+Then it was that Sir Eberhard first really listened to her entreaty that
+she might not die without a priest, and comforted her by passing his word
+to her that, if—he would not say when—the time drew near, he would bring
+her one of the priests who had only come from St. Ruprecht’s cloister on
+great days, by a sort of sufferance, to say mass at the Blessed
+Friedmund’s hermitage chapel.
+
+The time was slow in coming.  Easter had passed with Ermentrude far too
+ill for Christina to make the effort she had intended of going to the
+church, even if she could get no escort but old Ursel—the sheet of snow
+had dwindled to a mere wreath—the ford looked blue in the sunshine—the
+cascade tinkled merrily down its rock—mountain primroses peeped out,
+when, as Father Norbert came forth from saying his ill-attended
+Pentecostal mass, and was parting with the infirm peasant hermit, a tall
+figure strode up the pass, and, as the villagers fell back to make way,
+stood before the startled priest, and said, in a voice choked with grief,
+“Come with me.”
+
+“Who needs me?” began the astonished monk.
+
+“Follow him not, father!” whispered the hermit.  “It is the young
+Freiherr.—Oh have mercy on him, gracious sir; he has done your noble
+lordships no wrong.”
+
+“I mean him no ill,” replied Eberhard, clearing his voice with
+difficulty; “I would but have him do his office.  Art thou afraid,
+priest?”
+
+“Who needs my office?” demanded Father Norbert.  “Show me fit cause, and
+what should I dread?  Wherefore dost thou seek me?”
+
+“For my sister,” replied Eberhard, his voice thickening again.  “My
+little sister lies at the point of death, and I have sworn to her that a
+priest she shall have.  Wilt thou come, or shall I drag thee down the
+pass?”
+
+“I come, I come with all my heart, sir knight,” was the ready response.
+“A few moments and I am at your bidding.”
+
+He stepped back into the hermit’s cave, whence a stair led up to the
+chapel.  The anchorite followed him, whispering—“Good father, escape!
+There will be full time ere he misses you.  The north door leads to the
+Gemsbock’s Pass; it is open now.”
+
+“Why should I baulk him?  Why should I deny my office to the dying?” said
+Norbert.
+
+“Alas! holy father, thou art new to this country, and know’st not these
+men of blood!  It is a snare to make the convent ransom thee, if not
+worse.  The Freiherrinn is a fiend for malice, and the Freiherr is
+excommunicate.”
+
+“I know it, my son,” said Norbert; “but wherefore should their child
+perish unassoilzied?”
+
+“Art coming, priest?” shouted Eberhard, from his stand at the mouth of
+the cave.
+
+And, as Norbert at once appeared with the pyx and other appliances that
+he had gone to fetch, the Freiherr held out his hand with an offer to
+“carry his gear for him;” and, when the monk refused, with an inward
+shudder at entrusting a sacred charge to such unhallowed hands, replied,
+“You will have work enow for both hands ere the castle is reached.”
+
+But Father Norbert was by birth a sturdy Switzer, and thought little of
+these Swabian Alps; and he climbed after his guide through the most
+rugged passages of Eberhard’s shortest and most perpendicular cut without
+a moment’s hesitation, and with agility worthy of a chamois.  The young
+baron turned for a moment, when the level of the castle had been gained,
+perhaps to see whether he were following, but at the same time came to a
+sudden, speechless pause.
+
+On the white masses of vapour that floated on the opposite side of the
+mountain was traced a gigantic shadowy outline of a hermit, with head
+bent eagerly forward, and arm outstretched.
+
+The monk crossed himself.  Eberhard stood still for a moment, and then
+said, hoarsely,—“The Blessed Friedmund!  He is come for her;” then strode
+on towards the postern gate, followed by Brother Norbert, a good deal
+reassured both as to the genuineness of the young Baron’s message and the
+probable condition of the object of his journey, since the patron saint
+of her race was evidently on the watch to speed her departing spirit.
+
+Sir Eberhard led the way up the turret stairs to the open door, and the
+monk entered the death-chamber.  The elder Baron sat near the fire in the
+large wooden chair, half turned towards his daughter, as one who must
+needs be present, but with his face buried in his hands, unable to endure
+the spectacle.  Nearer was the tall form of his wife, standing near the
+foot of the bed, her stern, harsh features somewhat softened by the
+feelings of the moment.  Ursel waited at hand, with tears running down
+her furrowed cheeks.
+
+For such as these Father Norbert was prepared; but he little expected to
+meet so pure and sweet a gaze of reverential welcome as beamed on him
+from the soft, dark eyes of the little white-checked maiden who sat on
+the bed, holding the sufferer in her arms.  Still less had he anticipated
+the serene blessedness that sat on the wasted features of the dying girl,
+and all the anguish of labouring breath.
+
+She smiled a smile of joy, held up her hand, and thanked her brother.
+Her father scarcely lifted his head, her mother made a rigid curtsey, and
+with a grim look of sorrow coming over her features, laid her hand over
+the old Baron’s shoulder.  “Come away, Herr Vater,” she said; “he is
+going to hear her confession, and make her too holy for the like of us to
+touch.”
+
+The old man rose up, and stepped towards his child.  Ermentrude held out
+her arms to him, and murmured—
+
+“Father, father, pardon me; I would have been a better daughter if I had
+only known—”  He gathered her in his arms; he was quite past speaking;
+and they only heard his heavy breathing, and one more whisper from
+Ermentrude—“And oh! father, one day wilt thou seek to be absolved?”
+Whether he answered or not they knew not; he only gave her repeated
+kisses, and laid her down on her pillows, then rushed to the door, and
+the passionate sobs of the strong man’s uncontrolled nature might be
+heard upon the stair.  The parting with the others was not necessarily so
+complete, as they were not, like him, under censure of the Church; but
+Kunigunde leant down to kiss her; and, in return to her repetition of her
+entreaty for pardon, replied, “Thou hast it, child, if it will ease thy
+mind; but it is all along of these new fancies that ever an Adlerstein
+thought of pardon.  There, there, I blame thee not, poor maid; it thou
+wert to die, it may be even best as it is.  Now must I to thy father; he
+is troubled enough about this gear.”
+
+But when Eberhard moved towards his sister, she turned to the priest, and
+said, imploringly, “Not far, not far!  Oh! let them,” pointing to
+Eberhard and Christina, “let them not be quite out of sight!”
+
+“Out of hearing is all that is needed, daughter,” replied the priest; and
+Ermentrude looked content as Christina moved towards the empty north
+turret, where, with the door open, she was in full view, and Eberhard
+followed her thither.  It was indeed fully out of earshot of the child’s
+faint, gasping confession.  Gravely and sadly both stood there.
+Christina looked up the hillside for the snow-wreath.  The May sunshine
+had dissolved it; the green pass lay sparkling without a vestige of its
+white coating.  Her eyes full of tears, she pointed the spot out to
+Eberhard.  He understood; but, leaning towards her, told, under his
+breath, of the phantom he had seen.  Her eyes expanded with awe of the
+supernatural.  “It was the Blessed Friedmund,” said Eberhard.  “Never
+hath he so greeted one of our race since the pious Freiherrinn
+Hildegarde.  Maiden, hast thou brought us back a blessing?”
+
+“Ah! well may she be blessed—well may the saints stoop to greet her,”
+murmured Christina, with strangled voice, scarcely able to control her
+sobs.
+
+Father Norbert came towards them.  The simple confession had been heard,
+and he sought the aid of Christina in performing the last rites of the
+Church.
+
+“Maiden,” he said to her, “thou hast done a great and blessed work, such
+as many a priest might envy thee.”
+
+Eberhard was not excluded during the final services by which the soul was
+to be dismissed from its earthly dwelling-place.  True, he comprehended
+little of their import, and nothing of the words, but he gazed meekly,
+with uncovered head, and a bewildered look of sadness, while Christina
+made her responses and took her part with full intelligence and deep
+fervour, sorrowing indeed for the companion who had become so dear to
+her, but deeply thankful for the spiritual consolation that had come at
+last.  Ermentrude lay calm, and, as it were, already rapt into a higher
+world, lighting up at the German portions of the service, and not wholly
+devoid of comprehension of the spirit even of the Latin, as indeed she
+had come to the border of the region where human tongues and languages
+are no more.
+
+She was all but gone when the rite of extreme unction was completed, and
+they could only stand round her, Eberhard, Christina, Ursel, and the old
+Baroness, who had returned again, watching the last flutterings of the
+breath, the window thrown wide open that nothing might impede the passage
+of the soul to the blue vault above.
+
+The priest spoke the beautiful commendation, “Depart, O Christian soul.”
+There was a faint gesture in the midst for Christina to lift her in her
+arms—a sign to bend down and kiss her brow—but her last look was for her
+brother, her last murmur, “Come after me; be the Good Baron Ebbo.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+THE YOUNG FREIHERR
+
+
+ERMENTRUDE VON ADLERSTEIN slept with her forefathers in the vaults of the
+hermitage chapel, and Christina Sorel’s work was done.
+
+Surely it was time for her to return home, though she should be more
+sorry to leave the mountain castle than she could ever have believed
+possible.  She entreated her father to take her home, but she received a
+sharp answer that she did not know what she was talking of: the
+Schlangenwald Reitern were besetting all the roads; and moreover the Ulm
+burghers had taken the capture of the Constance wine in such dudgeon that
+for a retainer of Adlerstein to show himself in the streets would be an
+absolute asking for the wheel.
+
+But was there any hope for her?  Could he not take her to some nunnery
+midway, and let her write to her uncle to fetch her from thence?
+
+He swore at woman’s pertinacity, but allowed at last that if the plan,
+talked of by the Barons, of going to make their submission to the Emperor
+at Linz, with a view to which all violence at the ford had ceased, should
+hold good, it might be possible thus to drop her on their way.
+
+With this Christina must needs content herself.  Poor child, not only had
+Ermentrude’s death deprived her of the sole object of her residence at
+Schloss Adlerstein, but it had infinitely increased the difficulties of
+her position.  No one interfered with her possession of the upper room
+and its turrets; and it was only at meal times that she was obliged to
+mingle with the other inhabitants, who, for the most part, absolutely
+overlooked the little shrinking pale maiden but with one exception, and
+that the most perplexing of all.  She had been on terms with Freiherr
+Eberhard that were not so easily broken off as if she had been an old
+woman of Ursel’s age.  All through his sister’s decline she had been his
+comforter, assistant, director, living in intercourse and sympathy that
+ought surely to cease when she was no longer his sister’s attendant, yet
+which must be more than ever missed in the full freshness of the stroke.
+
+Even on the earliest day of bereavement, a sudden thought of Hausfrau
+Johanna flashed upon Christina, and reminded her of the guard she must
+keep over herself if she would return to Ulm the same modest girl whom
+her aunt could acquit of all indiscretion.  Her cheeks flamed, as she sat
+alone, with the very thought, and the next time she heard the well-known
+tread on the stair, she fled hastily into her own turret chamber, and
+shut the door.  Her heart beat fast.  She could hear Sir Eberhard moving
+about the room, and listened to his heavy sigh as he threw himself into
+the large chair.  Presently he called her by name, and she felt it
+needful to open her door and answer, respectfully,
+
+“What would you, my lord?”
+
+“What would I?  A little peace, and heed to her who is gone.  To see my
+father and mother one would think that a partridge had but flown away.  I
+have seen my father more sorrowful when his dog had fallen over the
+abyss.”
+
+“Mayhap there is more sorrow for a brute that cannot live again,” said
+Christina.  “Our bird has her nest by an Altar that is lovelier and
+brighter than even our Dome Kirk will ever be.”
+
+“Sit down, Christina,” he said, dragging a chair nearer the hearth.  “My
+heart is sore, and I cannot bear the din below.  Tell me where my bird is
+flown.”
+
+“Ah! sir; pardon me.  I must to the kitchen,” said Christina, crossing
+her hands over her breast, to still her trembling heart, for she was very
+sorry for his grief, but moving resolutely.
+
+“Must?  And wherefore?  Thou hast nought to do there; speak truth!  Why
+not stay with me?” and his great light eyes opened wide.
+
+“A burgher maid may not sit down with a noble baron.”
+
+“The devil!  Has my mother been plaguing thee, child?”
+
+“No, my lord,” said Christina, “she reeks not of me; but”—steadying her
+voice with great difficulty—“it behoves me the more to be discreet.”
+
+“And you would not have me come here!” he said, with a wistful tone of
+reproach.
+
+“I have no power to forbid you; but if you do, I must betake me to Ursel
+in the kitchen,” said Christina, very low, trembling and half choked.
+
+“Among the rude wenches there!” he cried, starting up.  “Nay, nay, that
+shall not be!  Rather will I go.”
+
+“But this is very cruel of thee, maiden,” he added, lingering, “when I
+give thee my knightly word that all should be as when she whom we both
+loved was here,” and his voice shook.
+
+“It could not so be, my lord,” returned Christina with drooping, blushing
+face; “it would not be maidenly in me.  Oh, my lord, you are kind and
+generous, make it not hard for me to do what other maidens less lonely
+have friends to do for them!”
+
+“Kind and generous?” said Eberhard, leaning over the back of the chair as
+if trying to begin a fresh score.  “This from you, who told me once I was
+no true knight!”
+
+“I shall call you a true knight with all my heart,” cried Christina, the
+tears rushing into her eyes, “if you will respect my weakness and
+loneliness.”
+
+He stood up again, as if to move away; then paused, and, twisting his
+gold chain, said, “And how am I ever to be what the happy one bade me, if
+you will not show me how?”
+
+“My error would never show you the right,” said Christina, with a strong
+effort at firmness, and retreating at once through the door of the
+staircase, whence she made her way to the kitchen, and with great
+difficulty found an excuse for her presence there.
+
+It had been a hard struggle with her compassion and gratitude, and, poor
+little Christina felt with dismay, with something more than these.  Else
+why was it that, even while principle and better sense summoned her back
+to Ulm, she experienced a deadly weariness of the city-pent air, of the
+grave, heavy roll of the river, nay, even of the quiet, well-regulated
+household?  Why did such a marriage as she had thought her natural
+destiny, with some worthy, kind-hearted brother of the guild, become so
+hateful to her that she could only aspire to a convent life?  This same
+burgomaster would be an estimable man, no doubt, and those around her
+were ruffians, but she felt utterly contemptuous and impatient of him.
+And why was the interchange of greetings, the few words at meals, worth
+all the rest of the day besides to her?  Her own heart was the traitor,
+and to her own sensations the poor little thing had, in spirit at least,
+transgressed all Aunt Johanna’s precepts against young Barons.  She wept
+apart, and resolved, and prayed, cruelly ashamed of every start of joy or
+pain that the sight of Eberhard cost her.  From almost the first he had
+sat next her at the single table that accommodated the whole household at
+meals, and the custom continued, though on some days he treated her with
+sullen silence, which she blamed herself for not rejoicing in, sometimes
+he spoke a few friendly words; but he observed, better than she could
+have dared to expect, her test of his true knighthood, and never again
+forced himself into her apartment, though now and then he came to the
+door with flowers, with mountain strawberries, and once with two young
+doves.  “Take them, Christina,” he said, “they are very like yourself;”
+and he always delayed so long that she was forced to be resolute, and
+shut the door on him at last.
+
+Once, when there was to be a mass at the chapel, Hugh Sorel, between a
+smile and a growl, informed his daughter that he would take her thereto.
+She gladly prepared, and, bent on making herself agreeable to her father,
+did not once press on him the necessity of her return to Ulm.  To her
+amazement and pleasure, the young Baron was at church, and when on the
+way home, he walked beside her mule, she could see no need of sending him
+away.
+
+He had been in no school of the conventionalities of life, and, when he
+saw that Hugh Sorel’s presence had obtained him this favour, he wistfully
+asked, “Christina, if I bring your father with me, will you not let me
+in?”
+
+“Entreat me not, my lord,” she answered, with fluttering breath.
+
+She felt the more that she was right in this decision, when she
+encountered her father’s broad grin of surprise and diversion, at seeing
+the young Baron help her to dismount.  It was a look of receiving an idea
+both new, comical, and flattering, but by no means the look of a father
+who would resent the indignity of attentions to his daughter from a man
+whose rank formed an insuperable barrier to marriage.
+
+The effect was a new, urgent, and most piteous entreaty, that he would
+find means of sending her home.  It brought upon her the hearing put into
+words what her own feelings had long shrunk from confessing to herself.
+
+“Ah!  Why, what now?  What, is the young Baron after thee?  Ha! ha!
+petticoats are few enough up here, but he must have been ill off ere he
+took to a little ghost like thee!  I saw he was moping and doleful, but I
+thought it was all for his sister.”
+
+“And so it is, father.”
+
+“Tell me that, when he watches every turn of that dark eye of thine—the
+only good thing thou took’st of mine!  Thou art a witch, Stina.”
+
+“Hush, oh hush, for pity’s sake, father, and let me go home!”
+
+“What, thou likest him not?  Thy mind is all for the mincing goldsmith
+opposite, as I ever told thee.”
+
+“My mind is—is to return to my uncle and aunt the true-hearted maiden
+they parted with,” said Christina, with clasped hands.  “And oh, father,
+as you were the son of a true and faithful mother, be a father to me now!
+Jeer not your motherless child, but protect her and help her.”
+
+Hugh Sorel was touched by this appeal, and he likewise recollected how
+much it was for his own interest that his brother should be satisfied
+with the care he took of his daughter.  He became convinced that the
+sooner she was out of the castle the better, and at length bethought him
+that, among the merchants who frequented the Midsummer Fair at the
+Blessed Friedmund’s Wake, a safe escort might be found to convey her back
+to Ulm.
+
+If the truth were known, Hugh Sorel was not devoid of a certain feeling
+akin to contempt, both for his young master’s taste, and for his
+forbearance in not having pushed matters further with a being so
+helpless, meek, and timid as Christina, more especially as such slackness
+had not been his wont in other cases where his fancy had been caught.
+
+But Sorel did not understand that it was not physical beauty that here
+had been the attraction, though to some persons, the sweet, pensive eyes,
+the delicate, pure skin, the slight, tender form, might seem to exceed in
+loveliness the fully developed animal comeliness chiefly esteemed at
+Adlerstein.  It was rather the strangeness of the power and purity of
+this timid, fragile creature, that had struck the young noble.  With all
+their brutal manners reverence for a lofty female nature had been in the
+German character ever since their Velleda prophesied to them, and this
+reverence in Eberhard bowed at the feet of the pure gentle maiden, so
+strong yet so weak, so wistful and entreating even in her resolution,
+refined as a white flower on a heap of refuse, wise and dexterous beyond
+his slow and dull conception, and the first being in whom he had ever
+seen piety or goodness; and likewise with a tender, loving spirit of
+consolation such as he had both beheld and tasted by his sister’s
+deathbed.
+
+There was almost a fear mingled with his reverence.  If he had been more
+familiar with the saints, he would thus have regarded the holy virgin
+martyrs, nay, even Our Lady herself; and he durst not push her so hard as
+to offend her, and excite the anger or the grief that he alike dreaded.
+He was wretched and forlorn without the resources he had found in his
+sister’s room; the new and better cravings of his higher nature had been
+excited only to remain unsupplied and disappointed; and the affectionate
+heart in the freshness of its sorrow yearned for the comfort that such
+conversation had supplied: but the impression that had been made on him
+was still such, that he knew that to use rough means of pressing his
+wishes would no more lead to his real gratification than it would to
+appropriate a snow-bell by crushing it in his gauntlet.
+
+And it was on feeble little Christina, yielding in heart, though not in
+will, that it depended to preserve this reverence, and return unscathed
+from this castle, more perilous now than ever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+THE BLESSED FRIEDMUND’S WAKE
+
+
+MIDSUMMER-DAY arrived, and the village of Adlerstein presented a most
+unusual spectacle.  The wake was the occasion of a grand fair for all the
+mountain-side, and it was an understood thing that the Barons, instead of
+molesting the pedlars, merchants, and others who attended it, contented
+themselves with demanding a toll from every one who passed the Kohler’s
+hut on the one side, or the Gemsbock’s Pass on the other; and this toll,
+being the only coin by which they came honestly in the course of the
+year, was regarded as a certainty and highly valued.  Moreover, it was
+the only time that any purchases could be made, and the flotsam of the
+ford did not always include all even of the few requirements of the
+inmates of the castle; it was the only holiday, sacred or secular, that
+ever gladdened the Eagle’s Rock.
+
+So all the inmates of the castle prepared to enjoy themselves, except the
+heads of the house.  The Freiherr had never been at one of these wakes
+since the first after he was excommunicated, when he had stalked round to
+show his indifference to the sentence; and the Freiherrinn snarled out
+such sentences of disdain towards the concourse, that it might be
+supposed that she hated the sight of her kind; but Ursel had all the
+household purchases to make, and the kitchen underlings were to take
+turns to go and come, as indeed were the men-at-arms, who were set to
+watch the toll-bars.
+
+Christina had packed up a small bundle, for the chance of being unable to
+return to the castle without missing her escort, though she hoped that
+the fair might last two days, and that she should thus be enabled to
+return and bring away the rest of her property.  She was more and more
+resolved on going, but her heart was less and less inclined to departure.
+And bitter had been her weeping through all the early light hours of the
+long morning—weeping that she tried to think was all for Ermentrude; and
+all, amid prayers she could scarce trust herself to offer, that the
+generous, kindly nature might yet work free of these evil surroundings,
+and fulfil the sister’s dying wish, she should never see it; but, when
+she should hear that the Debateable Ford was the Friendly Ford, then
+would she know that it was the doing of the Good Baron Ebbo.  Could she
+venture on telling him so?  Or were it not better that there were no
+farewell?  And she wept again that he should think her ungrateful.  She
+could not persuade herself to release the doves, but committed the charge
+to Ursel to let them go in case she should not return.
+
+So tear-stained was her face, that, ashamed that it should be seen, she
+wrapped it closely in her hood and veil when she came down and joined her
+father.  The whole scene swam in tears before her eyes when she saw the
+whole green slope from the chapel covered with tents and booths, and
+swarming with pedlars and mountaineers in their picturesque dresses.
+Women and girls were exchanging the yarn of their winter’s spinning for
+bright handkerchiefs; men drove sheep, goats, or pigs to barter for
+knives, spades, or weapons; others were gazing at simple shows—a dancing
+bear or ape—or clustering round a Minnesinger; many even then
+congregating in booths for the sale of beer.  Further up, on the flat
+space of sward above the chapel, were some lay brothers, arranging for
+the representation of a mystery—a kind of entertainment which Germany
+owed to the English who came to the Council of Constance, and which the
+monks of St. Ruprecht’s hoped might infuse some religious notions into
+the wild, ignorant mountaineers.
+
+First however Christina gladly entered the church.  Crowded though it
+were, it was calmer than the busy scene without.  Faded old tapestry was
+decking its walls, representing apparently some subject entirely alien to
+St. John or the blessed hermit; Christina rather thought it was Mars and
+Venus, but that was all the same to every one else.  And there was a
+terrible figure of St. John, painted life-like, with a real hair-cloth
+round his loins, just opposite to her, on the step of the Altar; also
+poor Friedmund’s bones, dressed up in a new serge amice and hood; the
+stone from Nicæa was in a gilded box, ready in due time to be kissed; and
+a preaching friar (not one of the monks of St. Ruprecht’s) was in the
+midst of a sermon, telling how St. John presided at the Council of Nicæa
+till the Emperor Maximius cut off his head at the instance of
+Herodius—full justice being done to the dancing—and that the blood was
+sprinkled on this very stone, whereupon our Holy Father the Pope decreed
+that whoever would kiss the said stone, and repeat the Credo five times
+afterwards, should be capable of receiving an indulgence for 500 years:
+which indulgence must however be purchased at the rate of six groschen,
+to be bestowed in alms at Rome.  And this inestimable benefit he, poor
+Friar Peter, had come from his brotherhood of St. Francis at Offingen
+solely to dispense to the poor mountaineers.
+
+It was disappointing to find this profane mummery going on instead of the
+holy services to which Christina had looked forward for strength and
+comfort; she was far too well instructed not to be scandalized at the
+profane deception which was ripening fast for Luther, only thirty years
+later; and, when the stone was held up by the friar in one hand, the
+printed briefs of indulgence in the other, she shrunk back.  Her father
+however said, “Wilt have one, child?  Five hundred years is no bad
+bargain.”
+
+“My uncle has small trust in indulgences,” she whispered.
+
+“All lies, of course,” quoth Hugh; “yet they’ve the Pope’s seal, and I
+have more than half a mind to get one.  Five hundred years is no joke,
+and I am sure of purgatory, since I bought this medal at the Holy House
+of Loretto.”
+
+And he went forward, and invested six groschen in one of the papers, the
+most religious action poor Christina had ever seen him perform.  Other
+purchasers came forward—several, of the castle _knappen_, and a few
+peasant women who offered yarn or cheeses as equivalents for money, but
+were told with some insolence to go and sell their goods, and bring the
+coin.
+
+After a time, the friar, finding his traffic slack, thought fit to
+remove, with his two lay assistants, outside the chapel, and try the
+effects of an out-of-door sermon.  Hugh Sorel, who had been hitherto
+rather diverted by the man’s gestures and persuasions, now decided on
+going out into the fair in quest of an escort for his daughter, but as
+she saw Father Norbert and another monk ascending from the stairs leading
+to the hermit’s cell, she begged to be allowed to remain in the church,
+where she was sure to be safe, instead of wandering about with him in the
+fair.
+
+He was glad to be unencumbered, though he thought her taste unnatural;
+and, promising to return for her when he had found an escort, he left
+her.
+
+Father Norbert had come for the very purpose of hearing confessions, and
+Christina’s next hour was the most comfortable she had spent since
+Ermentrude’s death.
+
+After this however the priests were called away, and long, long did
+Christina first kneel and then sit in the little lonely church, hearing
+the various sounds without, and imagining that her father had forgotten
+her, and that he and all the rest were drinking, and then what would
+become of her?  Why had she quitted old Ursel’s protection?
+
+Hours of waiting and nameless alarm must have passed, for the sun was
+waxing low, when at length she heard steps coming up the hermit’s cell,
+and a head rose above the pavement which she recognized with a wild throb
+of joy, but, repressing her sense of gladness, she only exclaimed, “Oh,
+where is my father!”
+
+“I have sent him to the toll at the Gemsbock’s Pass,” replied Sir
+Eberhard, who had by this time come up the stairs, followed by Brother
+Peter and the two lay assistants.  Then, as Christina turned on him her
+startled, terrified eyes in dismay and reproach for such thoughtlessness,
+he came towards her, and, bending his head and opening his hand, he
+showed on his palm two gold rings.  “There, little one,” he said; “now
+shalt thou never again shut me out.”
+
+Her senses grew dizzy.  “Sir,” she faintly said, “this is no place to
+delude a poor maiden.”
+
+“I delude thee not.  The brother here waits to wed us.”
+
+“Impossible!  A burgher maid is not for such as you.”
+
+“None but a burgher maid will I wed,” returned Sir Eberhard, with all the
+settled resolution of habits of command.  “See, Christina, thou art
+sweeter and better than any lady in the land; thou canst make me what
+she—the blessed one who lies there—would have me.  I love thee as never
+knight loved lady.  I love thee so that I have not spoken a word to
+offend thee when my heart was bursting; and”—as he saw her irrepressible
+tears—“I think thou lovest me a little.”
+
+“Ah!” she gasped with a sob, “let me go.”
+
+“Thou canst not go home; there is none here fit to take charge of thee.
+Or if there were, I would slay him rather than let thee go.  No, not so,”
+he said, as he saw how little those words served his cause; “but without
+thee I were a mad and desperate man.  Christina, I will not answer for
+myself if thou dost not leave this place my wedded wife.”
+
+“Oh!” implored Christina, “if you would only betroth me, and woo me like
+an honourable maiden from my home at Ulm!”
+
+“Betroth thee, ay, and wed thee at once,” replied Eberhard, who, all
+along, even while his words were most pleading, had worn a look and
+manner of determined authority and strength, good-natured indeed, but
+resolved.  “I am not going to miss my opportunity, or baulk the friar.”
+
+The friar, who had meantime been making a few needful arrangements for
+the ceremony, advanced towards them.  He was a good-humoured, easy-going
+man, who came prepared to do any office that came in his way on such
+festival days at the villages round; and peasant marriages at such times
+were not uncommon.  But something now staggered him, and he said
+anxiously—
+
+“This maiden looks convent-bred!  Herr Reiter, pardon me; but if this be
+the breaking of a cloister, I can have none of it.”
+
+“No such thing,” said Eberhard; “she is town-bred, that is all.”
+
+“You would swear to it, on the holy mass yonder, both of you?” said the
+friar, still suspiciously.
+
+“Yea,” replied Eberhard, “and so dost thou, Christina.”
+
+This was the time if ever to struggle against her destiny.  The friar
+would probably have listened to her if she had made any vehement
+opposition to a forced marriage, and if not, a few shrieks would have
+brought perhaps Father Norbert, and certainly the whole population; but
+the horror and shame of being found in such a situation, even more than
+the probability that she might meet with vengeance rather than
+protection, withheld her.  Even the friar could hardly have removed her,
+and this was her only chance of safety from the Baroness’s fury.  Had she
+hated and loathed Sir Eberhard, perhaps she had striven harder, but his
+whole demeanour constrained and quelled her, and the chief effort she
+made against yielding was the reply, “I am no cloister maid, holy father,
+but—”
+
+The “but” was lost in the friar’s jovial speech.  “Oh, then, all is well!
+Take thy place, pretty one, there, by the door, thou know’st it should be
+in the porch, but—ach, I understand!” as Eberhard quietly drew the bolt
+within.  “No, no, little one, I have no time for bride scruples and
+coyness; I have to train three dull-headed louts to be Shem, Ham, and
+Japhet before dark.  Hast confessed of late?”
+
+“This morning, but—” said Christina, and “This morning,” to her great
+joy, said Eberhard, and, in her satisfaction thereat, her second “but”
+was not followed up.
+
+The friar asked their names, and both gave the Christian name alone; then
+the brief and simple rite was solemnized in its shortest form.  Christina
+had, by very force of surprise and dismay, gone through all without signs
+of agitation, except the quivering of her whole frame, and the icy
+coldness of the hand, where Eberhard had to place the ring on each finger
+in turn.
+
+But each mutual vow was a strange relief to her long-tossed and divided
+mind, and it was rest indeed to let her affection have its will, and own
+him indeed as a protector to be loved instead of shunned.  When all was
+over, and he gathered the two little cold hands into his large one, his
+arm supporting her trembling form, she felt for the moment, poor little
+thing, as if she could never be frightened again.
+
+Parish registers were not, even had this been a parish church, but
+Brother Peter asked, when he had concluded, “Well, my son, which of his
+flock am I to report to your Pfarrer as linked together?”
+
+“The less your tongue wags on that matter till I call on you, the
+better,” was the stern reply.  “Look you, no ill shall befall you if you
+are wise, but remember, against the day I call you to bear witness, that
+you have this day wedded Baron Eberhard von Adlerstein the younger, to
+Christina, the daughter of Hugh Sorel, the Esquire of Ulm.”
+
+“Thou hast played me a trick, Sir Baron!” said the friar, somewhat
+dismayed, but more amused, looking up at Eberhard, who, as Christina now
+saw, had divested himself of his gilt spurs, gold chain, silvered belt
+and horn, and eagle’s plume, so as to have passed for a simple
+lanzknecht.  “I would have had no such gear as this!”
+
+“So I supposed,” said Eberhard coolly.
+
+“Young folks! young folks!” laughed the friar, changing his tone, and
+holding up his finger slyly; “the little bird so cunningly nestled in the
+church to fly out my Lady Baroness!  Well, so thou hast a pretty, timid
+lambkin there, Sir Baron.  Take care you use her mildly.”
+
+Eberhard looked into Christina’s face with a smile, that to her, at
+least, was answer enough; and he held out half a dozen links of his gold
+chain to the friar, and tossed a coin to each of the lay brethren.
+
+“Not for the poor friar himself,” explained Brother Peter, on receiving
+this marriage fee; “it all goes to the weal of the brotherhood.”
+
+“As you please,” said Eberhard.  “Silence, that is all!  And thy
+friary—?”
+
+“The poor house of St. Francis at Offingen for the present, noble sir,”
+said the priest.  “There will you hear of me, if you find me not.  And
+now, fare thee well, my gracious lady.  I hope one day thou wilt have
+more words to thank the poor brother who has made thee a noble Baroness.”
+
+“Ah, good father, pardon my fright and confusion,” Christina tried to
+murmur, but at that moment a sudden glow and glare of light broke out on
+the eastern rock, illuminating the fast darkening little church with a
+flickering glare, that made her start in terror as if the fires of heaven
+were threatening this stolen marriage; but the friar and Eberhard both
+exclaimed, “The Needfire alight already!”  And she recollected how often
+she had seen these bonfires on Midsummer night shining red on every hill
+around Ulm.  Loud shouts were greeting the uprising flame, and the people
+gathering thicker and thicker on the slope.  The friar undid the door to
+hasten out into the throng, and Eberhard said he had left his spurs and
+belt in the hermit’s cell, and must return thither, after which he would
+walk home with his bride, moving at the same time towards the stair, and
+thereby causing a sudden scuffle and fall.  “So, master hermit,” quoth
+Eberhard, as the old man picked himself up, looking horribly frightened;
+“that’s your hermit’s abstraction, is it?  No whining, old man, I am not
+going to hurt thee, so thou canst hold thy tongue.  Otherwise I will
+smoke thee out of thy hole like a wild cat!  What, thou aiding me with my
+belt, my lovely one?  Thanks; the snap goes too hard for thy little
+hands.  Now, then, the fire will light us gaily down the mountain side.”
+
+But it soon appeared that to depart was impossible, unless by forcing a
+way through the busy throng in the full red glare of the firelight, and
+they were forced to pause at the opening of the hermit’s cave, Christina
+leaning on her husband’s arm, and a fold of his mantle drawn round her to
+guard her from the night-breeze of the mountain, as they waited for a
+quiet space in which to depart unnoticed.  It was a strange, wild scene!
+The fire was on a bare, flat rock, which probably had been yearly so
+employed ever since the Kelts had brought from the East the rite that
+they had handed on to the Swabians—the Beltane fire, whose like was
+blazing everywhere in the Alps, in the Hartz, nay, even in England,
+Scotland, and on the granite points of Ireland.  Heaped up for many
+previous days with faggots from the forest, then apparently
+inexhaustible, the fire roared and crackled, and rose high, red and
+smoky, into the air, paling the moon, and obscuring the stars.  Round it,
+completely hiding the bonfire itself, were hosts of dark figures swarming
+to approach it—all with a purpose.  All held old shoes or superannuated
+garments in their hands to feed the flame; for it was esteemed needful
+that every villager should contribute something from his house—once, no
+doubt, as an offering to Bel, but now as a mere unmeaning observance.
+And shrieks of merriment followed the contribution of each too well-known
+article of rubbish that had been in reserve for the Needfire!  Girls and
+boys had nuts to throw in, in pairs, to judge by their bounces of future
+chances of matrimony.  Then came a shouting, tittering, and falling back,
+as an old boor came forward like a priest with something heavy and
+ghastly in his arms, which was thrown on with a tremendous shout,
+darkened the glow for a moment, then hissed, cracked, and emitted a
+horrible odour.
+
+It was a horse’s head, the right owner of which had been carefully kept
+for the occasion, though long past work.  Christina shuddered, and felt
+as if she had fallen upon a Pagan ceremony; as indeed was true enough,
+only that the Adlersteiners attached no meaning to the performance,
+except a vague notion of securing good luck.
+
+With the same idea the faggots were pulled down, and arranged so as to
+form a sort of lane of fire.  Young men rushed along it, and then bounded
+over the diminished pile, amid loud shouts of laughter and either
+admiration or derision; and, in the meantime, a variety of odd, recusant
+noises, grunts, squeaks, and lowings proceeding from the darkness were
+explained to the startled little bride by her husband to come from all
+the cattle of the mountain farms around, who were to have their weal
+secured by being driven through the Needfire.
+
+It may well be imagined that the animals were less convinced of the
+necessity of this performance than their masters.  Wonderful was the
+clatter and confusion, horrible the uproar raised behind to make the poor
+things proceed at all, desperate the shout when some half-frantic
+creature kicked or attempted a charge wild the glee when a persecuted
+goat or sheep took heart of grace, and flashed for one moment between the
+crackling, flaring, smoking walls.  When one cow or sheep off a farm
+went, all the others were pretty sure to follow it, and the owner had
+then only to be on the watch at the other end to turn them back, with
+their flame-dazzled eyes, from going unawares down the precipice, a fate
+from which the passing through the fire was evidently not supposed to
+ensure them.  The swine, those special German delights, were of course
+the most refractory of all.  Some, by dint of being pulled away from the
+lane of fire, were induced to rush through it; but about half-way they
+generally made a bolt, either sidelong through the flaming fence or
+backwards among the legs of their persecutors, who were upset amid loud
+imprecations.  One huge, old, lean, high-backed sow, with a large family,
+truly feminine in her want of presence of mind, actually charged into the
+midst of the bonfire itself, scattering it to the right and left with her
+snout, and emitting so horrible a smell of singed bacon, that it might
+almost be feared that some of her progeny were anticipating the invention
+of Chinese roasting-pigs.  However, their proprietor, Jobst, counted them
+out all safe on the other side, and there only resulted some sighs and
+lamentations among the seniors, such as Hatto and Ursel, that it boded
+ill to have the Needfire trodden out by an old sow.
+
+All the castle live-stock were undergoing the same ceremony.  Eberhard
+concerned himself little about the vagaries of the sheep and pigs, and
+only laughed a little as the great black goat, who had seen several
+Midsummer nights, and stood on his guard, made a sudden short run and
+butted down old Hatto, then skipped off like a chamois into the darkness,
+unheeding, the old rogue, the whispers that connected his unlucky hue
+with the doings of the Walpurgisnacht.  But when it came to the horses,
+Eberhard could not well endure the sight of the endeavours to force them,
+snorting, rearing, and struggling, through anything so abhorrent to them
+as the hedge of fire.
+
+The Schneiderlein, with all the force of his powerful arm, had hold of
+Eberhard’s own young white mare, who, with ears turned back, nostrils
+dilated, and wild eyes, her fore-feet firmly planted wide apart, was
+using her whole strength for resistance; and, when a heavy blow fell on
+her, only plunged backwards, and kicked without advancing.  It was more
+than Eberhard could endure, and Christina’s impulse was to murmur, “O do
+not let him do it;” but this he scarcely heard, as he exclaimed, “Wait
+for me here!” and, as he stepped forward, sent his voice before him,
+forbidding all blows to the mare.
+
+The creature’s extreme terror ceased at once upon hearing his voice, and
+there was an instant relaxation of all violence of resistance as he came
+up to her, took her halter from the Schneiderlein, patted her glossy
+neck, and spoke to her.  But the tumult of warning voices around him
+assured him that it would be a fatal thing to spare the steed the passage
+through the fire, and he strove by encouragements and caresses with voice
+and hand to get her forward, leading her himself; but the poor beast
+trembled so violently, and, though making a few steps forward, stopped
+again in such exceeding horror of the flame, that Eberhard had not the
+heart to compel her, turned her head away, and assured her that she
+should not be further tormented.
+
+“The gracious lordship is wrong,” said public opinion, by the voice of
+old Bauer Ulrich, the sacrificer of the horse’s head.  “Heaven forfend
+that evil befall him and that mare in the course of the year.”
+
+And the buzz of voices concurred in telling of the recusant pigs who had
+never developed into sausages, the sheep who had only escaped to be eaten
+by wolves, the mule whose bones had been found at the bottom of an abyss.
+
+Old Ursel was seriously concerned, and would have laid hold on her young
+master to remonstrate, but a fresh notion had arisen—Would the gracious
+Freiherr set a-rolling the wheel, which was already being lighted in the
+fire, and was to conclude the festivities by being propelled down the
+hill—figuring, only that no one present knew it, the sun’s declension
+from his solstitial height?  Eberhard made no objection; and Christina,
+in her shelter by the cave, felt no little dismay at being left alone
+there, and moreover had a strange, weird feeling at the wild, uncanny
+ceremony he was engaged in, not knowing indeed that it was sun-worship,
+but afraid that it could be no other than unholy sorcery.
+
+The wheel, flaring or reddening in all its spokes, was raised from the
+bonfire, and was driven down the smoothest piece of green sward, which
+formed an inclined plane towards the stream.  If its course was smooth,
+and it only became extinguished by leaping into the water, the village
+would flourish; and prosperity above all was expected if it should spring
+over the narrow channel, and attempt to run up the other side.  Such
+things had happened in the days of the good Freiherren Ebbo and Friedel,
+though the wheel had never gone right since the present baron had been
+excommunicated; but his heir having been twice seen at mass in this last
+month great hopes were founded upon him.
+
+There was a shout to clear the slope.  Eberhard, in great earnest and
+some anxiety, accepted the gauntlet that he was offered to protect his
+hand, steadied the wheel therewith, and, with a vigorous impulse from
+hand and foot, sent it bounding down the slope, among loud cries and a
+general scattering of the idlers who had crowded full into the very path
+of the fiery circle, which flamed up brilliantly for the moment as it met
+the current of air.  But either there was an obstacle in the way, or the
+young Baron’s push had not been quite straight: the wheel suddenly
+swerved aside, its course swerved to the right, maugre all the
+objurgations addressed to it as if it had been a living thing, and the
+next moment it had disappeared, all but a smoky, smouldering spot of red,
+that told where it lay, charring and smoking on its side, without having
+fulfilled a quarter of its course.
+
+People drew off gravely and silently, and Eberhard himself was strangely
+discomfited when he came back to the hermitage, and, wrapping Christina
+in his cloak, prepared to return, so soon as the glare of the fire should
+have faded from his eyesight enough to make it safe to tread so
+precipitous a path.  He had indeed this day made a dangerous venture, and
+both he and Christina could not but feel disheartened by the issue of all
+the omens of the year, the more because she had a vague sense of wrong in
+consulting or trusting them.  It seemed to her all one frightened,
+uncomprehended dream ever since her father had left her in the chapel;
+and, though conscious of her inability to have prevented her marriage,
+yet she blamed herself, felt despairing as she thought of the future,
+and, above all, dreaded the Baron and the Baroness and their anger.
+Eberhard, after his first few words, was silent, and seemed solely
+absorbed in leading her safely along the rocky path, sometimes lifting
+her when he thought her in danger of stumbling.  It was one of the
+lightest, shortest nights of the year, and a young moon added to the
+brightness in open places, while in others it made the rocks and stones
+cast strange elvish shadows.  The distance was not entirely lost; other
+Beltane fires could be seen, like beacons, on every hill, and the few
+lights in the castle shone out like red fiery eyes in its heavy dark pile
+of building.
+
+Before entering, Eberhard paused, pulled off his own wedding-ring, and
+put it into his bosom, and taking his bride’s hand in his, did the same
+for her, and bade her keep the ring till they could wear them openly.
+
+“Alas! then,” said Christina, “you would have this secret?”
+
+“Unless I would have to seek thee down the oubliette, my little one,”
+said Eberhard “or, what might even be worse, see thee burnt on the
+hillside for bewitching me with thine arts!  No, indeed, my darling.
+Were it only my father, I could make him love thee; but my mother—I could
+not trust her where she thought the honour of our house concerned.  It
+shall not be for long.  Thou know’st we are to make peace with the
+Kaiser, and then will I get me employment among Kürfurst Albrecht’s
+companies of troops, and then shalt thou prank it as my Lady Freiherrinn,
+and teach me the ways of cities.”
+
+“Alas!  I fear me it has been a great sin!” sighed the poor little wife.
+
+“For thee—thou couldst not help it,” said Eberhard; “for me—who knows how
+many deadly ones it may hinder?  Cheer up, little one; no one can harm
+thee while the secret is kept.”
+
+Poor Christina had no choice but submission; but it was a sorry bridal
+evening, to enter her husband’s home in shrinking terror; with the threat
+of the oubliette before her, and with a sense of shame and deception
+hanging upon her, making the wonted scowl of the old baroness cut her
+both with remorse and dread.
+
+She did indeed sit beside her bridegroom at the supper, but how little
+like a bride! even though he pushed the salt-cellar, as if by accident,
+below her place.  She thought of her myrtle, tended in vain at home by
+Barbara Schmidt; she thought of Ulm courtships, and how all ought to have
+been; the solemn embassage to her uncle, the stately negotiations; the
+troth plight before the circle of ceremonious kindred and merry maidens,
+of whom she had often been one—the subsequent attentions of the betrothed
+on all festival days, the piles of linen and all plenishings accumulated
+since babyhood, and all reviewed and laid out for general admiration (Ah!
+poor Aunt Johanna still spinning away to add to the many webs in her
+walnut presses!)—then the grand procession to fetch home the bride, the
+splendid festival with the musicians, dishes, and guest-tables to the
+utmost limit that was allowed by the city laws, and the bride’s hair so
+joyously covered by her matron’s curch amid the merriment of her
+companion maidens.
+
+Poor child!  After she had crept away to her own room, glad that her
+father was not yet returned, she wept bitterly over the wrong that she
+felt she had done to the kind uncle and aunt, who must now look in vain
+for their little Christina, and would think her lost to them, and to all
+else that was good.  At least she had had the Church’s blessing—but that,
+strange to say, was regarded, in burgher life before the Reformation, as
+rather the ornament of a noble marriage than as essential to the civil
+contract; and a marriage by a priest was regarded by the citizens rather
+as a means of eluding the need of obtaining the parent’s consent, than as
+a more regular and devout manner of wedding.  However, Christina felt
+this the one drop of peace.  The blessings and prayers were warm at her
+heart, and gave her hope.  And as to drops of joy, of them there was no
+lack, for had not she now a right to love Eberhard with all her heart and
+conscience, and was not it a wonderful love on his part that had made him
+stoop to the little white-faced burgher maid, despised even by her own
+father?  O better far to wear the maiden’s uncovered head for him than
+the myrtle wreath for any one else!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+THE SCHNEIDERLEIN’S RETURN
+
+
+THE poor little unowned bride had more to undergo than her imagination
+had conceived at the first moment.
+
+When she heard that the marriage was to be a secret, she had not
+understood that Eberhard was by no means disposed to observe much more
+caution than mere silence.  A rough, though kindly man, he did not
+thoroughly comprehend the shame and confusion that he was bringing upon
+her by departing from his former demeanour.  He knew that, so enormous
+was the distance then supposed to exist between the noble and the
+burgher, there was no chance of any one dreaming of the true state of the
+case, and that as long as Christina was not taken for his wife, there was
+no personal danger for her from his mother, who—so lax were the morals of
+the German nobility with regard to all of inferior rank—would tolerate
+her with complacency as his favourite toy; and he was taken by surprise
+at the agony of grief and shame with which she slowly comprehended his
+assurance that she had nothing to fear.
+
+There was no help for it.  The oubliette would probably be the portion of
+the low-born girl who had interfered with the sixteen quarterings of the
+Adlerstein shield, and poor Christina never stepped across its trap-door
+without a shudder lest it should open beneath her.  And her father would
+probably have been hung from the highest tower, in spite of his shrewd
+care to be aware of nothing.  Christina consoled herself with the hope
+that he knew all the time why he had been sent out of the way, for, with
+a broad grin that had made her blush painfully, he had said he knew she
+would be well taken care of, and that he hoped she was not breaking her
+heart for want of an escort.  She tried to extort Eberhard’s permission
+to let him at least know how it was; but Eberhard laughed, saying he
+believed the old fox knew just as much as he chose; and, in effect,
+Sorel, though now and then gratifying his daughter’s scruples, by serving
+as a shield to her meetings with the young Baron, never allowed himself
+to hear a hint of the true state of affairs.
+
+Eberhard’s love and reverence were undiminished, and the time spent with
+him would have been perfectly happy could she ever have divested herself
+of anxiety and alarm; but the periods of his absence from the castle were
+very terrible to her, for the other women of the household, quick to
+perceive that she no longer repelled him, had lost that awe that had
+hitherto kept them at a distance from her, and treated her with a
+familiarity, sometimes coarse, sometimes spiteful, always hateful and
+degrading.  Even old Ursel had become half-pitying, half-patronizing; and
+the old Baroness, though not molesting her, took not the slightest notice
+of her.
+
+This state of things lasted much longer than there had been reason to
+expect at the time of the marriage.  The two Freiherren then intended to
+set out in a very short time to make their long talked-of submission to
+the Emperor at Ratisbon; but, partly from their German tardiness of
+movement, partly from the obstinate delays interposed by the proud old
+Freiherrinn, who was as averse as ever to the measure, partly from
+reports that the Court was not yet arrived at Ratisbon, the expedition
+was again and again deferred, and did not actually take place till
+September was far advanced.
+
+Poor Christina would have given worlds to go with them, and even
+entreated to be sent to Ulm with an avowal of her marriage to her uncle
+and aunt, but of this Eberhard would not hear.  He said the Ulmers would
+thus gain an hostage, and hamper his movements; and, if her wedding was
+not to be confessed—poor child!—she could better bear to remain where she
+was than to face Hausfrau Johanna.  Eberhard was fully determined to
+enrol himself in some troop, either Imperial, or, if not, among the Free
+Companies, among whom men of rank were often found, and he would then
+fetch or send for his wife and avow her openly, so soon as she should be
+out of his mother’s reach.  He longed to leave her father at home, to be
+some protection to her, but Hugh Sorel was so much the most intelligent
+and skilful of the retainers as to be absolutely indispensable to the
+party—he was their only scribe; and moreover his new suit of buff
+rendered him a creditable member of a troop that had been very hard to
+equip.  It numbered about ten men-at-arms, only three being left at home
+to garrison the castle—namely, Hatto, who was too old to take; Hans, who
+had been hopelessly lame and deformed since the old Baron had knocked him
+off a cliff in a passion; and Squinting Mätz, a runaway servant, who had
+murdered his master, the mayor of Strasburg, and might be caught and put
+to death if any one recognized him.  If needful the villagers could
+always be called in to defend the castle: but of this there was little or
+no danger—the Eagle’s Steps were defence enough in themselves, and the
+party were not likely to be absent more than a week or ten days—a
+grievous length of time, poor Christina thought, as she stood straining
+her eyes on the top of the watch-tower, to watch them as far as possible
+along the plain.  Her heart was very sad, and the omen of the burning
+wheel so continually haunted her that even in her sleep that night she
+saw its brief course repeated, beheld its rapid fall and extinction, and
+then tracked the course of the sparks that darted from it, one rising and
+gleaming high in air till it shone like a star, another pursuing a fitful
+and irregular, but still bright course amid the dry grass on the
+hillside, just as she had indeed watched some of the sparks on that
+night, minding her of the words of the Allhallow-tide legend: “_Fulgebunt
+justi et tanquam scintillæ in arundinete discurrent_”—a sentence which
+remained with her when awake, and led her to seek it out in her Latin
+Bible in the morning.
+
+Reluctantly had she gone down to the noontide meal, feeling, though her
+husband and father were far less of guardians than they should have been,
+yet that there was absolute rest, peace, and protection in their presence
+compared with what it was to be alone with Freiherrinn Kunigunde and her
+rude women without them.  A few sneers on her daintiness and uselessness
+had led her to make an offer of assisting in the grand chopping of
+sausage meat and preparation of winter stores, and she had been answered
+with contempt that my young lord would not have her soil her delicate
+hands, when one of the maids who had been sent to fetch beer from the
+cellar came back with startled looks, and the exclamation, “There is the
+Schneiderlein riding up the Eagle’s Ladder upon Freiherr Ebbo’s white
+mare!”
+
+All the women sprang up together, and rushed to the window, whence they
+could indeed recognize both man and horse; and presently it became plain
+that both were stained with blood, weary, and spent; indeed, nothing but
+extreme exhaustion would have induced the man-at-arms to trust the tired,
+stumbling horse up such a perilous path.
+
+Loud were the exclamations, “Ah! no good could come of not leading that
+mare through the Johannisfeuer.”
+
+“This shameful expedition!  Only harm could befall.  This is thy doing,
+thou mincing city-girl.”
+
+“All was certain to go wrong when a pale mist widow came into the place.”
+
+The angry and dismayed cries all blended themselves in confusion in the
+ears of the only silent woman present; the only one that sounded
+distinctly on her brain was that of the last speaker, “A pale, mist
+widow,” as, holding herself a little in the rear of the struggling,
+jostling little mob of women, who hardly made way even for their
+acknowledged lady, she followed with failing limbs the universal rush to
+the entrance as soon as man and horse had mounted the slope and were lost
+sight of.
+
+A few moments more, and the throng of expectants was at the foot of the
+hall steps, just as the lanzknecht reached the arched entrance.  His
+comrade Hans took his bridle, and almost lifted him from his horse; he
+reeled and stumbled as, pale, battered, and bleeding, he tried to advance
+to Freiherinn Kunigunde, and, in answer to her hasty interrogation,
+faltered out, “Ill news, gracious lady.  We have been set upon by the
+accursed Schlangenwaldern, and I am the only living man left.”
+
+Christina scarce heard even these last words; senses and powers alike
+failed her, and she sank back on the stone steps in a deathlike swoon.
+
+When she came to herself she was lying on her bed, Ursel and Else,
+another of the women, busy over her, and Ursel’s voice was saying, “Ah,
+she is coming round.  Look up, sweet lady, and fear not.  You are our
+gracious Lady Baroness.”
+
+“Is he here?  O, has he said so?  O, let me see him—Sir Eberhard,”
+faintly cried Christina with sobbing breath.
+
+“Ah, no, no,” said the old woman; “but see here,” and she lifted up
+Christina’s powerless, bloodless hand, and showed her the ring on the
+finger.  Her bosom had been evidently searched when her dress was
+loosened in her swoon, and her ring found and put in its place.  “There,
+you can hold up your head with the best of them; he took care of that—my
+dear young Freiherr, the boy that I nursed,” and the old woman’s burst of
+tears brought back the truth to Christina’s reviving senses.
+
+“Oh, tell me,” she said, trying to raise herself, “was it indeed so?  O
+say it was not as he said!”
+
+“Ah, woe’s me, woe’s me, that it was even so,” lamented Ursel; “but oh,
+be still, look not so wild, dear lady.  The dear, true-hearted young
+lord, he spent his last breath in owning you for his true lady, and in
+bidding us cherish you and our young baron that is to be.  And the
+gracious lady below—she owns you; there is no fear of her now; so vex not
+yourself, dearest, most gracious lady.”
+
+Christina did not break out into the wailing and weeping that the old
+nurse expected; she was still far too much stunned and overwhelmed, and
+she entreated to be told all, lying still, but gazing at Ursel with
+piteous bewildered eyes.  Ursel and Else helping one another out, tried
+to tell her, but they were much confused; all they knew was that the
+party had been surprised at night in a village hostel by the
+Schlangenwaldern, and all slain, though the young Baron had lived long
+enough to charge the Schneiderlein with his commendation of his wife to
+his mother; but all particulars had been lost in the general confusion.
+
+“Oh, let me see the Schneiderlein,” implored Christina, by this time able
+to rise and cross the room to the large carved chair; and Ursel
+immediately turned to her underling, saying, “Tell the Schneiderlein that
+the gracious Lady Baroness desires his presence.”
+
+Else’s wooden shoes clattered down stairs, but the next moment she
+returned.  “He cannot come; he is quite spent, and he will let no one
+touch his arm till Ursel can come, not even to get off his doublet.”
+
+“I will go to him,” said Christina, and, revived by the sense of being
+wanted, she moved at once to the turret, where she kept some rag and some
+ointment, which she had found needful in the latter stages of
+Ermentrude’s illness—indeed, household surgery was a part of regular
+female education, and Christina had had plenty of practice in helping her
+charitable aunt, so that the superiority of her skill to that of Ursel
+had long been avowed in the castle.  Ursel made no objection further than
+to look for something that could be at once converted into a widow’s
+veil—being in the midst of her grief quite alive to the need that no
+matronly badge should be omitted—but nothing came to hand in time, and
+Christina was descending the stairs, on her way to the kitchen, where she
+found the fugitive man-at-arms seated on a rough settle, his head and
+wounded arm resting on the table, while groans of pain, weariness, and
+impatience were interspersed with imprecations on the stupid awkward
+girls who surrounded him.
+
+Pity and the instinct of affording relief must needs take the precedence
+even of the desire to hear of her husband’s fate; and, as the girls
+hastily whispered, “Here she is,” and the lanzknecht hastily tried to
+gather himself up, and rise with tokens of respect; she bade him remain
+still, and let her see what she could do for him.  In fact, she at once
+perceived that he was in no condition to give a coherent account of
+anything, he was so completely worn out, and in so much suffering.  She
+bade at once that some water should be heated, and some of the broth of
+the dinner set on the fire; then with the shears at her girdle, and her
+soft, light fingers, she removed the torn strip of cloth that had been
+wound round the arm, and cut away the sleeve, showing the arm not broken,
+but gashed at the shoulder, and thence the whole length grazed and
+wounded by the descent of the sword down to the wrist.  So tender was her
+touch, that he scarcely winced or moaned under her hand; and, when she
+proceeded, with Ursel’s help, to bathe the wound with the warm water, the
+relief was such that the wearied man absolutely slumbered during the
+process, which Christina protracted on that very account.  She then
+dressed and bandaged the arm, and proceeded to skim—as no one else in the
+castle would do—the basin of soup, with which she then fed her patient as
+he leant back in the corner of the settle, at first in the same
+somnolent, half-conscious state in which he had been ever since the
+relief from the severe pain; but after a few spoonfuls the light and life
+came back to his eye, and he broke out, “Thanks, thanks, gracious lady!
+This is the Lady Baroness for me!  My young lord was the only wise man!
+Thanks, lady; now am I my own man again.  It had been long ere the old
+Freiherrinn had done so much for me!  I am your man, lady, for life or
+death!”  And, before she knew what he was about, the gigantic
+Schneiderlein had slid down on his knees, seized her hand, and kissed
+it—the first act of homage to her rank, but most startling and
+distressing to her.  “Nay,” she faltered, “prithee do not; thou must
+rest.  Only if—if thou canst only tell me if he, my own dear lord, sent
+me any greeting, I would wait to hear the rest till thou hast slept.”
+
+“Ah! the dog of Schlangenwald!” was the first answer; then, as he
+continued, “You see, lady, we had ridden merrily as far as Jacob Müller’s
+hostel, the traitor,” it became plain that he meant to begin at the
+beginning.  She allowed Ursel to seat her on the bench opposite to his
+settle, and, leaning forward, heard his narrative like one in a dream.
+There, the Schneiderlein proceeded to say, they put up for the night,
+entirely unsuspicious of evil; Jacob Müller, who was known to himself, as
+well as to Sorel and to the others, assuring them that the way was clear
+to Ratisbon, and that he heard the Emperor was most favourably disposed
+to any noble who would tender his allegiance.  Jacob’s liquors were
+brought out, and were still in course of being enjoyed, when the house
+was suddenly surrounded by an overpowering number of the retainers of
+Schlangenwald, with their Count himself at their head.  He had been
+evidently resolved to prevent the timely submission of the enemies of his
+race, and suddenly presenting himself before the elder Baron, had
+challenged him to instantaneous battle, claiming credit to himself for
+not having surprised them when asleep.  The disadvantage had been
+scarcely less than if this had been the case, for the Adlersteinern were
+all half-intoxicated, and far inferior in numbers—at least, on the
+showing of the Schneiderlein—and a desperate fight had ended by his being
+flung aside in a corner, bound fast by the ankles and wrists, the only
+living prisoner, except his young lord, who, having several terrible
+wounds, the worst in his chest, was left unbound.
+
+Both lay helpless, untended, and silent, while the revel that had been so
+fatal to them was renewed by their captors, who finally all sunk into a
+heavy sleep.  The torches were not all spent, and the moonlight shone
+into the room, when the Schneiderlein, desperate from the agony caused by
+the ligature round his wounded arm, sat up and looked about him.  A knife
+thrown aside by one of the drunkards lay near enough to be grasped by his
+bound hands, and he had just reached it when Sir Eberhard made a sign to
+him to put it into his hand, and therewith contrived to cut the rope
+round both hands and feet—then pointed to the door.
+
+There was nothing to hinder an escape; the men slept the sleep of the
+drunken; but the Schneiderlein, with the rough fidelity of a retainer,
+would have lingered with a hope of saving his master.  But Eberhard shook
+his head, and signed again to escape; then, making him bend down close to
+him, he used all his remaining power to whisper, as he pressed his sword
+into the retainer’s hand,—
+
+“Go home; tell my mother—all the world—that Christina Sorel is my wife,
+wedded on the Friedmund Wake by Friar Peter of Offingen, and if she
+should bear a child, he is my true and lawful heir.  My sword for him—my
+love to her.  And if my mother would not be haunted by me, let her take
+care of her.”
+
+These words were spoken with extreme difficulty, for the nature of the
+wound made utterance nearly impossible, and each broken sentence cost a
+terrible effusion of blood.  The final words brought on so choking and
+fatal a gush that, said the Schneiderlein, “he fell back as I tried to
+hold him up, and I saw that it was all at an end, and a kind and friendly
+master and lord gone from me.  I laid him down, and put his cross on his
+breast that I had seen him kissing many a time that evening; and I
+crossed his hands, and wiped the blood from them and his face.  And,
+lady, he had put on his ring; I trust the robber caitiff’s may have left
+it to him in his grave.  And so I came forth, walking soft, and opening
+the door in no small dread, not of the snoring swine, but of the dogs
+without.  But happily they were still, and even by the door I saw all our
+poor fellows stark and stiff.”
+
+“My father?” asked Christina.
+
+“Ay! with his head cleft open by the Graf himself.  He died like a true
+soldier, lady, and we have lost the best head among us in him.  Well, the
+knave that should have watched the horses was as drunken as the rest of
+them, and I made a shift to put the bridle on the white mare and ride
+off.”
+
+Such was the narrative of the Schneiderlein, and all that was left to
+Christina was the picture of her husband’s dying effort to guard her, and
+the haunting fancy of those long hours of speechless agony on the floor
+of the hostel, and how direful must have been his fears for her.  Sad and
+overcome, yet not sinking entirely while any work of comfort remained,
+her heart yearned over her companion in misfortune, the mother who had
+lost both husband and son; and all her fears of the dread Freiherrinn
+could not prevent her from bending her steps, trembling and palpitating
+as she was, towards the hall, to try whether the daughter-in-law’s right
+might be vouchsafed to her, of weeping with the elder sufferer.
+
+The Freiherrinn sat by the chimney, rocking herself to and fro, and
+holding consultation with Hatto.  She started as she saw Christina
+approaching, and made a gesture of repulsion; but, with the feeling of
+being past all terror in this desolate moment, Christina stepped nearer,
+knelt, and, clasping her hands, said, “Your pardon, lady.”
+
+“Pardon!” returned the harsh voice, even harsher for very grief, “thou
+hast naught to fear, girl.  As things stand, thou canst not have thy
+deserts.  Dost hear?”
+
+“Ah, lady, it was not such pardon that I meant.  If you would let me be a
+daughter to you.”
+
+“A daughter!  A wood-carver’s girl to be a daughter of Adlerstein!” half
+laughed the grim Baroness.  “Come here, wench,” and Christina underwent a
+series of sharp searching questions on the evidences of her marriage.
+
+“So,” ended the old lady, “since better may not be, we must own thee for
+the nonce.  Hark ye all, this is the Frau Freiherrinn, Freiherr
+Eberhard’s widow, to be honoured as such,” she added, raising her voice.
+“There, girl, thou hast what thou didst strive for.  Is not that enough?”
+
+“Alas! lady,” said Christina, her eyes swimming in tears, “I would fain
+have striven to be a comforter, or to weep together.”
+
+“What! to bewitch me as thou didst my poor son and daughter, and
+well-nigh my lord himself!  Girl!  Girl!  Thou know’st I cannot burn thee
+now; but away with thee; try not my patience too far.”
+
+And, more desolate than ever, the crushed and broken-hearted Christina, a
+widow before she had been owned a wife, returned to the room that was now
+so full of memories as to be even more home than Master Gottfried’s
+gallery at Ulm.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+PASSING THE OUBLIETTE
+
+
+WHO can describe the dreariness of being snowed-up all the winter with
+such a mother-in-law as Freiherrinn Kunigunde?
+
+Yet it was well that the snow came early, for it was the best defence of
+the lonely castle from any attack on the part of the Schlangenwaldern,
+the Swabian League, or the next heir, Freiherr Kasimir von Adlerstein
+Wildschloss.  The elder Baroness had, at least, the merit of a stout
+heart, and, even with her sadly-reduced garrison, feared none of them.
+She had been brought up in the faith that Adlerstein was impregnable, and
+so she still believed; and, if the disaster that had cut off her husband
+and son was to happen at all, she was glad that it had befallen before
+the homage had been paid.  Probably the Schlangenwald Count knew how
+tough a morsel the castle was like to prove, and Wildschloss was serving
+at a distance, for nothing was heard of either during the short interval
+while the roads were still open.  During this time an attempt had been
+made through Father Norbert to ascertain what had become of the corpses
+of the two Barons and their followers, and it had appeared that the Count
+had carried them all off from the inn, no doubt to adorn his castle with
+their limbs, or to present them to the Emperor in evidence of his zeal
+for order.  The old Baron could not indeed have been buried in
+consecrated ground, nor have masses said for him; but for the weal of her
+son’s soul Dame Kunigunde gave some of her few ornaments, and Christina
+added her gold earrings, and all her scanty purse, that both her husband
+and father might be joined in the prayers of the Church—trying with all
+her might to put confidence in Hugh Sorel’s Loretto relic, and the
+Indulgence he had bought, and trusting with more consolatory thoughts to
+the ever stronger dawnings of good she had watched in her own Eberhard.
+
+She had some consoling intercourse with the priest while all this was
+pending; but throughout the winter she was entirely cut off from every
+creature save the inmates of the castle, where, as far as the old lady
+was concerned, she only existed on sufferance, and all her meekness and
+gentleness could not win for her more than the barest toleration.
+
+That Eberhard had for a few hours survived his father, and that thus the
+Freiherrinn Christina was as much the Dowager Baroness as Kunigunde
+herself, was often insisted on in the kitchen by Ursel, Hatto, and the
+Schneiderlein, whom Christina had unconsciously rendered her most devoted
+servant, not only by her daily care of his wound, but by her kind
+courteous words, and by her giving him his proper name of Heinz, dropping
+the absurd _nom de guerre_ of the Schneiderlein, or little tailor, which
+had been originally conferred on him in allusion to the valiant
+Tailorling who boasted of having killed seven flies at a blow, and had
+been carried on chiefly because of the contradiction between such a title
+and his huge brawny strength and fierce courage.  Poor Eberhard, with his
+undaunted bravery and free reckless good-nature, a ruffian far more by
+education than by nature, had been much loved by his followers.  His
+widow would have reaped the benefit of that affection even if her
+exceeding sweetness had not gained it on her own account; and this giant
+was completely gained over to her, when, amid all her sorrow and
+feebleness, she never failed to minister to his sufferings to the utmost,
+while her questions about his original home, and revival of the name of
+his childhood, softened him, and awoke in him better feelings.  He would
+have died to serve her, and she might have headed an opposition party in
+the castle, had she not been quite indifferent to all save her grief;
+and, except by sitting above the salt at the empty table, she laid no
+claim to any honours or authority, and was more seldom than ever seen
+beyond what was now called her own room.
+
+At last, when for the second time she was seeing the snow wreaths
+dwindle, and the drops shine forth in moisture again, while the mountain
+paths were set free by the might of the springtide sun, she spoke almost
+for the first time with authority, as she desired Heinz to saddle her
+mule, and escort her to join in the Easter mass at the Blessed
+Friedmund’s Chapel.  Ursel heaped up objections; but so urgent was
+Christina for confession and for mass, that the old woman had not the
+heart to stop her by a warning to the elder Baroness, and took the
+alternative of accompanying her.  It was a glorious sparkling Easter Day,
+lovely blue sky above, herbage and flowers glistening below, snow
+dazzling in the hollows, peasants assembling in holiday garb, and all
+rejoicing.  Even the lonely widow, in her heavy veil and black mufflings,
+took hope back to her heart, and smiled when at the church door a little
+child came timidly up to her with a madder-tinted Easter egg—a gift once
+again like the happy home customs of Ulm.  She gave the child a kiss—she
+had nothing else to give, but the sweet face sent it away strangely glad.
+
+The festival mass in all its exultation was not fully over, when anxious
+faces began to be seen at the door, and whisperings went round and many
+passed out.  Nobody at Adlerstein was particular about silence in church,
+and, when the service was not in progress, voices were not even lowered,
+and, after many attempts on the part of the Schneiderlein to attract the
+attention of his mistress, his voice immediately succeeded the _Ite missa
+est_, “Gracious lady, we must begone.  Your mule is ready.  There is a
+party at the Debateable Ford, whether Schlangenwald or Wildschloss we
+know not yet, but either way you must be the first thing placed in
+safety.”
+
+Christina turned deadly pale.  She had long been ready to welcome death
+as a peaceful friend; but, sheltered as her girlhood had been in the
+quiet city, she had never been brought in contact with warfare, and her
+nervous, timid temperament made the thought most appalling and frightful
+to her, certain as she was that the old Baroness would resist to the
+uttermost.  Father Norbert saw her extreme terror, and, with the thought
+that he might comfort and support her, perhaps mediate between the
+contending parties, plead that it was holy-tide, and proclaim the peace
+of the church, or at the worst protect the lady herself, he offered his
+company; but, though she thanked him, it was as if she scarcely
+understood his kindness, and a shudder passed over her whenever the
+serfs, hastily summoned to augment the garrison, came hurrying down the
+path, or turned aside into the more rugged and shorter descents.  It was
+strange, the good father thought, that so timorous and fragile a being
+should have her lot cast amid these rugged places and scenes of violence,
+with no one to give her the care and cherishing she so much required.
+
+Even when she crept up the castle stairs, she was met with an angry
+rebuke, not so much for the peril she had incurred as for having taken
+away the Schneiderlein, by far the most availing among the scanty remnant
+of the retainers of Adlerstein.  Attempting no answer, and not even
+daring to ask from what quarter came the alarm, Christina made her way
+out of the turmoil to that chamber of her own, the scene of so much fear
+and sorrow, and yet of some share of peace and happiness.  But from the
+window, near the fast subsiding waters of the Debateable Ford, could
+plainly be seen the small troop of warriors, of whom Jobst the Kohler had
+brought immediate intelligence.  The sun glistened on their armour, and a
+banner floated gaily on the wind; but they were a fearful sight to the
+inmates of the lonely castle.
+
+A stout heart was however Kunigunde’s best endowment; and, with the
+steadiness and precision of a general, her commands rang out, as she
+arranged and armed her garrison, perfectly resolved against any
+submission, and confident in the strength of her castle; nay, not without
+a hope of revenge either against Schlangenwald or Wildschloss, whom, as a
+degenerate Adlerstein, she hated only less than the slayer of her husband
+and son.
+
+The afternoon of Easter Day however passed away without any movement on
+the part of the enemy, and it was not till the following day that they
+could be seen struggling through the ford, and preparing to ascend the
+mountain.  Attacks had sometimes been disconcerted by posting men in the
+most dangerous passes; but, in the lack of numbers, and of trustworthy
+commanders, the Freiherrinn had judged it wiser to trust entirely to her
+walls, and keep her whole force within them.
+
+The new comers could hardly have had any hostile intentions, for, though
+well armed and accoutred, their numbers did not exceed twenty-five.  The
+banner borne at their head was an azure one, with a white eagle, and
+their leader could be observed looking with amazement at the top of the
+watch-tower, where the same eagle had that morning been hoisted for the
+first time since the fall of the two Freiherren.
+
+So soon as the ascent had been made, the leader wound his horn, and,
+before the echoes had died away among the hills, Hatto, acting as
+seneschal, was demanding his purpose.
+
+“I am Kasimir von Adlerstein Wildschloss,” was the reply.  “I have
+hitherto been hindered by stress of weather from coming to take
+possession of my inheritance.  Admit me, that I may arrange with the
+widowed Frau Freiherrinn as to her dower and residence.”
+
+“The widowed Frau Freiherrinn, born of Adlerstein,” returned Hatto,
+“thanks the Freiherr von Adlerstein Wildschloss; but she holds the castle
+as guardian to the present head of the family, the Freiherr von
+Adlerstein.”
+
+“It is false, old man,” exclaimed the Wildschloss; “the Freiherr had no
+other son.”
+
+“No,” said Hatto, “but Freiherr Eberhard hath left us twin heirs, our
+young lords, for whom we hold this castle.”
+
+“This trifling will not serve!” sternly spoke the knight.  “Eberhard von
+Adlerstein died unmarried.”
+
+“Not so,” returned Hatto, “our gracious Frau Freiherrinn, the younger,
+was wedded to him at the last Friedmund Wake, by the special blessing of
+our good patron, who would not see our house extinct.”
+
+“I must see thy lady, old man,” said Sir Kasimir, impatiently, not in the
+least crediting the story, and believing his cousin Kunigunde quite
+capable of any measure that could preserve to her the rule in Schloss
+Adlerstein, even to erecting some passing love affair of her son’s into a
+marriage.  And he hardly did her injustice, for she had never made any
+inquiry beyond the castle into the validity of Christina’s espousals, nor
+sought after the friar who had performed the ceremony.  She consented to
+an interview with the claimant of the inheritance, and descended to the
+gateway for the purpose.  The court was at its cleanest, the thawing snow
+having newly washed away its impurities, and her proud figure, under her
+black hood and veil, made an imposing appearance as she stood tall and
+defiant in the archway.
+
+Sir Kasimir was a handsome man of about thirty, of partly Polish descent,
+and endowed with Slavonic grace and courtesy, and he had likewise been
+employed in negotiations with Burgundy, and had acquired much polish and
+knowledge of the world.
+
+“Lady,” he said, “I regret to disturb and intrude on a mourning family,
+but I am much amazed at the tidings I have heard; and I must pray of you
+to confirm them.”
+
+“I thought they would confound you,” composedly replied Kunigunde.
+
+“And pardon me, lady, but the Diet is very nice in requiring full proofs.
+I would be glad to learn what lady was chosen by my deceased cousin
+Eberhard.”
+
+“The lady is Christina, daughter of his esquire, Hugh Sorel, of an
+honourable family at Ulm.”
+
+“Ha!  I know who and what Sorel was!” exclaimed Wildschloss.  “Lady
+cousin, thou wouldst not stain the shield of Adlerstein with owning aught
+that cannot bear the examination of the Diet!”
+
+“Sir Kasimir,” said Kunigunde proudly, “had I known the truth ere my
+son’s death, I had strangled the girl with mine own hands!  But I learnt
+it only by his dying confession; and, had she been a beggar’s child, she
+was his wedded wife, and her babes are his lawful heirs.”
+
+“Knowest thou time—place—witnesses?” inquired Sir Kasimir.
+
+“The time, the Friedmund Wake; the place, the Friedmund Chapel,” replied
+the Baroness.  “Come hither, Schneiderlein.  Tell the knight thy young
+lord’s confession.”
+
+He bore emphatic testimony to poor Eberhard’s last words; but as to the
+point of who had performed the ceremony, he knew not,—his mind had not
+retained the name.
+
+“I must see the Frau herself,” said Wildschloss, feeling certain that
+such a being as he expected in a daughter of the dissolute lanzknecht
+Sorel would soon, by dexterous questioning, be made to expose the
+futility of her pretensions so flagrantly that even Kunigunde could not
+attempt to maintain them.
+
+For one moment Kunigunde hesitated, but suddenly a look of malignant
+satisfaction crossed her face.  She spoke a few words to Squinting Mätz,
+and then replied that Sir Kasimir should be allowed to satisfy himself,
+but that she could admit no one else into the castle; hers was a widow’s
+household, the twins were only a few hours old, and she could not open
+her gates to admit any person besides himself.
+
+So resolved on judging for himself was Adlerstein Wildschloss that all
+this did not stagger him; for, even if he had believed more than he did
+of the old lady’s story, there would have been no sense of intrusion or
+impropriety in such a visit to the mother.  Indeed, had Christina been
+living in the civilized world, her chamber would have been hung with
+black cloth, black velvet would have enveloped her up to the eyes, and
+the blackest of cradles would have stood ready for her fatherless babe;
+two steps, in honour of her baronial rank, would have led to her bed, and
+a beaufet with the due baronial amount of gold and silver plate would
+have held the comfits and caudle to be dispensed to all visitors.  As it
+was, the two steps built into the floor of the room, and the black hood
+that Ursel tied over her young mistress’s head, were the only traces that
+such etiquette had ever been heard of.
+
+But when Baron Kasimir had clanked up the turret stairs, each step
+bringing to her many a memory of him who should have been there, and when
+he had been led to the bedside, he was completely taken by surprise.
+
+Instead of the great, flat-faced, coarse comeliness of a German wench,
+treated as a lady in order to deceive him, he saw a delicate, lily-like
+face, white as ivory, and the soft, sweet brown eyes under their drooping
+lashes, so full of innocence and sad though thankful content, that he
+felt as if the inquiries he came to make were almost sacrilege.
+
+He had seen enough of the world to know that no agent in a clumsy
+imposition would look like this pure white creature, with her arm
+encircling the two little swaddled babes, whose red faces and bald heads
+alone were allowed to appear above their mummy-like wrappings; and he
+could only make an obeisance lower and infinitely more respectful than
+that with which he had favoured the Baroness _née_ von Adlerstein, with a
+few words of inquiry and apology.
+
+But Christina had her sons’ rights to defend now, and she had far more
+spirit to do so than ever she had had in securing her own position, and a
+delicate rose tint came into her cheek as she said in her soft voice,
+“The Baroness tells me, that you, noble sir, would learn who wedded me to
+my dear and blessed lord, Sir Eberhard.  It was Friar Peter of the
+Franciscan brotherhood of Offingen, an agent for selling indulgences.
+Two of his lay brethren were present.  My dear lord gave his own name and
+mine in full after the holy rite; the friar promising his testimony if it
+were needed.  He is to be found, or at least heard of, at his own
+cloister; and the hermit at the chapel likewise beheld a part of the
+ceremony.”
+
+“Enough, enough, lady,” replied Sir Kasimir; “forgive me for having
+forced the question upon you.”
+
+“Nay,” replied Christina, with her blush deepening, “it is but just and
+due to us all;” and her soft eyes had a gleam of exultation, as she
+looked at the two little mummies that made up the _us_—“I would have all
+inquiries made in full.”
+
+“They shall be made, lady, as will be needful for the establishment of
+your son’s right as a free Baron of the empire, but not with any doubt on
+my part, or desire to controvert that right.  I am fully convinced, and
+only wish to serve you and my little cousins.  Which of them is the head
+of our family?” he added, looking at the two absolutely undistinguishable
+little chrysalises, so exactly alike that Christina herself was obliged
+to look for the black ribbon, on which a medal had been hung, round the
+neck of the elder.  Sir Kasimir put one knee to the ground as he kissed
+the red cheek of the infant and the white hand of the mother.
+
+“Lady cousin,” he said to Kunigunde, who had stood by all this time with
+an anxious, uneasy, scowling expression on her face, “I am satisfied.  I
+own this babe as the true Freiherr von Adlerstein, and far be it from me
+to trouble his heritage.  Rather point out the way in which I may serve
+you and him.  Shall I represent all to the Emperor, and obtain his
+wardship, so as to be able to protect you from any attacks by the enemies
+of the house?”
+
+“Thanks, sir,” returned the elder lady, severely, seeing Christina’s
+gratified, imploring face.  “The right line of Adlerstein can take care
+of itself without greedy guardians appointed by usurpers.  Our submission
+has never been made, and the Emperor cannot dispose of our wardship.”
+
+And Kunigunde looked defiant, regarding herself and her grandson as quite
+as good as the Emperor, and ready to blast her daughter-in-law with her
+eyes for murmuring gratefully and wistfully, “Thanks, noble sir, thanks!”
+
+“Let me at least win a friendly right in my young cousins,” said Sir
+Kasimir, the more drawn by pitying admiration towards their mother, as he
+perceived more of the grandmother’s haughty repulsiveness and want of
+comprehension of the dangers of her position.  “They are not baptized?
+Let me become their godfather.”
+
+Christina’s face was all joy and gratitude, and even the grandmother made
+no objection; in fact, it was the babes’ only chance of a noble sponsor;
+and Father Norbert, who had already been making ready for the baptism,
+was sent for from the hall.  Kunigunde, meantime, moved about restlessly,
+went half-way down the stairs, and held council with some one there;
+Ursel likewise, bustled about, and Sir Kasimir remained seated on the
+chair that had been placed for him near Christina’s bed.
+
+She was able again to thank him, and add, “It may be that you will have
+more cause than the lady grandmother thinks to remember your offer of
+protection to my poor orphans.  Their father and grandfather were, in
+very deed, on their way to make submission.”
+
+“That is well known to me,” said Sir Kasimir.  “Lady, I will do all in my
+power for you.  The Emperor shall hear the state of things; and, while no
+violence is offered to travellers,” he added, lowering his tone, “I doubt
+not he will wait for full submission till this young Baron be of age to
+tender it.”
+
+“We are scarce in force to offer violence,” said Christina sighing.  “I
+have no power to withstand the Lady Baroness.  I am like a stranger here;
+but, oh! sir, if the Emperor and Diet will be patient and forbearing with
+this desolate house, my babes, if they live, shall strive to requite
+their mercy by loyalty.  And the blessing of the widow and fatherless
+will fall on you, most generous knight,” she added, fervently, holding
+out her hand.
+
+“I would I could do more for you,” said the knight.  “Ask, and all I can
+do is at your service.”
+
+“Ah, sir,” cried Christina, her eyes brightening, “there is one most
+inestimable service you could render me—to let my uncle, Master
+Gottfried, the wood-carver of Ulm, know where I am, and of my state, and
+of my children.”
+
+Sir Kasimir repeated the name.
+
+“Yes,” she said.  “There was my home, there was I brought up by my dear
+uncle and aunt, till my father bore me away to attend on the young lady
+here.  It is eighteen months since they had any tidings from her who was
+as a daughter to them.”
+
+“I will see them myself,” said Kasimir; “I know the name.  Carved not
+Master Gottfried the stall-work at Augsburg?”
+
+“Yes, indeed!  In chestnut leaves!  And the Misereres all with fairy
+tales!” exclaimed Christina.  “Oh, sir, thanks indeed!  Bear to the dear,
+dear uncle and aunt their child’s duteous greetings, and tell them she
+loves them with all her heart, and prays them to forgive her, and to pray
+for her and her little ones!  And,” she added, “my uncle may not have
+learnt how his brother, my father, died by his lord’s side.  Oh! pray
+him, if ever he loved his little Christina, to have masses sung for my
+father and my own dear lord.”
+
+As she promised, Ursel came to make the babes ready for their baptism,
+and Sir Kasimir moved away towards the window.  Ursel was looking uneasy
+and dismayed, and, as she bent over her mistress, she whispered, “Lady,
+the Schneiderlein sends you word that Mätz has called him to help in
+removing the props of the door you wot of when _he_ yonder steps across
+it.  He would know if it be your will?”
+
+“The oubliette!”  This was Frau Kunigunde’s usage of the relative who was
+doing his best for the welfare of her grandsons!  Christina’s whole
+countenance looked so frozen with horror, that Ursel felt as if she had
+killed her on the spot; but the next moment a flash of relief came over
+the pale features, and the trembling lip commanded itself to say, “My
+best thanks to good Heinz.  Say to him that I forbid it.  If he loves the
+life of his master’s children, he will abstain!  Tell him so.  My
+blessings on him if this knight leave the castle safe, Ursel.” And her
+terrified earnest eyes impelled Ursel to hasten to do her bidding; but
+whether it had been executed, there was no knowing, for almost
+immediately the Freiherrinn and Father Norbert entered, and Ursel
+returned with them.  Nay, the message given, who could tell if Heinz
+would be able to act upon it?  In the ordinary condition of the castle,
+he was indeed its most efficient inmate; Mätz did not approach him in
+strength, Hans was a cripple, Hatto would be on the right side; but Jobst
+the Kohler, and the other serfs who had been called in for the defence,
+were more likely to hold with the elder than the younger lady.  And Frau
+Kunigunde herself, knowing well that the five-and-twenty men outside
+would be incompetent to avenge their master, confident in her
+narrow-minded, ignorant pride that no one could take Schloss Adlerstein,
+and incapable of understanding the changes in society that were rendering
+her isolated condition untenable, was certain to scout any representation
+of the dire consequences that the crime would entail.  Kasimir had no
+near kindred, and private revenge was the only justice the Baroness
+believed in; she only saw in her crime the satisfaction of an old feud,
+and the union of the Wildschloss property with the parent stem.
+
+Seldom could such a christening have taken place as that of which
+Christina’s bed-room was the scene—the mother scarcely able even to think
+of the holy sacrament for the horror of knowing that the one sponsor was
+already exulting in the speedy destruction of the other; and, poor little
+feeble thing, rallying the last remnants of her severely-tried powers to
+prevent the crime at the most terrible of risks.
+
+The elder babe received from his grandmother the hereditary name of
+Eberhard, but Sir Kasimir looked at the mother inquiringly, ere he gave
+the other to the priest.  Christina had well-nigh said, “Oubliette,” but,
+recalling herself in time, she feebly uttered the name she had longed
+after from the moment she had known that two sons had been her Easter
+gift, “Gottfried,” after her beloved uncle.  But Kunigunde caught the
+sound, and exclaimed, “No son of Adlerstein shall bear abase craftsman’s
+name.  Call him Rächer (the avenger);” and in the word there already rang
+a note of victory and revenge that made Christina’s blood run cold.  Sir
+Kasimir marked her trouble.  “The lady mother loves not the sound,” he
+said, kindly.  “Lady, have you any other wish?  Then will I call him
+Friedmund.”
+
+Christina had almost smiled.  To her the omen was of the best.  Baron
+Friedmund had been the last common ancestor of the two branches of the
+family, the patron saint was so called, his wake was her wedding-day, the
+sound of the word imported peace, and the good Barons Ebbo and Friedel
+had ever been linked together lovingly by popular memory.  And so the
+second little Baron received the name of Friedmund, and then the knight
+of Wildschloss, perceiving, with consideration rare in a warrior, that
+the mother looked worn out and feverish, at once prepared to kiss her
+hand and take leave.
+
+“One more favour, Sir Knight,” she said, lifting up her head, while a
+burning spot rose on either cheek.  “I beg of you to take my two babes
+down—yes, both, both, in your own arms, and show them to your men, owning
+them as your kinsmen and godsons.”
+
+Sir Kasimir looked exceedingly amazed, as if he thought the lady’s senses
+taking leave of her, and Dame Kunigunde broke out into declarations that
+it was absurd, and she did not know what she was talking of; but she
+repeated almost with passion, “Take them, take them, you know not how
+much depends on it.”  Ursel, with unusual readiness of wit, signed and
+whispered that the young mother must be humoured, for fear of
+consequences; till the knight, in a good-natured, confused way, submitted
+to receive the two little bundles in his arms, while he gave place to
+Kunigunde, who hastily stepped before him in a manner that made Christina
+trust that her precaution would be effectual.
+
+The room was reeling round with her.  The agony of those few minutes was
+beyond all things unspeakable.  What had seemed just before like a
+certain way of saving the guest without real danger to her children, now
+appeared instead the most certain destruction to all, and herself the
+unnatural mother who had doomed her new-born babes for a stranger’s sake.
+She could not even pray; she would have shrieked to have them brought
+back, but her voice was dead within her, her tongue clave to the roof of
+her mouth, ringings in her ears hindered her even from listening to the
+descending steps.  She lay as one dead, when ten minutes afterwards the
+cry of one of her babes struck on her ear, and the next moment Ursel
+stood beside her, laying them down close to her, and saying exultingly,
+“Safe! safe out at the gate, and down the hillside, and my old lady ready
+to gnaw off her hands for spite!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+THE EAGLETS
+
+
+CHRISTINA’S mental and bodily constitution had much similarity—apparently
+most delicate, tender, and timid, yet capable of a vigour, health, and
+endurance that withstood shocks that might have been fatal to many
+apparently stronger persons.  The events of that frightful Easter Monday
+morning did indeed almost kill her; but the effects, though severe, were
+not lasting; and by the time the last of Ermentrude’s snow-wreath had
+vanished, she was sunning her babes at the window, happier than she had
+ever thought to be—above all, in the possession of both the children.  A
+nurse had been captured for the little Baron from the village on the
+hillside; but the woman had fretted, the child had pined, and had been
+given back to his mother to save his life; and ever since both had
+thriven perfectly under her sole care, so that there was very nearly joy
+in that room.
+
+Outside it, there was more bitterness than ever.  The grandmother had
+softened for a few moments at the birth of the children, with
+satisfaction at obtaining twice as much as she had hoped; but the
+frustration of her vengeance upon Kasimir of Adlerstein Wildschloss had
+renewed all her hatred, and she had no scruple in abusing “the
+burgher-woman” to the whole household for her artful desire to captivate
+another nobleman.  She, no doubt, expected that degenerate fool of a
+Wildschlosser to come wooing after her; “if he did he should meet his
+deserts.”  It was the favourite reproach whenever she chose to vent her
+fury on the mute, blushing, weeping young widow, whose glance at her
+babies was her only appeal against the cruel accusation.
+
+On Midsummer eve, Heinz the Schneiderlein, who had all day been taking
+toll from the various attendants at the Friedmund Wake, came up and
+knocked at the door.  He had a bundle over his shoulder and a bag in his
+hand, which last he offered to her.
+
+“The toll!  It is for the Lady Baroness.”
+
+“You are my Lady Baroness.  I levy toll for this my young lord.”
+
+“Take it to her, good Heinz, she must have the charge, and needless
+strife I will not breed.”
+
+The angry notes of Dame Kunigunde came up: “How now, knave Schneiderlein!
+Come down with the toll instantly.  It shall not be tampered with!  Down,
+I say, thou thief of a tailor.”
+
+“Go; prithee go, vex her not,” entreated Christina.
+
+“Coming, lady!” shouted Heinz, and, disregarding all further objurgations
+from beneath, he proceeded to deposit his bundle, and explain that it had
+been entrusted to him by a pedlar from Ulm, who would likewise take
+charge of anything she might have to send in return, and he then ran down
+just in time to prevent a domiciliary visit from the old lady.
+
+From Ulm!  The very sound was joy; and Christina with trembling hands
+unfastened the cords and stitches that secured the canvas covering,
+within which lay folds on folds of linen, and in the midst a rich silver
+goblet, long ago brought by her father from Italy, a few of her own
+possessions, and a letter from her uncle secured with black floss silk,
+with a black seal.
+
+She kissed it with transport, but the contents were somewhat chilling by
+their grave formality.  The opening address to the “honour-worthy Lady
+Baroness and love-worthy niece,” conveyed to her a doubt on good Master
+Gottfried’s part whether she were still truly worthy of love or honour.
+The slaughter at Jacob Müller’s had been already known to him, and he
+expressed himself as relieved, but greatly amazed, at the information he
+had received from the Baron of Adlerstein Wildschloss, who had visited
+him at Ulm, after having verified what had been alleged at Schloss
+Adlerstein by application to the friar at Offingen.
+
+Freiherr von Adlerstein Wildschloss had further requested him to make
+known that, feud-briefs having regularly passed between Schlangenwald and
+Adlerstein, and the two Barons not having been within the peace of the
+empire, no justice could be exacted for their deaths; yet, in
+consideration of the tender age of the present heirs, the question of
+forfeiture or submission should be waived till they could act for
+themselves, and Schlangenwald should be withheld from injuring them so
+long as no molestation was offered to travellers.  It was plain that Sir
+Kasimir had well and generously done his best to protect the helpless
+twins, and he sent respectful but cordial greetings to their mother.
+These however were far less heeded by her than the coldness of her
+uncle’s letter.  She had drifted beyond the reckoning of her kindred, and
+they were sending her her property and bridal linen, as if they had done
+with her, and had lost their child in the robber-baron’s wife.  Yet at
+the end there was a touch of old times in offering a blessing, should she
+still value it, and the hopes that heaven and the saints would comfort
+her; “for surely, thou poor child, thou must have suffered much, and, if
+thou wiliest still to write to thy city kin, thine aunt would rejoice to
+hear that thou and thy babes were in good health.”
+
+Precise grammarian and scribe as was Uncle Gottfried, the lapse from the
+formal _Sie_ to the familiar _Du_ went to his niece’s heart.  Whenever
+her little ones left her any leisure, she spent this her first
+wedding-day in writing so earnest and loving a letter as, in spite of
+mediæval formality, must assure the good burgomaster that, except in
+having suffered much and loved much, his little Christina was not changed
+since she had left him.
+
+No answer could be looked for till another wake-day; but, when it came,
+it was full and loving, and therewith were sent a few more of her
+favourite books, a girdle, and a richly-scented pair of gloves, together
+with two ivory boxes of comfits, and two little purple silk, gold-edged,
+straight, narrow garments and tight round brimless lace caps, for the two
+little Barons.  Nor did henceforth a wake-day pass by without bringing
+some such token, not only delightful as gratifying Christina’s affection
+by the kindness that suggested them, but supplying absolute wants in the
+dire stress of poverty at Schloss Adlerstein.
+
+Christina durst not tell her mother-in-law of the terms on which they
+were unmolested, trusting to the scantiness of the retinue, and to her
+own influence with the Schneiderlein to hinder any serious violence.
+Indeed, while the Count of Schlangenwald was in the neighbourhood, his
+followers took care to secure all that could be captured at the
+Debateable Ford, and the broken forces of Adlerstein would have been
+insane had they attempted to contend with such superior numbers.  That
+the castle remained unattacked was attributed by the elder Baroness to
+its own merits; nor did Christina undeceive her.  They had no intercourse
+with the outer world, except that once a pursuivant arrived with a formal
+intimation from their kinsman, the Baron of Adlerstein Wildschloss, of
+his marriage with the noble Fräulein, Countess Valeska von Trautbach, and
+a present of a gay dagger for each of his godsons.  Frau Kunigunde
+triumphed a good deal over the notion of Christina’s supposed
+disappointment; but the tidings were most welcome to the younger lady,
+who trusted they would put an end to all future taunts about Wildschloss.
+Alas! the handle for abuse was too valuable to be relinquished.
+
+The last silver cup the castle had possessed had to be given as a reward
+to the pursuivant, and mayhap Frau Kunigunde reckoned this as another
+offence of her daughter-in-law, since, had Sir Kasimir been safe in the
+oubliette, the twins might have shared his broad lands on the Danube,
+instead of contributing to the fees of his pursuivant.  The cup could
+indeed be ill spared.  The cattle and swine, the dues of the serfs, and
+the yearly toll at the wake were the sole resources of the household; and
+though there was no lack of meat, milk, and black bread, sufficient
+garments could scarce be come by, with all the spinning of the household,
+woven by the village webster, of whose time the baronial household, by
+prescriptive right, owned the lion’s share.
+
+These matters little troubled the two beings in whom Christina’s heart
+was wrapped up.  Though running about barefooted and bareheaded, they
+were healthy, handsome, straight-limbed, noble-looking creatures, so
+exactly alike, and so inseparable, that no one except herself could tell
+one from the other save by the medal of Our Lady worn by the elder, and
+the little cross carved by the mother for the younger; indeed, at one
+time, the urchins themselves would feel for cross or medal, ere naming
+themselves “Ebbo,” or “Friedel.”  They were tall for their age, but with
+the slender make of their foreign ancestry; and, though their fair rosy
+complexions were brightened by mountain mists and winds, their rapidly
+darkening hair, and large liquid brown eyes, told of their Italian blood.
+Their grandmother looked on their colouring as a taint, and Christina
+herself had hoped to see their father’s simple, kindly blue eyes revive
+in his boys; but she could hardly have desired anything different from
+the dancing, kindling, or earnest glances that used to flash from under
+their long black lashes when they were nestling in her lap, or playing by
+her knee, making music with their prattle, or listening to her answers
+with faces alive with intelligence.  They scarcely left her time for
+sorrow or regret.
+
+They were never quarrelsome.  Either from the influence of her
+gentleness, or from their absolute union, they could do and enjoy nothing
+apart, and would as soon have thought of their right and left hands
+falling out as of Ebbo and Friedel disputing.  Ebbo however was always
+the right hand.  _The_ Freiherr, as he had been called from the first,
+had, from the time he could sit at the table at all, been put into the
+baronial chair with the eagle carved at the back; every member of the
+household, from his grandmother downwards, placed him foremost, and
+Friedel followed their example, at the less loss to himself, as his hand
+was always in Ebbo’s, and all their doings were in common.  Sometimes
+however the mother doubted whether there would have been this perfect
+absence of all contest had the medal of the firstborn chanced to hang
+round Friedmund’s neck instead of Eberhard’s.  At first they were
+entirely left to her.  Their grandmother heeded them little as long as
+they were healthy, and evidently regarded them more as heirs of
+Adlerstein than as grandchildren; but, as they grew older, she showed
+anxiety lest their mother should interfere with the fierce, lawless
+spirit proper to their line.
+
+One winter day, when they were nearly six years old, Christina, spinning
+at her window, had been watching them snowballing in the castle court,
+smiling and applauding every large handful held up to her, every laughing
+combat, every well-aimed hit, as the hardy little fellows scattered the
+snow in showers round them, raising their merry fur-capped faces to the
+bright eyes that “rained influence and judged the prize.”
+
+By and by they stood still; Ebbo—she knew him by the tossed head and
+commanding air—was proposing what Friedel seemed to disapprove; but,
+after a short discussion, Ebbo flung away from him, and went towards a
+shed where was kept a wolf-cub, recently presented to the young Barons by
+old Ulrich’s son.  The whelp was so young as to be quite harmless, but it
+was far from amiable; Friedel never willingly approached it, and the
+snarling and whining replies to all advances had begun to weary and
+irritate Ebbo.  He dragged it out by its chain, and, tethering it to a
+post, made it a mark for his snowballs, which, kneaded hard, and
+delivered with hearty good-will by his sturdy arms, made the poor little
+beast yelp with pain and terror, till the more tender-hearted Friedel
+threw himself on his brother to withhold him, while Mätz stood by
+laughing and applauding the Baron.  Seeing Ebbo shake Friedel off with
+unusual petulance, and pitying the tormented animal, Christina flung a
+cloak round her head and hastened down stairs, entering the court just as
+the terrified whelp had made a snap at the boy, which was returned by
+angry, vindictive pelting, not merely with snow, but with stones.
+Friedel sprang to her crying, and her call to Ebbo made him turn, though
+with fury in his face, shouting, “He would bite me! the evil beast!”
+
+“Come with me, Ebbo,” she said.
+
+“He shall suffer for it, the spiteful, ungrateful brute!  Let me alone,
+mother!” cried Ebbo, stamping on the snow, but still from habit yielding
+to her hand on his shoulder.
+
+“What now?” demanded the old Baroness, appearing on the scene.  “Who is
+thwarting the Baron?”
+
+“She; she will not let me deal with yonder savage whelp,” cried the boy.
+
+“She!  Take thy way, child,” said the old lady.  “Visit him well for his
+malice.  None shall withstand thee here.  At thy peril!” she added,
+turning on Christina.  “What, art not content to have brought base
+mechanical blood into a noble house?  Wouldst make slaves and cowards of
+its sons?”
+
+“I would teach them true courage, not cruelty,” she tried to say.
+
+“What should such as thou know of courage?  Look here, girl: another word
+to daunt the spirit of my grandsons, and I’ll have thee scourged down the
+mountain-side!  On!  At him, Ebbo!  That’s my gallant young knight!  Out
+of the way, girl, with thy whining looks!  What, Friedel, be a man, and
+aid thy brother!  Has she made thee a puling woman already?”  And
+Kunigunde laid an ungentle grasp upon Friedmund, who was clinging to his
+mother, hiding his face in her gown.  He struggled against the clutch,
+and would not look up or be detached.
+
+“Fie, poor little coward!” taunted the old lady; “never heed him, Ebbo,
+my brave Baron!”
+
+Cut to the heart, Christina took refuge in her room, and gathered her
+Friedel to her bosom, as he sobbed out, “Oh, mother, the poor little
+wolf!  Oh, mother, are you weeping too?  The grandmother should not so
+speak to the sweetest, dearest motherling,” he added, throwing his arms
+round her neck.
+
+“Alas, Friedel, that Ebbo should learn that it is brave to hurt the
+weak!”
+
+“It is not like Walther of Vögelwiede,” said Friedel, whose mind had been
+much impressed by the Minnesinger’s bequest to the birds.
+
+“Nor like any true Christian knight.  Alas, my poor boys, must you be
+taught foul cruelty and I too weak and cowardly to save you?”
+
+“That never will be,” said Friedel, lifting his head from her shoulder.
+“Hark! what a howl was that!”
+
+“Listen not, dear child; it does but pain thee.”
+
+“But Ebbo is not shouting.  Oh, mother, he is vexed—he is hurt!” cried
+Friedel, springing from her lap; but, ere either could reach the window,
+Ebbo had vanished from the scene.  They only saw the young wolf stretched
+dead on the snow, and the same moment in burst Ebbo, and flung himself on
+the floor in a passion of weeping.  Stimulated by the applause of his
+grandmother and of Mätz, he had furiously pelted the poor animal with all
+missiles that came to hand, till a blow, either from him or Mätz, had
+produced such a howl and struggle of agony, and then such terrible
+stillness, as had gone to the young Baron’s very heart, a heart as soft
+as that of his father had been by nature.  Indeed, his sobs were so
+piteous that his mother was relieved to hear only, “The wolf! the poor
+wolf!” and to find that he himself was unhurt; and she was scarcely
+satisfied of this when Dame Kunigunde came up also alarmed, and thus
+turned his grief to wrath.  “As if I would cry in that way for a bite!”
+he said.  “Go, grandame; you made me do it, the poor beast!” with a fresh
+sob.
+
+“Ulrich shall get thee another cub, my child.”
+
+“No, no; I never will have another cub!  Why did you let me kill it?”
+
+“For shame, Ebbo!  Weep for a spiteful brute!  That’s no better than thy
+mother or Friedel.”
+
+“I love my mother!  I love Friedel!  They would have withheld me.  Go,
+go; I hate you!”
+
+“Peace, peace, Ebbo,” exclaimed his mother; “you know not what you say.
+Ask your grandmother’s pardon.”
+
+“Peace, thou fool!” screamed the old lady.  “The Baron speaks as he will
+in his own castle.  He is not to be checked here, and thwarted there, and
+taught to mince his words like a cap-in-hand pedlar.  Pardon!  When did
+an Adlerstein seek pardon?  Come with me, my Baron; I have still some
+honey-cakes.”
+
+“Not I,” replied Ebbo; “honey-cakes will not cure the wolf whelp.  Go: I
+want my mother and Friedel.”
+
+Alone with them his pride and passion were gone; but alas! what augury
+for the future of her boys was left with the mother!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+THE EAGLE’S PREY
+
+
+    “IT fell about the Lammas tide,
+    When moor men win their hay,”
+
+that all the serfs of Adlerstein were collected to collect their lady’s
+hay to be stored for the winter’s fodder of the goats, and of poor Sir
+Eberhard’s old white mare, the only steed as yet ridden by the young
+Barons.
+
+The boys were fourteen years old.  So monotonous was their mother’s life
+that it was chiefly their growth that marked the length of her residence
+in the castle.  Otherwise there had been no change, except that the elder
+Baroness was more feeble in her limbs, and still more irritable and
+excitable in temper.  There were no events, save a few hunting adventures
+of the boys, or the yearly correspondence with Ulm; and the same life
+continued, of shrinking in dread from the old lady’s tyrannous dislike,
+and of the constant endeavour to infuse better principles into the boys,
+without the open opposition for which there was neither power nor
+strength.
+
+The boys’ love was entirely given to their mother.  Far from diminishing
+with their dependence on her, it increased with the sense of protection;
+and, now that they were taller than herself, she seemed to be cherished
+by them more than ever.  Moreover, she was their oracle.  Quick-witted
+and active-minded, loving books the more because their grandmother
+thought signing a feud-letter the utmost literary effort becoming to a
+noble, they never rested till they had acquired all that their mother
+could teach them; or, rather, they then became more restless than ever.
+Long ago had her whole store of tales and ballads become so familiar, by
+repetition, that the boys could correct her in the smallest variation;
+reading and writing were mastered as for pleasure; and the Nuremberg
+Chronicle, with its wonderful woodcuts, excited such a passion of
+curiosity that they must needs conquer its Latin and read it for
+themselves.  This _World History_, with _Alexander and the Nine
+Worthies_, the cities and landscapes, and the oft-repeated portraits, was
+Eberhard’s study; but Friedmund continued—constant to Walther of
+Vögelweide.  Eberhard cared for no character in the Vulgate so much as
+for Judas the Maccabee; but Friedmund’s heart was all for King David; and
+to both lads, shut up from companionship as they were, every acquaintance
+in their books was a living being whose like they fancied might be met
+beyond their mountain.  And, when they should go forth, like Dietrich of
+Berne, in search of adventures, doughty deeds were chiefly to fall to the
+lot of Ebbo’s lance; while Friedel was to be their Minnesinger; and
+indeed certain verses, that he had murmured in his brother’s ear, had
+left no doubt in Ebbo’s mind that the exploits would be worthily sung.
+
+The soft dreamy eye was becoming Friedel’s characteristic, as fire and
+keenness distinguished his brother’s glance.  When at rest, the twins
+could be known apart by their expression, though in all other respects
+they were as alike as ever; and let Ebbo look thoughtful or Friedel eager
+and they were again undistinguishable; and indeed they were constantly
+changing looks.  Had not Friedel been beside him, Ebbo would have been
+deemed a wondrous student for his years; had not Ebbo been the standard
+of comparison, Friedel would have been in high repute for spirit and
+enterprise and skill as a cragsman, with the crossbow, and in all feats
+of arms that the Schneiderlein could impart.  They shared all
+occupations; and it was by the merest shade that Ebbo excelled with the
+weapon, and Friedel with the book or tool.  For the artist nature was in
+them, not intentionally excited by their mother, but far too strong to be
+easily discouraged.  They had long daily gazed at Ulm in the distance,
+hoping to behold the spire completed; and the illustrations in their
+mother’s books excited a strong desire to imitate them.  The floor had
+often been covered with charcoal outlines even before Christina was
+persuaded to impart the rules she had learnt from her uncle; and her
+carving-tools were soon seized upon.  At first they were used only upon
+knobs of sticks; but one day when the boys, roaming on the mountain, had
+lost their way, and coming to the convent had been there hospitably
+welcomed by Father Norbert, they came home wild to make carvings like
+what they had seen in the chapel.  Jobst the Kohler was continually
+importuned for soft wood; the fair was ransacked for knives; and even the
+old Baroness could not find great fault with the occupation, base and
+mechanical though it were, which disposed of the two restless spirits
+during the many hours when winter storms confined them to the castle.
+Rude as was their work, the constant observation and choice of subjects
+were an unsuspected training and softening.  It was not in vain that they
+lived in the glorious mountain fastness, and saw the sun descend in his
+majesty, dyeing the masses of rock with purple and crimson; not in vain
+that they beheld peak and ravine clothed in purest snow, flushed with
+rosy light at morn and eve, or contrasted with the purple blue of the
+sky; or that they stood marvelling at ice caverns with gigantic crystal
+pendants shining with the most magical pure depths of sapphire and
+emerald, “as if,” said Friedel, “winter kept in his service all the
+jewel-forging dwarfs of the motherling’s tales.” And, when the snow
+melted and the buds returned, the ivy spray, the smiling saxifrage, the
+purple gentian bell, the feathery rowan leaf, the symmetrical lady’s
+mantle, were hailed and loved first as models, then for themselves.
+
+One regret their mother had, almost amounting to shame.  Every virtuous
+person believed in the efficacy of the rod, and, maugre her own docility,
+she had been chastised with it almost as a religious duty; but her sons
+had never felt the weight of a blow, except once when their grandmother
+caught them carving a border of eagles and doves round the hall table,
+and then Ebbo had returned the blow with all his might.  As to herself,
+if she ever worked herself up to attempt chastisement, the Baroness was
+sure to fall upon her for insulting the noble birth of her sons, and thus
+gave them a triumph far worse for them than impunity.  In truth, the boys
+had their own way, or rather the Baron had his way, and his way was Baron
+Friedmund’s.  Poor, bare, and scanty as were all the surroundings of
+their life, everything was done to feed their arrogance, with only one
+influence to counteract their education in pride and violence—a mother’s
+influence, indeed, but her authority was studiously taken from her, and
+her position set at naught, with no power save what she might derive from
+their love and involuntary honour, and the sight of the pain caused her
+by their wrong-doings.
+
+And so the summer’s hay-harvest was come.  Peasants clambered into the
+green nooks between the rocks to cut down with hook or knife the flowery
+grass, for there was no space for the sweep of a scythe.  The best crop
+was on the bank of the Braunwasser, by the Debateable Ford, but this was
+cut and carried on the backs of the serfs, much earlier than the mountain
+grass, and never without much vigilance against the Schlangenwaldern; but
+this year the Count was absent at his Styrian castle, and little had been
+seen or heard of his people.
+
+The full muster of serfs appeared, for Frau Kunigunde admitted of no
+excuses, and the sole absentee was a widow who lived on the ledge of the
+mountain next above that on which the castle stood.  Her son reported her
+to be very ill, and with tears in his eyes entreated Baron Friedel to
+obtain leave for him to return to her, since she was quite alone in her
+solitary hut, with no one even to give her a drink of water.  Friedel
+rushed with the entreaty to his grandmother, but she laughed it to scorn.
+Lazy Koppel only wanted an excuse, or, if not, the woman was old and
+useless, and men could not be spared.
+
+“Ah! good grandame,” said Friedel, “his father died with ours.”
+
+“The more honour for him!  The more he is bound to work for us.  Off,
+junker, make no loiterers.”
+
+Grieved and discomfited, Friedel betook himself to his mother and
+brother.
+
+“Foolish lad not to have come to me!” said the young Baron.  “Where is
+he?  I’ll send him at once.”
+
+But Christina interposed an offer to go and take Koppel’s place beside
+his mother, and her skill was so much prized over all the mountain-side,
+that the alternative was gratefully accepted, and she was escorted up the
+steep path by her two boys to the hovel, where she spent the day in
+attendance on the sick woman.
+
+Evening came on, the patient was better, but Koppel did not return, nor
+did the young Barons come to fetch their mother home.  The last sunbeams
+were dying off the mountain-tops, and, beginning to suspect something
+amiss, she at length set off, and half way down met Koppel, who replied
+to her question, “Ah, then, the gracious lady has not heard of our luck.
+Excellent booty, and two prisoners!  The young Baron has been a hero
+indeed, and has won himself a knightly steed.”  And, on her further
+interrogation, he added, that an unusually rich but small company had
+been reported by Jobst the Kohler to be on the way to the ford, where he
+had skilfully prepared a stumbling-block.  The gracious Baroness had
+caused Hatto to jodel all the hay-makers together, and they had fallen on
+the travellers by the straight path down the crag.  “Ach! did not the
+young Baron spring like a young gemsbock?  And in midstream down came
+their pack-horses and their wares!  Some of them took to flight, but,
+pfui, there were enough for my young lord to show his mettle upon.  Such
+a prize the saints have not sent since the old Baron’s time.”
+
+Christina pursued her walk in dismay at this new beginning of freebooting
+in its worst form, overthrowing all her hopes.  The best thing that could
+happen would be the immediate interference of the Swabian League, while
+her sons were too young to be personally held guilty.  Yet this might
+involve ruin and confiscation; and, apart from all consequences, she
+bitterly grieved that the stain of robbery should have fallen on her
+hitherto innocent sons.
+
+Every peasant she met greeted her with praises of their young lord, and,
+when she mounted the hall-steps, she found the floor strewn with bales of
+goods.
+
+“Mother,” cried Ebbo, flying up to her, “have you heard?  I have a horse!
+a spirited bay, a knightly charger, and Friedel is to ride him by turns
+with me.  Where is Friedel?  And, mother, Heinz said I struck as good a
+stroke as any of them, and I have a sword for Friedel now.  Why does he
+not come?  And, motherling, this is for you, a gown of velvet, a real
+black velvet, that will make you fairer than our Lady at the Convent.
+Come to the window and see it, mother dear.”
+
+The boy was so joyously excited that she could hardly withstand his
+delight, but she did not move.
+
+“Don’t you like the velvet?” he continued.  “We always said that, the
+first prize we won, the motherling should wear velvet.  Do but look at
+it.”
+
+“Woe is me, my Ebbo!” she sighed, bending to kiss his brow.
+
+He understood her at once, coloured, and spoke hastily and in defiance.
+“It was in the river, mother, the horses fell; it is our right.”
+
+“Fairly, Ebbo?” she asked in a low voice.
+
+“Nay, mother, if Jobst _did_ hide a branch in midstream, it was no doing
+of mine; and the horses fell.  The Schlangenwaldern don’t even wait to
+let them fall.  We cannot live, if we are to be so nice and dainty.”
+
+“Ah! my son, I thought not to hear you call mercy and honesty mere
+niceness.”
+
+“What do I hear?” exclaimed Frau Kunigunde, entering from the storeroom,
+where she had been disposing of some spices, a much esteemed commodity.
+“Are you chiding and daunting this boy, as you have done with the other?”
+
+“My mother may speak to me!” cried Ebbo, hotly, turning round.
+
+“And quench thy spirit with whining fooleries!  Take the Baron’s bounty,
+woman, and vex him not after his first knightly exploit.”
+
+“Heaven knows, and Ebbo knows,” said the trembling Christina, “that, were
+it a knightly exploit, I were the first to exult.”
+
+“Thou! thou craftsman’s girl! dost presume to call in question the
+knightly deeds of a noble house!  There!” cried the furious Baroness,
+striking her face.  “Now! dare to be insolent again.”  Her hand was
+uplifted for another blow, when it was grasped by Eberhard, and, the next
+moment, he likewise held the other hand, with youthful strength far
+exceeding hers.  She had often struck his mother before, but not in his
+presence, and the greatness of the shock seemed to make him cool and
+absolutely dignified.
+
+“Be still, grandame,” he said.  “No, mother, I am not hurting her,” and
+indeed the surprise seemed to have taken away her rage and volubility,
+and unresistingly she allowed him to seat her in a chair.  Still holding
+her arm, he made his clear boyish voice resound through the hall, saying,
+“Retainers all, know that, as I am your lord and master, so is my
+honoured mother lady of the castle, and she is never to be gainsay’ed,
+let her say or do what she will.”
+
+“You are right, Herr Freiherr,” said Heinz.  “The Frau Christina is our
+gracious and beloved dame.  Long live the Freiherrinn Christina!” And the
+voices of almost all the serfs present mingled in the cry.
+
+“And hear you all,” continued Eberhard, “she shall rule all, and never be
+trampled on more.  Grandame, you understand?”
+
+The old woman seemed confounded, and cowered in her chair without
+speaking.  Christina, almost dismayed by this silence, would have
+suggested to Ebbo to say something kind or consoling; but at that moment
+she was struck with alarm by his renewed inquiry for his brother.
+
+“Friedel!  Was not he with thee?”
+
+“No; I never saw him!”
+
+Ebbo flew up the stairs, and shouted for his brother; then, coming down,
+gave orders for the men to go out on the mountain-side, and search and
+jodel.  He was hurrying with them, but his mother caught his arm.  “O
+Ebbo, how can I let you go?  It is dark, and the crags are so perilous!”
+
+“Mother, I cannot stay!” and the boy flung his arms round her neck, and
+whispered in her ear, “Friedel said it would be a treacherous attack, and
+I called him a craven.  Oh, mother, we never parted thus before!  He went
+up the hillside.  Oh, where is he?”
+
+Infected by the boy’s despairing voice, yet relieved that Friedel at
+least had withstood the temptation, Christina still held Ebbo’s hand, and
+descended the steps with him.  The clear blue sky was fast showing the
+stars, and into the evening stillness echoed the loud wide jodeln, cast
+back from the other side of the ravine.  Ebbo tried to raise his voice,
+but broke down in the shout, and, choked with agitation, said, “Let me
+go, mother.  None know his haunts as I do!”
+
+“Hark!” she said, only grasping him tighter.
+
+Thinner, shriller, clearer came a far-away cry from the heights, and Ebbo
+thrilled from head to foot, then sent up another pealing mountain shout,
+responded to by a jodel so pitched as to be plainly not an echo.
+“Towards the Red Eyrie,” said Hans.
+
+“He will have been to the Ptarmigan’s Pool,” said Ebbo, sending up his
+voice again, in hopes that the answer would sound less distant; but,
+instead of this, its intonations conveyed, to these adepts in mountain
+language, that Friedel stood in need of help.
+
+“Depend upon it,” said the startled Ebbo, “that he has got up amongst
+those rocks where the dead chamois rolled down last summer;” then, as
+Christina uttered a faint cry of terror, Heinz added, “Fear not, lady,
+those are not the jodeln of one who has met with a hurt.  Baron Friedel
+has the sense to be patient rather than risk his bones if he cannot move
+safely in the dark.”
+
+“Up after him!” said Ebbo, emitting a variety of shouts intimating speedy
+aid, and receiving a halloo in reply that reassured even his mother.
+Equipped with a rope and sundry torches of pinewood, Heinz and two of the
+serfs were speedily ready, and Christina implored her son to let her come
+so far as where she should not impede the others.  He gave her his arm,
+and Heinz held his torch so as to guide her up a winding path, not in
+itself very steep, but which she could never have climbed had daylight
+shown her what it overhung.  Guided by the constant exchange of jodeln,
+they reached a height where the wind blew cold and wild, and Ebbo pointed
+to an intensely black shadow overhung by a peak rising like the gable of
+a house into the sky.  “Yonder lies the tarn,” he said.  “Don’t stir.
+This way lies the cliff.  Fried-mund!” exchanging the jodel for the name.
+
+“Here!—this way!  Under the Red Eyrie,” called back the wanderer; and
+steering their course round the rocks above the pool, the rescuers made
+their way towards the base of the peak, which was in fact the summit of
+the mountain, the top of the Eagle’s Ladder, the highest step of which
+they had attained.  The peak towered over them, and beneath, the castle
+lights seemed as if it would be easy to let a stone fall straight down on
+them.
+
+Friedel’s cry seemed to come from under their feet.  “I am here!  I am
+safe; only it grew so dark that I durst not climb up or down.”
+
+The Schneiderlein explained that he would lower down a rope, which, when
+fastened round Friedel’s waist, would enable him to climb safely up; and,
+after a breathless space, the torchlight shone upon the longed-for face,
+and Friedel springing on the path, cried, “The mother!—and here!”—
+
+“Oh, Friedel, where have you been?  What is this in your arms?”
+
+He showed them the innocent face of a little white kid.
+
+“Whence is it, Friedel?”
+
+He pointed to the peak, saying, “I was lying on my back by the tarn, when
+my lady eagle came sailing overhead, so low that I could see this poor
+little thing, and hear it bleat.”
+
+“Thou hast been to the Eyrie—the inaccessible Eyrie!” exclaimed Ebbo, in
+amazement.
+
+“That’s a mistake.  It is not hard after the first” said Friedel.  “I
+only waited to watch the old birds out again.”
+
+“Robbed the eagles!  And the young ones?”
+
+“Well,” said Friedmund, as if half ashamed, “they were twin eaglets, and
+their mother had left them, and I felt as though I could not harm them;
+so I only bore off their provisions, and stuck some feathers in my cap.
+But by that time the sun was down, and soon I could not see my footing;
+and, when I found that I had missed the path, I thought I had best nestle
+in the nook where I was, and wait for day.  I grieved for my mother’s
+fear; but oh, to see her here!”
+
+“Ah, Friedel! didst do it to prove my words false?” interposed Ebbo,
+eagerly.
+
+“What words?”
+
+“Thou knowest.  Make me not speak them again.”
+
+“Oh, those!” said Friedel, only now recalling them.  “No, verily; they
+were but a moment’s anger.  I wanted to save the kid.  I think it is old
+mother Rika’s white kid.  But oh, motherling!  I grieve to have thus
+frightened you.”
+
+Not a single word passed between them upon Ebbo’s exploits.  Whether
+Friedel had seen all from the heights, or whether he intuitively
+perceived that his brother preferred silence, he held his peace, and both
+were solely occupied in assisting their mother down the pass, the
+difficulties of which were far more felt now than in the excitement of
+the ascent; only when they were near home, and the boys were walking in
+the darkness with arms round one another’s necks, Christina heard Friedel
+say low and rather sadly, “I think I shall be a priest, Ebbo.”
+
+To which Ebbo only answered, “Pfui!”
+
+Christina understood that Friedel meant that robbery must be a severance
+between the brothers.  Alas! had the moment come when their paths must
+diverge?  Could Ebbo’s step not be redeemed?
+
+Ursel reported that Dame Kunigunde had scarcely spoken again, but had
+retired, like one stunned, into her bed.  Friedel was half asleep after
+the exertions of the day; but Ebbo did not speak, and both soon betook
+themselves to their little turret chamber within their mother’s.
+
+Christina prayed long that night, her heart full of dread of the
+consequence of this transgression.  Rumours of freebooting castles
+destroyed by the Swabian League had reached her every wake day, and, if
+this outrage were once known, the sufferance that left Adlerstein
+unmolested must be over.  There was hope indeed in the weakness and
+uncertainty of the Government; but present safety would in reality be the
+ruin of Ebbo, since he would be encouraged to persist in the career of
+violence now unhappily begun.  She knew not what to ask, save that her
+sons might be shielded from evil, and might fulfil that promise of her
+dream, the star in heaven, the light on earth.  And for the present!—the
+good God guide her and her sons through the difficult morrow, and turn
+the heart of the unhappy old woman below!
+
+When, exhausted with weeping and watching, she rose from her knees, she
+stole softly into her sons’ turret for a last look at them.  Generally
+they were so much alike in their sleep that even she was at fault between
+them; but that night there was no doubt.  Friedel, pale after the day’s
+hunger and fatigue, slept with relaxed features in the most complete
+calm; but though Ebbo’s eyes were closed, there was no repose in his
+face—his hair was tossed, his colour flushed, his brow contracted, the
+arm flung across his brother had none of the ease of sleep.  She doubted
+whether he were not awake; but, knowing that he would not brook any
+endeavour to force confidence he did not offer, she merely hung over them
+both, murmured a prayer and blessing, and left them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+THE CHOICE IN LIFE
+
+
+“FRIEDEL, wake!”
+
+“Is it day?” said Friedel, slowly wakening, and crossing himself as he
+opened his eyes.  “Surely the sun is not up—?”
+
+“We must be before the sun!” said Ebbo, who was on his feet, beginning to
+dress himself.  “Hush, and come!  Do not wake the mother.  It must be ere
+she or aught else be astir!  Thy prayers—I tell thee this is a work as
+good as prayer.”
+
+Half awake, and entirely bewildered, Friedel dipped his finger in the
+pearl mussel shell of holy water over their bed, and crossed his own brow
+and his brother’s; then, carrying their shoes, they crossed their
+mother’s chamber, and crept down stairs.  Ebbo muttered to his brother,
+“Stand thou still there, and pray the saints to keep her asleep;” and
+then, with bare feet, moved noiselessly behind the wooden partition that
+shut off his grandmother’s box-bedstead from the rest of the hall.  She
+lay asleep with open mouth, snoring loudly, and on her pillow lay the
+bunch of castle keys, that was always carried to her at night.  It was a
+moment of peril when Ebbo touched it; but he had nerved himself to be
+both steady and dexterous, and he secured it without a jingle, and then,
+without entering the hall, descended into a passage lit by a rough
+opening cut in the rock.  Friedel, who began to comprehend, followed him
+close and joyfully, and at the first door he fitted in, and with some
+difficulty turned, a key, and pushed open the door of a vault, where
+morning light, streaming through the grated window, showed two captives,
+who had started to their feet, and now stood regarding the pair in the
+doorway as if they thought their dreams were multiplying the young Baron
+who had led the attack.
+
+“_Signori_—” began the principal of the two; but Ebbo spoke.
+
+“Sir, you have been brought here by a mistake in the absence of my
+mother, the lady of the castle.  If you will follow me, I will restore
+all that is within my reach, and put you on your way.”
+
+The merchant’s knowledge of German was small, but the purport of the
+words was plain, and he gladly left the damp, chilly vault.  Ebbo pointed
+to the bales that strewed the hall.  “Take all that can be carried,” he
+said.  “Here is your sword, and your purse,” he said, for these had been
+given to him in the moment of victory.  “I will bring out your horse and
+lead you to the pass.”
+
+“Give him food,” whispered Friedel; but the merchant was too anxious to
+have any appetite.  Only he faltered in broken German a proposal to pay
+his respects to the Signora Castellana, to whom he owed so much.
+
+“No!  _Dormit in lecto_,” said Ebbo, with a sudden inspiration caught
+from the Latinized sound of some of the Italian words, but colouring
+desperately as he spoke.
+
+The Latin proved most serviceable, and the merchant understood that his
+property was restored, and made all speed to gather it together, and
+transport it to the stable.  One or two of his beasts of burden had been
+lost in the fray, and there were more packages than could well be carried
+by the merchant, his servant, and his horse.  Ebbo gave the aid of the
+old white mare—now very white indeed—and in truth the boys pitied the
+merchant’s fine young bay for being put to base trading uses, and were
+rather shocked to hear that it had been taken in payment for a knight’s
+branched velvet gown, and would be sold again at Ulm.
+
+“What a poor coxcomb of a knight!” said they to one another, as they
+patted the creature’s neck with such fervent admiration that the merchant
+longed to present it to them, when he saw that the old white mare was the
+sole steed they possessed, and watched their tender guidance both of her
+and of the bay up the rocky path so familiar to them.
+
+“But ah, _signorini miei_, I am an _infelice infelicissimo_, ever
+persecuted by _le Fate_.”
+
+“By whom?  A count like Schlangenwald?” asked Ebbo.
+
+“_Das Schicksal_,” whispered Friedel.
+
+“Three long miserable years did I spend as a captive among the Moors,
+having lost all, my ships and all I had, and being forced to row their
+galleys, _gli scomunicati_.”
+
+“Galleys!” exclaimed Ebbo; “there are some pictured in our _World History
+before Carthage_.  Would that I could see one!”
+
+“The _signorino_ would soon have seen his fill, were he between the
+decks, chained to the bench for weeks together, without ceasing to row
+for twenty-four hours together, with a renegade standing over to lash us,
+or to put a morsel into our mouths if we were fainting.”
+
+“The dogs!  Do they thus use Christian men?” cried Friedel.
+
+“_Sì_, _sì—ja wohl_.  There were a good fourscore of us, and among them a
+Tedesco, a good man and true, from whom I learnt _la lingua loro_.”
+
+“Our tongue!—from whom?” asked one twin of the other.
+
+“A Tedesco, a fellow-countryman of _sue eccellenze_.”
+
+“_Deutscher_!” cried both boys, turning in horror, “our Germans so
+treated by the pagan villains?”
+
+“Yea, truly, _signorini miei_.  This fellow-captive of mine was a
+_cavaliere_ in his own land, but he had been betrayed and sold by his
+enemies, and he mourned piteously for _la sposa sua_—his bride, as they
+say here.  A goodly man and a tall, piteously cramped in the narrow deck,
+I grieved to leave him there when the good _confraternità_ at Genoa paid
+my ransom.  Having learnt to speak _il Tedesco_, and being no longer able
+to fit out a vessel, I made my venture beyond the Alps; but, alas! till
+this moment fortune has still been adverse.  My mules died of the toil of
+crossing the mountains; and, when with reduced baggage I came to the
+river beneath there—when my horses fell and my servants fled, and the
+peasants came down with their hayforks—I thought myself in hands no
+better than those of the Moors themselves.”
+
+“It was wrongly done,” said Ebbo, in an honest, open tone, though
+blushing.  “I have indeed a right to what may be stranded on the bank,
+but never more shall foul means be employed for the overthrow.”
+
+The boys had by this time led the traveller through the Gemsbock’s Pass,
+within sight of the convent.  “There,” said Ebbo, “will they give you
+harbourage, food, a guide, and a beast to carry the rest of your goods.
+We are now upon convent land, and none will dare to touch your bales; so
+I will unload old Schimmel.”
+
+“Ah, _signorino_, if I might offer any token of gratitude—”
+
+“Nay,” said Ebbo, with boyish lordliness, “make me not a spoiler.”
+
+“If the _signorini_ should ever come to Genoa,” continued the trader,
+“and would honour Gian Battista dei Battiste with a call, his whole house
+would be at their feet.”
+
+“Thanks; I would that we could see strange lands!” said Ebbo.  “But come,
+Friedel, the sun is high, and I locked them all into the castle to make
+matters safe.”
+
+“May the liberated captive know the name of his deliverers, that he may
+commend it to the saints?” asked the merchant.
+
+“I am Eberhard, Freiherr von Adlerstein, and this is Freiherr Friedmund,
+my brother.  Farewell, sir.”
+
+“Strange,” muttered the merchant, as he watched the two boys turn down
+the pass, “strange how like one barbarous name is to another.  Eberardo!
+That was what we called _il Tedesco_, and, when he once told me his
+family name, it ended in _stino_; but all these foreign names sound
+alike.  Let us speed on, lest these accursed peasants should wake, and be
+beyond the control of the _signorino_.”
+
+“Ah!” sighed Ebbo, as soon as he had hurried out of reach of the
+temptation, “small use in being a baron if one is to be no better
+mounted!”
+
+“Thou art glad to have let that fair creature go free, though,” said
+Friedel.
+
+“Nay, my mother’s eyes would let me have no rest in keeping him.
+Otherwise—Talk not to me of gladness, Friedel!  Thou shouldst know
+better.  How is one to be a knight with nothing to ride but a beast old
+enough to be his grandmother?”
+
+“Knighthood of the heart may be content to go afoot,” said Friedel.  “Oh,
+Ebbo, what a brother thou art!  How happy the mother will be!”
+
+“Pfui, Friedel; what boots heart without spur?  I am sick of being mewed
+up here within these walls of rock!  No sport, not even with falling on a
+traveller.  I am worse off than ever were my forefathers!”
+
+“But how is it?  I cannot understand,” asked Friedel.  “What has changed
+thy mind?”
+
+“Thou, and the mother, and, more than all, the grandame.  Listen,
+Friedel: when thou camest up, in all the whirl of eagerness and glad
+preparation, with thy grave face and murmur that Jobst had put forked
+stakes in the stream, it was past man’s endurance to be baulked of the
+fray.  Thou hast forgotten what I said to thee then, good Friedel?”
+
+“Long since.  No doubt I thrust in vexatiously.”
+
+“Not so,” said Ebbo; “and I saw thou hadst reason, for the stakes were
+most maliciously planted, with long branches hid by the current; but the
+fellows were showing fight, and I could not stay to think then, or I
+should have seemed to fear them!  I can tell you we made them run!  But I
+never meant the grandmother to put yon poor fellow in the dungeon, and
+use him worse than a dog.  I wot that he was my captive, and none of
+hers.  And then came the mother; and oh, Friedel, she looked as if I were
+slaying her when she saw the spoil; and, ere I had made her see right and
+reason, the old lady came swooping down in full malice and spite, and
+actually came to blows.  She struck the motherling—struck her on the
+face, Friedel!”
+
+“I fear me it has so been before,” said Friedel, sadly.
+
+“Never will it be so again,” said Ebbo, standing still.  “I took the old
+hag by the hands, and told her she had ruled long enough!  My father’s
+wife is as good a lady of the castle as my grandfather’s, and I myself am
+lord thereof; and, since my Lady Kunigunde chooses to cross me and beat
+my mother about this capture, why she has seen the last of it, and may
+learn who is master, and who is mistress!”
+
+“Oh, Ebbo!  I would I had seen it!  But was not she outrageous?  Was not
+the mother shrinking and ready to give back all her claims at once?”
+
+“Perhaps she would have been, but just then she found thou wast not with
+me, and I found thou wast not with her, and we thought of nought else.
+But thou must stand by me, Friedel, and help to keep the grandmother in
+her place, and the mother in hers.”
+
+“If the mother _will_ be kept,” said Friedel.  “I fear me she will only
+plead to be left to the grandame’s treatment, as before.”
+
+“Never, Friedel!  I will never see her so used again.  I released this
+man solely to show that she is to rule here.—Yes, I know all about
+freebooting being a deadly sin, and moreover that it will bring the
+League about our ears; and it was a cowardly trick of Jobst to put those
+branches in the stream.  Did I not go over it last night till my brain
+was dizzy?  But still, it is but living and dying like our fathers, and I
+hate tameness or dullness, and it is like a fool to go back from what one
+has once begun.”
+
+“No; it is like a brave man, when one has begun wrong,” said Friedel.
+
+“But then I thought of the grandame triumphing over the gentle mother—and
+I know the mother wept over her beads half the night.  She _shall_ find
+she has had her own way for once this morning.”
+
+Friedel was silent for a few moments, then said, “Let me tell thee what I
+saw yesterday, Ebbo.”
+
+“So,” answered the other brother.
+
+“I liked not to vex my mother by my tidings, so I climbed up to the tarn.
+There is something always healing in that spot, is it not so, Ebbo?  When
+the grandmother has been raving” (hitherto Friedel’s worst grievance) “it
+is like getting up nearer the quiet sky in the stillness there, when the
+sky seems to have come down into the deep blue water, and all is so
+still, so wondrous still and calm.  I wonder if, when we see the great
+Dome Kirk itself, it will give one’s spirit wings, as does the gazing up
+from the Ptarmigan’s Pool.”
+
+“Thou minnesinger, was it the blue sky thou hadst to tell me of?”
+
+“No, brother, it was ere I reached it that I saw this sight.  I had
+scaled the peak where grows the stunted rowan, and I sat down to look
+down on the other side of the gorge.  It was clear where I sat, but the
+ravine was filled with clouds, and upon them—”
+
+“The shape of the blessed Friedmund, thy patron?”
+
+“_Our_ patron,” said Friedel; “I saw him, a giant form in gown and hood,
+traced in grey shadow upon the dazzling white cloud; and oh, Ebbo! he was
+struggling with a thinner, darker, wilder shape bearing a club.  He
+strove to withhold it; his gestures threatened and warned!  I watched
+like one spell-bound, for it was to me as the guardian spirit of our race
+striving for thee with the enemy.”
+
+“How did it end?”
+
+“The cloud darkened, and swallowed them; nor should I have known the
+issue, if suddenly, on the very cloud where the strife had been, there
+had not beamed forth a rainbow—not a common rainbow, Ebbo, but a perfect
+ring, a soft-glancing, many-tinted crown of victory.  Then I knew the
+saint had won, and that thou wouldst win.”
+
+“I!  What, not thyself—his own namesake?”
+
+“I thought, Ebbo, if the fight went very hard—nay, if for a time the
+grandame led thee her way—that belike I might serve thee best by giving
+up all, and praying for thee in the hermit’s cave, or as a monk.”
+
+“Thou!—thou, my other self!  Aid me by burrowing in a hole like a rat!
+What foolery wilt say next?  No, no, Friedel, strike by my side, and I
+will strike with thee; pray by my side, and I will pray with thee; but if
+thou takest none of the strokes, then will I none of the prayers!”
+
+“Ebbo, thou knowest not what thou sayest.”
+
+“No one knows better!  See, Friedel, wouldst thou have me all that the
+old Adlersteinen were, and worse too? then wilt thou leave me and hide
+thine head in some priestly cowl.  Maybe thou thinkest to pray my soul
+into safety at the last moment as a favour to thine own abundant
+sanctity; but I tell thee, Friedel, that’s no manly way to salvation.  If
+thou follow’st that track, I’ll take care to get past the border-line
+within which prayer can help.”
+
+Friedel crossed himself, and uttered an imploring exclamation of horror
+at these wild words.
+
+“Stay,” said Ebbo; “I said not I meant any such thing—so long as thou
+wilt be with me.  My purpose is to be a good man and true, a guard to the
+weak, a defence against the Turk, a good lord to my vassals, and, if it
+may not be otherwise, I will take my oath to the Kaiser, and keep it.  Is
+that enough for thee, Friedel, or wouldst thou see me a monk at once?”
+
+“Oh, Ebbo, this is what we ever planned.  I only dreamed of the other
+when—when thou didst seem to be on the other track.”
+
+“Well, what can I do more than turn back?  I’ll get absolution on Sunday,
+and tell Father Norbert that I will do any penance he pleases; and warn
+Jobst that, if he sets any more traps in the river, I will drown him
+there next!  Only get this priestly fancy away, Friedel, once and for
+ever!”
+
+“Never, never could I think of what would sever us,” cried Friedel,
+“save—when—” he added, hesitating, unwilling to harp on the former
+string.  Ebbo broke in imperiously,
+
+“Friedmund von Adlerstein, give me thy solemn word that I never again
+hear of this freak of turning priest or hermit.  What! art slow to speak?
+Thinkest me too bad for thee?”
+
+“No, Ebbo.  Heaven knows thou art stronger, more resolute than I.  I am
+more likely to be too bad for thee.  But so long as we can be true,
+faithful God-fearing Junkern together, Heaven forbid that we should
+part!”
+
+“It is our bond!” said Ebbo; “nought shall part us.”
+
+“Nought but death,” said Friedmund, solemnly.
+
+“For my part,” said Ebbo, with perfect seriousness, “I do not believe
+that one of us can live or die without the other.  But, hark! there’s an
+outcry at the castle!  They have found out that they are locked in!  Ha!
+ho! hilloa, Hatto, how like you playing prisoner?”
+
+Ebbo would have amused himself with the dismay of his garrison a little
+longer, had not Friedel reminded him that their mother might be suffering
+for their delay, and this suggestion made him march in hastily.  He found
+her standing drooping under the pitiless storm which Frau Kunigunde was
+pouring out at the highest pitch of her cracked, trembling voice, one
+hand uplifted and clenched, the other grasping the back of a chair, while
+her whole frame shook with rage too mighty for her strength.
+
+“Grandame,” said Ebbo, striding up to the scene of action, “cease.
+Remember my words yestereve.”
+
+“She has stolen the keys!  She has tampered with the servants!  She has
+released the prisoner—thy prisoner, Ebbo!  She has cheated us as she did
+with Wildschloss!  False burgherinn!  I trow she wanted another suitor!
+Bane—pest of Adlerstein!”
+
+Friedmund threw a supporting arm round his mother, but Ebbo confronted
+the old lady.  “Grandmother,” he said, “I freed the captive.  I stole the
+keys—I and Friedel!  No one else knew my purpose.  He was my captive, and
+I released him because he was foully taken.  I have chosen my lot in
+life,” he added; and, standing in the middle of the hall, he took off his
+cap, and spoke gravely:—“I will not be a treacherous robber-outlaw, but,
+so help me God, a faithful, loyal, godly nobleman.”
+
+His mother and Friedel breathed an “Amen” with all their hearts; and he
+continued,
+
+“And thou, grandame, peace!  Such reverence shalt thou have as befits my
+father’s mother; but henceforth mine own lady-mother is the mistress of
+this castle, and whoever speaks a rude word to her offends the Freiherr
+von Adlerstein.”
+
+   [Picture: “‘Henceforth mine own lady-mother is the mistress of this
+  castle, and whoever speaks a rude word to her offends the Freiherr von
+                          Adlerstein’”—Page 126]
+
+That last day’s work had made a great step in Ebbo’s life, and there he
+stood, grave and firm, ready for the assault; for, in effect, he and all
+besides expected that the old lady would fly at him or at his mother like
+a wild cat, as she would assuredly have done in a like case a year
+earlier; but she took them all by surprise by collapsing into her chair
+and sobbing piteously.  Ebbo, much distressed, tried to make her
+understand that she was to have all care and honour; but she muttered
+something about ingratitude, and continued to exhaust herself with
+weeping, spurning away all who approached her; and thenceforth she lived
+in a gloomy, sullen acquiescence in her deposition.
+
+Christina inclined to the opinion that she must have had some slight
+stroke in the night, for she was never the same woman again; her vigour
+had passed away, and she would sit spinning, or rocking herself in her
+chair, scarcely alive to what passed, or scolding and fretting like a
+shadow of her old violence.  Nothing pleased her but the attentions of
+her grandsons, and happily she soon ceased to know them apart, and gave
+Ebbo credit for all that was done for her by Friedel, whose separate
+existence she seemed to have forgotten.
+
+As long as her old spirit remained she would not suffer the approach of
+her daughter-in-law, and Christina could only make suggestions for her
+comfort to be acted on by Ursel; and though the reins of government fast
+dropped from the aged hands, they were but gradually and cautiously
+assumed by the younger Baroness.
+
+Only Elsie remained of the rude, demoralized girls whom she had found in
+the castle, and their successors, though dull and uncouth, were meek and
+manageable; the men of the castle had all, except Mätz, been always
+devoted to the Frau Christina; and Mätz, to her great relief, ran away so
+soon as he found that decency and honesty were to be the rule.  Old
+Hatto, humpbacked Hans, and Heinz the Schneiderlein, were the whole male
+establishment, and had at least the merit of attachment to herself and
+her sons; and in time there was a shade of greater civilization about the
+castle, though impeded both by dire poverty and the doggedness of the old
+retainers.  At least the court was cleared of the swine, and, within
+doors, the table was spread with dainty linen out of the parcels from
+Ulm, and the meals served with orderliness that annoyed the boys at
+first, but soon became a subject of pride and pleasure.
+
+Frau Kunigunde lingered long, with increasing infirmities.  After the
+winter day, when, running down at a sudden noise, Friedel picked her up
+from the hearthstone, scorched, bruised, almost senseless, she accepted
+Christina’s care with nothing worse than a snarl, and gradually seemed to
+forget the identity of her nurse with the interloping burgher girl.
+Thanks or courtesy had been no part of her nature, least of all towards
+her own sex, and she did little but grumble, fret, and revile her
+attendant; but she soon depended so much on Christina’s care, that it was
+hardly possible to leave her.  At her best and strongest, her talk was
+maundering abuse of her son’s low-born wife; but at times her wanderings
+showed black gulfs of iniquity and coarseness of soul that would make the
+gentle listener tremble, and be thankful that her sons were out of
+hearing.  And thus did Christina von Adlerstein requite fifteen years of
+persecution.
+
+The old lady’s first failure had been in the summer of 1488; it was the
+Advent season of 1489, when the snow was at the deepest, and the frost at
+the hardest, that the two hardy mountaineer grandsons fetched over the
+pass Father Norbert, and a still sturdier, stronger monk, to the dying
+woman.
+
+“Are we in time, mother?” asked Ebbo, from the door of the upper chamber,
+where the Adlersteins began and ended life, shaking the snow from his
+mufflings.  Ruddy with exertion in the sharp wind, what a contrast he was
+to all within the room!
+
+“Who is that?” said a thin, feeble voice.
+
+“It is Ebbo.  It is the Baron,” said Christina.  “Come in, Ebbo.  She is
+somewhat revived.”
+
+“Will she be able to speak to the priest?” asked Ebbo.
+
+“Priest!” feebly screamed the old woman.  “No priest for me!  My lord
+died unshriven, unassoilzied.  Where he is, there will I be.  Let a
+priest approach me at his peril!”
+
+Stony insensibility ensued; nor did she speak again, though life lasted
+many hours longer.  The priests did their office; for, impenitent as the
+life and frantic as the words had been, the opinions of the time deemed
+that their rites might yet give the departing soul a chance, though the
+body was unconscious.
+
+When all was over, snow was again falling, shifting and drifting, so that
+it was impossible to leave the castle, and the two monks were kept there
+for a full fortnight, during which Christmas solemnities were observed in
+the chapel, for the first time since the days of Friedmund the Good.  The
+corpse of Kunigunde, preserved—we must say the word—salted, was placed in
+a coffin, and laid in that chapel to await the melting of the snows, when
+the vault at the Hermitage could be opened.  And this could not be
+effected till Easter had nearly come round again, and it was within a
+week of their sixteenth birthday that the two young Barons stood together
+at the coffin’s head, serious indeed, but more with the thought of life
+than of death.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+BACK TO THE DOVECOTE
+
+
+FOR the first time in her residence at Adlerstein, now full half her
+life, the Freiherrinn Christina ventured to send a messenger to Ulm,
+namely, a lay brother of the convent of St. Ruprecht, who undertook to
+convey to Master Gottfried Sorel her letter, informing him of the death
+of her mother-in-law, and requesting him to send the same tidings to the
+Freiherr von Adlerstein Wildschloss, the kinsman and godfather of her
+sons.
+
+She was used to wait fifty-two weeks for answers to her letters, and was
+amazed when, at the end of three, two stout serving-men were guided by
+Jobst up the pass; but her heart warmed to their flat caps and round
+jerkins, they looked so like home.  They bore a letter of invitation to
+her and her sons to come at once to her uncle’s house.  The King of the
+Romans, and perhaps the Emperor, were to come to the city early in the
+summer, and there could be no better opportunity of presenting the young
+Barons to their sovereign.  Sir Kasimir of Adlerstein Wildschloss would
+meet them there for the purpose, and would obtain their admission to the
+League, in which all Swabian nobles had bound themselves to put down
+robbery and oppression, and outside which there was nothing but outlawry
+and danger.
+
+“So must it be?” said Ebbo, between his teeth, as he leant moodily
+against the wall, while his mother was gone to attend to the fare to be
+set before the messengers.
+
+“What! art not glad to take wing at last?” exclaimed Friedel, cut short
+in an exclamation of delight.
+
+“Take wing, forsooth!  To be guest of a greasy burgher, and call cousin
+with him!  Fear not, Friedel; I’ll not vex the motherling.  Heaven knows
+she has had pain, grief, and subjection enough in her lifetime, and I
+would not hinder her visit to her home; but I would she could go alone,
+nor make us show our poverty to the swollen city folk, and listen to
+their endearments.  I charge thee, Friedel, do as I do; be not too
+familiar with them.  Could we but sprain an ankle over the crag—”
+
+“Nay, she would stay to nurse us,” said Friedel, laughing; “besides, thou
+art needed for the matter of homage.”
+
+“Look, Friedel,” said Ebbo, sinking his voice, “I shall not lightly yield
+my freedom to king or Kaiser.  Maybe, there is no help for it; but it
+irks me to think that I should be the last Lord of Adlerstein to whom the
+title of Freiherr is not a mockery.  Why dost bend thy brow, brother?
+What art thinking of?”
+
+“Only a saying in my mother’s book, that well-ordered service is true
+freedom,” said Friedel.  “And methinks there will be freedom in rushing
+at last into the great far-off!”—the boy’s eye expanded and glistened
+with eagerness.  “Here are we prisoners—to ourselves, if you like—but
+prisoners still, pent up in the rocks, seeing no one, hearing scarce an
+echo from the knightly or the poet world, nor from all the wonders that
+pass.  And the world has a history going on still, like the _Chronicle_.
+Oh, Ebbo, think of being in the midst of life, with lance and sword, and
+seeing the Kaiser—the Kaiser of the holy Roman Empire!”
+
+“With lance and sword, well and good; but would it were not at the cost
+of liberty!”
+
+However Ebbo forbore to damp his mother’s joy, save by the one
+warning—“Understand, mother, that I will not be pledged to anything.  I
+will not bend to the yoke ere I have seen and judged for myself.”
+
+The manly sound of the words gave a sweet sense of exultation to the
+mother, even while she dreaded the proud spirit, and whispered, “God
+direct thee, my son.”
+
+Certainly Ebbo, hitherto the most impetuous and least thoughtful of the
+two lads, had a gravity and seriousness about him, that, but for his
+naturally sweet temper, would have seemed sullen.  His aspirations for
+adventure had hitherto been more vehement than Friedel’s; but, when the
+time seemed at hand, his regrets at what he might have to yield
+overpowered his hopes of the future.  The fierce haughtiness of the old
+Adlersteins could not brook the descent from the crag, even while the
+keen, clear burgher wit that Ebbo inherited from the other side of the
+house taught him that the position was untenable, and that his isolated
+glory was but a poor mean thing after all.  And the struggle made him sad
+and moody.
+
+Friedel, less proud, and with nothing to yield, was open to blithe
+anticipations of what his fancy pictured as the home of all the beauty,
+sacred or romantic, that he had glimpsed at through his mother.
+Religion, poetry, learning, art, refinement, had all come to him through
+her; and though he had a soul that dreamt and soared in the lonely
+grandeur of the mountain heights, it craved further aliment for its
+yearnings for completeness and perfection.  Long ago had Friedel come to
+the verge of such attainments as he could work out of his present
+materials, and keen had been his ardour for the means of progress, though
+only the mountain tarn had ever been witness to the full outpouring of
+the longings with which he gazed upon the dim, distant city like a land
+of enchantment.
+
+The journey was to be at once, so as to profit by the escort of Master
+Sorel’s men.  Means of transport were scanty, but Ebbo did not choose
+that the messengers should report the need, and bring back a bevy of
+animals at the burgher’s expense; so the mother was mounted on the old
+white mare, and her sons and Heinz trusted to their feet.  By setting out
+early on a May morning, the journey could be performed ere night, and the
+twilight would find them in the domains of the free city, where their
+small numbers would be of no importance.  As to their appearance, the
+mother wore a black woollen gown and mantle, and a black silk hood tied
+under her chin, and sitting loosely round the stiff frame of her white
+cap—a nun-like garb, save for the soft brown hair, parted over her brow,
+and more visible than she sometimes thought correct, but her sons would
+not let her wear it out of sight.
+
+The brothers had piece by piece surveyed the solitary suit of armour
+remaining in the castle; but, though it might serve for defence, it could
+not be made fit for display, and they must needs be contented with blue
+cloth, spun, woven, dyed, fashioned, and sewn at home, chiefly by their
+mother, and by her embroidered on the breast with the white eagle of
+Adlerstein.  Short blue cloaks and caps of the same, with an eagle plume
+in each, and leggings neatly fashioned of deerskin, completed their
+equipments.  Ebbo wore his father’s sword, Friedel had merely a dagger
+and crossbow.  There was not a gold chain, not a brooch, not an approach
+to an ornament among the three, except the medal that had always
+distinguished Ebbo, and the coral rosary at Christina’s girdle.  Her own
+trinkets had gone in masses for the souls of her father and husband; and
+though a few costly jewels had been found in Frau Kunigunde’s hoards, the
+mode of their acquisition was so doubtful, that it had seemed fittest to
+bestow them in alms and masses for the good of her soul.
+
+“What ornament, what glory could any one desire better than two such
+sons?” thought Christina, as for the first time for eighteen years she
+crossed the wild ravine where her father had led her, a trembling little
+captive, longing for wings like a dove’s to flutter home again.  Who
+would then have predicted that she should descend after so long and weary
+a time, and with a gallant boy on either side of her, eager to aid her
+every step, and reassure her at each giddy pass, all joy and hope before
+her and them?  Yet she was not without some dread and misgiving, as she
+watched her elder son, always attentive to her, but unwontedly silent,
+with a stern gravity on his young brow, a proud sadness on his lip.  And
+when he had come to the Debateable Ford, and was about to pass the
+boundaries of his own lands, he turned and gazed back on the castle and
+mountain with a silent but passionate ardour, as though he felt himself
+doing them a wrong by perilling their independence.
+
+The sun had lately set, and the moon was silvering the Danube, when the
+travellers came full in view of the imperial free city, girt in with
+mighty walls and towers—the vine-clad hill dominated by its crowning
+church; the irregular outlines of the unfinished spire of the cathedral
+traced in mysterious dark lacework against the pearly sky; the lofty
+steeple-like gate-tower majestically guarding the bridge.  Christina
+clasped her hands in thankfulness, as at the familiar face of a friend;
+Friedel glowed like a minstrel introduced to his fair dame, long wooed at
+a distance; Ebbo could not but exclaim, “Yea, truly, a great city is a
+solemn and a glorious sight!”
+
+The gates were closed, and the serving-men had to parley at the barbican
+ere the heavy door was opened to admit the party to the bridge, between
+deep battlemented stone walls, with here and there loopholes, showing the
+shimmering of the river beneath.  The slow, tired tread of the old mare
+sounded hollow; the river rushed below with the full swell of evening
+loudness; a deep-toned convent-bell tolled gravely through the stillness,
+while, between its reverberations, clear, distinct notes of joyous music
+were borne on the summer wind, and a nightingale sung in one of the
+gardens that bordered the banks.
+
+“Mother, it is all that I dreamt!” breathlessly murmured Friedel, as they
+halted under the dark arch of the great gateway tower.
+
+Not however in Friedel’s dreams had been the hearty voice that proceeded
+from the lighted guard-room in the thickness of the gateway.
+“Freiherrinn von Adlerstein!  Is it she?  Then must I greet my old
+playmate!”  And the captain of the watch appeared among upraised lanterns
+and torches that showed a broad, smooth, plump face beneath a plain steel
+helmet.
+
+“Welcome, gracious lady, welcome to your old city.  What! do you not
+remember Lippus Grundt, your poor Valentine?”
+
+“Master Philip Grundt!” exclaimed Christina, amazed at the breadth of
+visage and person; “and how fares it with my good Regina?”
+
+“Excellent well, good lady.  She manages her trade and house as well as
+the good man Bartoläus Fleischer himself.  Blithe will she be to show you
+her goodly ten, as I shall my eight,” he continued, walking by her side;
+“and Barbara—you remember Barbara Schmidt, lady—”
+
+“My dear Barbara?—That do I indeed!  Is she your wife?”
+
+“Ay, truly, lady,” he answered, in an odd sort of apologetic tone; “you
+see, you returned not, and the housefathers, they would have it so—and
+Barbara is a good housewife.”
+
+“Truly do I rejoice!” said Christina, wishing she could convey to him how
+welcome he had been to marry any one he liked, as far as she was
+concerned—he, in whom her fears of mincing goldsmiths had always taken
+form—then signing with her hand, “I have my sons likewise to show her.”
+
+“Ah, on foot!” muttered Grundt, as a not well-conceived apology for not
+having saluted the young gentlemen.  “I greet you well, sirs,” with a
+bow, most haughtily returned by Ebbo, who was heartily wishing himself on
+his mountain.  “Two lusty, well-grown Junkern indeed, to whom my Martin
+will be proud to show the humours of Ulm.  A fair good night, lady!  You
+will find the old folks right cheery.”
+
+Well did Christina know the turn down the street, darkened by the
+overhanging brows of the tall houses, but each lower window laughing with
+the glow of light within that threw out the heavy mullions and the
+circles and diamonds of the latticework, and here and there the brilliant
+tints of stained glass sparkled like jewels in the upper panes, pictured
+with Scripture scene, patron saint, or trade emblem.  The familiar porch
+was reached, the familiar knock resounded on the iron-studded door.
+Friedel lifted his mother from her horse, and felt that she was quivering
+from head to foot, and at the same moment the light streamed from the
+open door on the white horse, and the two young faces, one eager, the
+other with knit brows and uneasy eyes.  A kind of echo pervaded the
+house, “She is come! she is come!” and as one in a dream Christina
+entered, crossed the well-known hall, looked up to her uncle and aunt on
+the stairs, perceived little change on their countenances, and sank upon
+her knees, with bowed head and clasped hands.
+
+“My child! my dear child!” exclaimed her uncle, raising her with one
+hand, and crossing her brow in benediction with the other.  “Art thou
+indeed returned?” and he embraced her tenderly.
+
+“Welcome, fair niece!” said Hausfrau Johanna, more formally.  “I am right
+glad to greet you here.”
+
+“Dear, dear mother!” cried Christina, courting her fond embrace by
+gestures of the most eager affection, “how have I longed for this moment!
+and, above all, to show you my boys!  Herr Uncle, let me present my
+sons—my Eberhard, my Friedmund.  O Housemother, are not my twins
+well-grown lads?”  And she stood with a hand on each, proud that their
+heads were so far above her own, and looking still so slight and girlish
+in figure that she might better have been their sister than their mother.
+The cloud that the sudden light had revealed on Ebbo’s brow had cleared
+away, and he made an inclination neither awkward nor ungracious in its
+free mountain dignity and grace, but not devoid of mountain rusticity and
+shy pride, and far less cordial than was Friedel’s manner.  Both were
+infinitely relieved to detect nothing of the greasy burgher, and were
+greatly struck with the fine venerable head before them; indeed, Friedel
+would, like his mother, have knelt to ask a blessing, had he not been
+under command not to outrun his brother’s advances towards her kindred.
+
+“Welcome, fair Junkern!” said Master Gottfried; “welcome both for your
+mother’s sake and your own!  These thy sons, my little one?” he added,
+smiling.  “Art sure I neither dream nor see double!  Come to the gallery,
+and let me see thee better.”
+
+And, ceremoniously giving his hand, he proceeded to lead his niece up the
+stairs, while Ebbo, labouring under ignorance of city forms and
+uncertainty of what befitted his dignity, presented his hand to his aunt
+with an air that half-amused, half-offended the shrewd dame.
+
+“All is as if I had left you but yesterday!” exclaimed Christina.
+“Uncle, have you pardoned me?  You bade me return when my work was done.”
+
+“I should have known better, child.  Such return is not to be sought on
+this side the grave.  Thy work has been more than I then thought of.”
+
+“Ah! and now will you deem it begun—not done!” softly said Christina,
+though with too much heartfelt exultation greatly to doubt that all the
+world must be satisfied with two such boys, if only Ebbo would be his
+true self.
+
+The luxury of the house, the wainscoted and tapestried walls, the
+polished furniture, the lamps and candles, the damask linen, the rich
+array of silver, pewter, and brightly-coloured glass, were a great
+contrast to the bare walls and scant necessaries of Schloss Adlerstein;
+but Ebbo was resolved not to expose himself by admiration, and did his
+best to stifle Friedel’s exclamations of surprise and delight.  Were not
+these citizens to suppose that everything was tenfold more costly at the
+baronial castle?  And truly the boy deserved credit for the consideration
+for his mother, which made him merely reserved, while he felt like a wild
+eagle in a poultry-yard.  It was no small proof of his affection to
+forbear more interference with his mother’s happiness than was the
+inevitable effect of that intuition which made her aware that he was
+chafing and ill at ease.  For his sake, she allowed herself to be placed
+in the seat of honour, though she longed, as of old, to nestle at her
+uncle’s feet, and be again his child; but, even while she felt each
+acceptance of a token of respect as almost an injury to them, every look
+and tone was showing how much the same Christina she had returned.
+
+In truth, though her life had been mournful and oppressed, it had not
+been such as to age her early.  It had been all submission, without wear
+and tear of mind, and too simple in its trials for care and moiling; so
+the fresh, lily-like sweetness of her maiden bloom was almost intact,
+and, much as she had undergone, her once frail health had been so braced
+by the mountain breezes, that, though delicacy remained, sickliness was
+gone from her appearance.  There was still the exquisite purity and
+tender modesty of expression, but with greater sweetness in the pensive
+brown eyes.
+
+“Ah, little one!” said her uncle, after duly contemplating her; “the
+change is all for the better!  Thou art grown a wondrously fair dame.
+There will scarce be a lovelier in the Kaiserly train.”
+
+Ebbo almost pardoned his great-uncle for being his great-uncle.
+
+“When she is arrayed as becomes the Frau Freiherrinn,” said the housewife
+aunt, looking with concern at the coarse texture of her black sleeve.  “I
+long to see our own lady ruffle it in her new gear.  I am glad that the
+lofty pointed cap has passed out; the coif becomes my child far better,
+and I see our tastes still accord as to fashion.”
+
+“Fashion scarce came above the Debateable Ford,” said Christina, smiling.
+“I fear my boys look as if they came out of the _Weltgeschichte_, for I
+could only shape their garments after my remembrance of the gallants of
+eighteen years ago.”
+
+“Their garments are your own shaping!” exclaimed the aunt, now in an
+accent of real, not conventional respect.
+
+“Spinning and weaving, shaping and sewing,” said Friedel, coming near to
+let the housewife examine the texture.
+
+“Close woven, even threaded, smooth tinted!  Ah, Stina, thou didst learn
+something!  Thou wert not quite spoilt by the housefather’s books and
+carvings.”
+
+“I cannot tell whose teachings have served me best, or been the most
+precious to me,” said Christina, with clasped hands, looking from one to
+another with earnest love.
+
+“Thou art a good child.  Ah! little one, forgive me; you look so like our
+child that I cannot bear in mind that you are the Frau Freiherrinn.”
+
+“Nay, I should deem myself in disgrace with you, did you keep me at a
+distance, and not _thou_ me, as your little Stina,” she fondly answered,
+half regretting her fond eager movement, as Ebbo seemed to shrink
+together with a gesture perceived by her uncle.
+
+“It is my young lord there who would not forgive the freedom,” he said,
+good-humouredly, though gravely.
+
+“Not so,” Ebbo forced himself to say; “not so, if it makes my mother
+happy.”
+
+He held up his head rather as if he thought it a fool’s paradise, but
+Master Gottfried answered: “The noble Freiherr is, from all I have heard,
+too good a son to grudge his mother’s duteous love even to burgher
+kindred.”
+
+There was something in the old man’s frank, dignified tone of grave
+reproof that at once impressed Ebbo with a sense of the true superiority
+of that wise and venerable old age to his own petulant baronial
+self-assertion.  He had both head and heart to feel the burgher’s
+victory, and with a deep blush, though not without dignity, he answered,
+“Truly, sir, my mother has ever taught us to look up to you as her
+kindest and best—”
+
+He was going to say “friend,” but a look into the grand benignity of the
+countenance completed the conquest, and he turned it into “father.”
+Friedel at the same instant bent his knee, exclaiming, “It is true what
+Ebbo says!  We have both longed for this day.  Bless us, honoured uncle,
+as you have blessed my mother.”
+
+For in truth there was in the soul of the boy, who had never had any but
+women to look up to, a strange yearning towards reverence, which was
+called into action with inexpressible force by the very aspect and tone
+of such a sage elder and counsellor as Master Gottfried Sorel, and he
+took advantage of the first opening permitted by his brother.  And the
+sympathy always so strong between the two quickened the like feeling in
+Ebbo, so that the same movement drew him on his knee beside Friedel in
+oblivion or renunciation of all lordly pride towards a kinsman such as he
+had here encountered.
+
+“Truly and heartily, my fair youths,” said Master Gottfried, with the
+same kind dignity, “do I pray the good God to bless you, and render you
+faithful and loving sons, not only to your mother, but to your
+fatherland.”
+
+He was unable to distinguish between the two exactly similar forms that
+knelt before him, yet there was something in the quivering of Friedel’s
+head, which made him press it with a shade more of tenderness than the
+other.  And in truth tears were welling into the eyes veiled by the
+fingers that Friedel clasped over his face, for such a blessing was
+strange and sweet to him.
+
+Their mother was ready to weep for joy.  There was now no drawback to her
+bliss, since her son and her uncle had accepted one another; and she
+repaired to her own beloved old chamber a happier being than she had been
+since she had left its wainscoted walls.
+
+Nay, as she gazed out at the familiar outlines of roof and tower, and
+felt herself truly at home, then knelt by the little undisturbed altar of
+her devotions, with the cross above and her own patron saint below in
+carved wood, and the flowers which the good aunt had ever kept as a
+freshly renewed offering, she felt that she was happier, more fully
+thankful and blissful than even in the girlish calm of her untroubled
+life.  Her prayer that she might come again in peace had been more than
+fulfilled; nay, when she had seen her boys kneel meekly to receive her
+uncle’s blessing, it was in some sort to her as if the work was done, as
+if the millstone had been borne up for her, and had borne her and her
+dear ones with it.
+
+But there was much to come.  She knew full well that, even though her
+sons’ first step had been in the right direction, it was in a path beset
+with difficulties; and how would her proud Ebbo meet them?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+THE EAGLETS IN THE CITY
+
+
+AFTER having once accepted Master Gottfried, Ebbo froze towards him and
+Dame Johanna no more, save that a naturally imperious temper now and then
+led to fitful stiffnesses and momentary haughtiness, which were easily
+excused in one so new to the world and afraid of compromising his rank.
+In general he could afford to enjoy himself with a zest as hearty as that
+of the simpler-minded Friedel.
+
+They were early afoot, but not before the heads of the household were
+coming forth for the morning devotions at the cathedral; and the streets
+were stirring into activity, and becoming so peopled that the boys
+supposed that it was a great fair day.  They had never seen so many
+people together even at the Friedmund Wake, and it was several days
+before they ceased to exclaim at every passenger as a new curiosity.
+
+The Dome Kirk awed and hushed them.  They had looked to it so long that
+perhaps no sublunary thing could have realized their expectations, and
+Friedel avowed that he did not know what he thought of it.  It was not
+such as he had dreamt, and, like a German as he was, he added that he
+could not think, he could only feel, that there was something ineffable
+in it; yet he was almost disappointed to find his visions unfulfilled,
+and the hues of the painted glass less pure and translucent than those of
+the ice crystals on the mountains.  However after his eye had become
+trained, the deep influence of its dim solemn majesty, and of the echoes
+of its organ tones, and chants of high praise or earnest prayer, began to
+enchain his spirit; and, if ever he were missing, he was sure to be found
+among the mysteries of the cathedral aisles, generally with Ebbo, who
+felt the spell of the same grave fascination, since whatever was true of
+the one brother was generally true of the other.  They were essentially
+alike, though some phases of character and taste were more developed in
+the one or the other.
+
+Master Gottfried was much edified by their perfect knowledge of the names
+and numbers of his books.  They instantly, almost resentfully, missed the
+Cicero’s _Offices_ that he had parted with, and joyfully hailed his new
+acquisitions, often sitting with heads together over the same book,
+reading like active-minded youths who were used to out-of-door life and
+exercise in superabundant measure, and to study as a valued recreation,
+with only food enough for the intellect to awaken instead of satisfying
+it.
+
+They were delighted to obtain instruction from a travelling student, then
+attending the schools of Ulm—a meek, timid lad who, for love of learning
+and desire of the priesthood, had endured frightful tyranny from the
+Bacchanten or elder scholars, and, having at length attained that rank,
+had so little heart to retaliate on the juniors that his contemporaries
+despised him, and led him a cruel life until he obtained food and shelter
+from Master Gottfried at the pleasant cost of lessons to the young
+Barons.  Poor Bastien! this land of quiet, civility, and books was a
+foretaste of Paradise to him after the hard living, barbarity, and coarse
+vices of his comrades, of whom he now and then disclosed traits that made
+his present pupils long to give battle to the big shaggy youths who used
+to send out the lesser lads to beg and steal for them, and cruelly
+maltreated such as failed in the quest.
+
+Lessons in music and singing were gladly accepted by both lads, and from
+their uncle’s carving they could not keep their hands.  Ebbo had begun by
+enjoining Friedel to remember that the work that had been sport in the
+mountains would be basely mechanical in the city, and Friedel as usual
+yielded his private tastes; but on the second day Ebbo himself was
+discovered in the workshop, watching the magic touch of the deft workman,
+and he was soon so enticed by the perfect appliances as to take tool in
+hand and prove himself not unadroit in the craft.  Friedel however
+excelled in delicacy of touch and grace and originality of conception,
+and produced such workmanship that Master Gottfried could not help
+stroking his hair and telling him it was a pity he was not born to belong
+to the guild.
+
+“I cannot spare him, sir,” cried Ebbo; “priest, scholar, minstrel,
+artist—all want him.”
+
+“What, Hans of all streets, Ebbo?” interrupted Friedel.
+
+“And guildmaster of none,” said Ebbo, “save as a warrior; the rest only
+enough for a gentleman!  For what I am thou must be!”
+
+But Ebbo did not find fault with the skill Friedel was bestowing on his
+work—a carving in wood of a dove brooding over two young eagles—the
+device that both were resolved to assume.  When their mother asked what
+their lady-loves would say to this, Ebbo looked up, and with the fullest
+conviction in his lustrous eyes declared that no love should ever rival
+his motherling in his heart.  For truly her tender sweetness had given
+her sons’ affection a touch of romance, for which Master Gottfried liked
+them the better, though his wife thought their familiarity with her
+hardly accordant with the patriarchal discipline of the citizens.
+
+The youths held aloof from these burghers, for Master Gottfried wisely
+desired to give them time to be tamed before running risk of offence,
+either to, or by, their wild shy pride; and their mother contrived to
+time her meetings with her old companions when her sons were otherwise
+occupied.  Master Gottfried made it known that the marriage portion he
+had designed for his niece had been intrusted to a merchant trading in
+peltry to Muscovy, and the sum thus realized was larger than any bride
+had yet brought to Adlerstein.  Master Gottfried would have liked to
+continue the same profitable speculations with it; but this would have
+been beyond the young Baron’s endurance, and his eyes sparkled when his
+mother spoke of repairing the castle, refitting the chapel, having a
+resident chaplain, cultivating more land, increasing the scanty stock of
+cattle, and attempting the improvements hitherto prevented by lack of
+means.  He fervently declared that the motherling was more than equal to
+the wise spinning Queen Bertha of legend and lay; and the first pleasant
+sense of wealth came in the acquisition of horses, weapons, and
+braveries.  In his original mood, Ebbo would rather have stood before the
+Diet in his home-spun blue than have figured in cloth of gold at a
+burgher’s expense; but he had learned to love his uncle, he regarded the
+marriage portion as family property, and moreover he sorely longed to
+feel himself and his brother well mounted, and scarcely less to see his
+mother in a velvet gown.
+
+Here was his chief point of sympathy with the housemother, who, herself
+precluded from wearing miniver, velvet, or pearls, longed to deck her
+niece therewith, in time to receive Sir Kasimir of Adlerstein
+Wildschloss, as he had promised to meet his godsons at Ulm.  The knight’s
+marriage had lasted only a few years, and had left him no surviving
+children except one little daughter, whom he had placed in a nunnery at
+Ulm, under the care of her mother’s sister.  His lands lay higher up the
+Danube, and he was expected at Ulm shortly before the Emperor’s arrival.
+He had been chiefly in Flanders with the King of the Romans, and had only
+returned to Germany when the Netherlanders had refused the regency of
+Maximilian, and driven him out of their country, depriving him of the
+custody of his children.
+
+Pfingsttag, or Pentecost-day, was the occasion of Christina’s first full
+toilet, and never was bride more solicitously or exultingly arrayed than
+she, while one boy held the mirror and the other criticized and admired
+as the aunt adjusted the pearl-bordered coif, and long white veil
+floating over the long-desired black velvet dress.  How the two lads
+admired and gazed, caring far less for their own new and noble attire!
+Friedel was indeed somewhat concerned that the sword by his side was so
+much handsomer than that which Ebbo wore, and which, for all its dinted
+scabbard and battered hilt, he was resolved never to discard.
+
+It was a festival of brilliant joy.  Wreaths of flowers hung from the
+windows; rich tapestries decked the Dome Kirk, and the relics were
+displayed in shrines of wonderful costliness of material and beauty of
+workmanship; little birds, with thin cakes fastened to their feet, were
+let loose to fly about the church, in strange allusion to the event of
+the day; the clergy wore their most gorgeous robes; and the exulting
+music of the mass echoed from the vaults of the long-drawn aisles, and
+brought a rapt look of deep calm ecstasy over Friedel’s sensitive
+features.  The beggars evidently considered a festival as a harvest-day,
+and crowded round the doors of the cathedral.  As the Lady of Adlerstein
+came out leaning on Ebbo’s arm, with Friedel on her other side, they
+evidently attracted the notice of a woman whose thin brown face looked
+the darker for the striped red and yellow silk kerchief that bound the
+dark locks round her brow, as, holding out a beringed hand, she fastened
+her glittering jet black eyes on them, and exclaimed, “Alms! if the fair
+dame and knightly Junkern would hear what fate has in store for them.”
+
+“We meddle not with the future, I thank thee,” said Christina, seeing
+that her sons, to whom gipsies were an amazing novelty, were in extreme
+surprise at the fortune-telling proposal.
+
+“Yet could I tell much, lady,” said the woman, still standing in the way.
+“What would some here present give to know that the locks that were
+shrouded by the widow’s veil ere ever they wore the matron’s coif shall
+yet return to the coif once more?”
+
+Ebbo gave a sudden start of dismay and passion; his mother held him fast.
+“Push on, Ebbo, mine; heed her not; she is a mere Bohemian.”
+
+“But how knew she your history, mother?” asked Friedel, eagerly.
+
+“That might be easily learnt at our Wake,” began Christina; but her steps
+were checked by a call from Master Gottfried just behind.  “Frau
+Freiherrinn, Junkern, not so fast.  Here is your noble kinsman.”
+
+A tall, fine-looking person, in the long rich robe worn on peaceful
+occasions, stood forth, doffing his eagle-plumed bonnet, and, as the lady
+turned and curtsied low, he put his knee to the ground and kissed her
+hand, saying, “Well met, noble dame; I felt certain that I knew you when
+I beheld you in the Dome.”
+
+“He was gazing at her all the time,” whispered Ebbo to his brother; while
+their mother, blushing, replied, “You do me too much honour, Herr
+Freiherr.”
+
+“Once seen, never to be forgotten,” was the courteous answer: “and truly,
+but for the stately height of these my godsons I would not believe how
+long since our meeting was.”
+
+Thereupon, in true German fashion, Sir Kasimir embraced each youth in the
+open street, and then, removing his long, embroidered Spanish glove, he
+offered his hand, or rather the tips of his fingers, to lead the Frau
+Christina home.
+
+Master Sorel had invited him to become his guest at a very elaborate
+ornamental festival meal in honour of the great holiday, at which were to
+be present several wealthy citizens with their wives and families, old
+connections of the Sorel family.  Ebbo had resolved upon treating them
+with courteous reserve and distance; but he was surprised to find his
+cousin of Wildschloss comporting himself among the burgomasters and their
+dames as freely as though they had been his equals, and to see that they
+took such demeanour as perfectly natural.  Quick to perceive, the boy
+gathered that the gulf between noble and burgher was so great that no
+intimacy could bridge it over, no reserve widen it, and that his own
+bashful hauteur was almost a sign that he knew that the gulf had been
+passed by his own parents; but shame and consciousness did not enable him
+to alter his manner but rather added to its stiffness.
+
+“The Junker is like an Englishman,” said Sir Kasimir, who had met many of
+the exiles of the Roses at the court of Mary of Burgundy; and then he
+turned to discuss with the guildmasters the interruption to trade caused
+by Flemish jealousies.
+
+After the lengthy meal, the tables were removed, the long gallery was
+occupied by musicians, and Master Gottfried crossed the hall to tell his
+eldest grandnephew that to him he should depute the opening of the dance
+with the handsome bride of the Rathsherr, Ulrich Burger.  Ebbo blushed up
+to the eyes, and muttered that he prayed his uncle to excuse him.
+
+“So!” said the old citizen, really displeased; “thy kinsman might have
+proved to thee that it is no derogation of thy lordly dignity.  I have
+been patient with thee, but thy pride passes—”
+
+“Sir,” interposed Friedel hastily, raising his sweet candid face with a
+look between shame and merriment, “it is not that; but you forget what
+poor mountaineers we are.  Never did we tread a measure save now and then
+with our mother on a winter evening, and we know no more than a chamois
+of your intricate measures.”
+
+Master Gottfried looked perplexed, for these dances were matters of great
+punctilio.  It was but seven years since the Lord of Praunstein had
+defied the whole city of Frankfort because a damsel of that place had
+refused to dance with one of his Cousins; and, though “Fistright” and
+letters of challenge had been made illegal, yet the whole city of Ulm
+would have resented the affront put on it by the young lord of
+Adlerstein.  Happily the Freiherr of Adlerstein Wildschloss was at hand.
+“Herr Burgomaster,” he said, “let me commence the dance with your fair
+lady niece.  By your testimony,” he added, smiling to the youths, “she
+can tread a measure.  And, after marking us, you may try your success
+with the Rathsherrinn.”
+
+Christina would gladly have transferred her noble partner to the
+Rathsherrinn, but she feared to mortify her good uncle and aunt further,
+and consented to figure alone with Sir Kasimir in one of the majestic,
+graceful dances performed by a single couple before a gazing assembly.
+So she let him lead her to her place, and they bowed and bent, swept past
+one another, and moved in interlacing lines and curves, with a grand slow
+movement that displayed her quiet grace and his stately port and courtly
+air.
+
+“Is it not beautiful to see the motherling?” said Friedel to his brother;
+“she sails like a white cloud in a soft wind.  And he stands grand as a
+stag at gaze.”
+
+“Like a malapert peacock, say I,” returned Ebbo; “didst not see, Friedel,
+how he kept his eyes on her in church?  My uncle says the Bohemians are
+mere deceivers.  Depend on it the woman had spied his insolent looks when
+she made her ribald prediction.”
+
+“See,” said Friedel, who had been watching the steps rather than
+attending, “it will be easy to dance it now.  It is a figure my mother
+once tried to teach us.  I remember it now.”
+
+“Then go and do it, since better may not be.”
+
+“Nay, but it should be thou.”
+
+“Who will know which of us it is?  I hated his presumption too much to
+mark his antics.”
+
+Friedel came forward, and the substitution was undetected by all save
+their mother and uncle; by the latter only because, addressing Ebbo, he
+received a reply in a tone such as Friedel never used.
+
+Natural grace, quickness of ear and eye, and a skilful partner, rendered
+Friedel’s so fair a performance that he ventured on sending his brother
+to attend the councilloress with wine and comfits; while he in his own
+person performed another dance with the city dame next in pretension, and
+their mother was amused by Sir Kasimir’s remark, that her second son
+danced better than the elder, but both must learn.
+
+The remark displeased Ebbo.  In his isolated castle he knew no superior,
+and his nature might yield willingly, but rebelled at being put down.
+His brother was his perfect equal in all mental and bodily attributes,
+but it was the absence of all self-assertion that made Ebbo so often give
+him the preference; it was his mother’s tender meekness in which lay her
+power with him; and if he yielded to Gottfried Sorel’s wisdom and
+experience, it was with the inward consciousness of voluntary deference
+to one of lower rank.  But here was Wildschloss, of the same noble blood
+with himself, his elder, his sponsor, his protector, with every right to
+direct him, so that there was no choice between grateful docility and
+headstrong folly.  If the fellow had been old, weak, or in any way
+inferior, it would have been more bearable; but he was a tried warrior, a
+sage counsellor, in the prime vigour of manhood, and with a kindly
+reasonable authority to which only a fool could fail to attend, and which
+for that very reason chafed Ebbo excessively.
+
+Moreover there was the gipsy prophecy ever rankling in the lad’s heart,
+and embittering to him the sight of every civility from his kinsman to
+his mother.  Sir Kasimir lodged at a neighbouring hostel; but he spent
+much time with his cousins, and tried to make them friends with his
+squire, Count Rudiger.  A great offence to Ebbo was however the
+criticisms of both knight and squire on the bearing of the young Barons
+in military exercises.  Truly, with no instructor but the rough
+lanzknecht Heinz, they must, as Friedel said, have been born paladins to
+have equalled youths whose life had been spent in chivalrous training.
+
+“See us in a downright fight,” said Ebbo; “we could strike as hard as any
+courtly minion.”
+
+“As hard, but scarce as dexterously,” said Friedel, “and be called for
+our pains the wild mountaineers.  I heard the men-at-arms saying I sat my
+horse as though it were always going up or down a precipice; and Master
+Schmidt went into his shop the other day shrugging his shoulders, and
+saying we hailed one another across the market-place as if we thought Ulm
+was a mountain full of gemsbocks.”
+
+“Thou heardst! and didst not cast his insolence in his teeth?” cried
+Ebbo.
+
+“How could I,” laughed Friedel, “when the echo was casting back in my
+teeth my own shout to thee?  I could only laugh with Rudiger.”
+
+“The chief delight I could have, next to getting home, would be to lay
+that fellow Rudiger on his back in the tilt-yard,” said Ebbo.
+
+But, as Rudiger was by four years his senior, and very expert, the upshot
+of these encounters was quite otherwise, and the young gentlemen were
+disabused of the notion that fighting came by nature, and found that, if
+they desired success in a serious conflict, they must practise diligently
+in the city tilt-yard, where young men were trained to arms.  The
+crossbow was the only weapon with which they excelled; and, as shooting
+was a favourite exercise of the burghers, their proficiency was not as
+exclusive as had seemed to Ebbo a baronial privilege.  Harquebuses were
+novelties to them, and they despised them as burgher weapons, in spite of
+Sir Kasimir’s assurance that firearms were a great subject of study and
+interest to the King of the Romans.  The name of this personage was, it
+may be feared, highly distasteful to the Freiherr von Adlerstein, both as
+Wildschloss’s model of knightly perfection, and as one who claimed
+submission from his haughty spirit.  When Sir Kasimir spoke to him on the
+subject of giving his allegiance, he stiffly replied, “Sir, that is a
+question for ripe consideration.”
+
+“It is the question,” said Wildschloss, rather more lightly than agreed
+with the Baron’s dignity, “whether you like to have your castle pulled
+down about your ears.”
+
+“That has never happened yet to Adlerstein!” said Ebbo, proudly.
+
+“No, because since the days of the Hohenstaufen there has been neither
+rule nor union in the empire.  But times are changing fast, my Junker,
+and within the last ten years forty castles such as yours have been
+consumed by the Swabian League, as though they were so many walnuts.”
+
+“The shell of Adlerstein was too hard for them, though.  They never
+tried.”
+
+“And wherefore, friend Eberhard?  It was because I represented to the
+Kaiser and the Graf von Wurtemberg that little profit and no glory would
+accrue from attacking a crag full of women and babes, and that I, having
+the honour to be your next heir, should prefer having the castle
+untouched, and under the peace of the empire, so long as that peace was
+kept.  When you should come to years of discretion, then it would be for
+you to carry out the intention wherewith your father and grandfather left
+home.”
+
+“Then we have been protected by the peace of the empire all this time?”
+said Friedel, while Ebbo looked as if the notion were hard of digestion.
+
+“Even so; and, had you not freely and nobly released your Genoese
+merchant, it had gone hard with Adlerstein.”
+
+“Could Adlerstein be taken?” demanded Ebbo triumphantly.
+
+“Your grandmother thought not,” said Sir Kasimir, with a shade of irony
+in his tone.  “It would be a troublesome siege; but the League numbers
+1,500 horse, and 9,000 foot, and, with Schlangenwald’s concurrence, you
+would be assuredly starved out.”
+
+Ebbo was so much the more stimulated to take his chance, and do nothing
+on compulsion; but Friedel put in the question to what the oaths would
+bind them.
+
+“Only to aid the Emperor with sword and counsel in field or Diet, and
+thereby win fame and honour such as can scarce be gained by carrying prey
+to yon eagle roost.”
+
+“One may preserve one’s independence without robbery,” said Ebbo coldly.
+
+“Nay, lad: did you ever hear of a wolf that could live without marauding?
+Or if he tried, would he get credit for so doing?”
+
+“After all,” said Friedel, “does not the present agreement hold till we
+are of age?  I suppose the Swabian League would attempt nothing against
+minors, unless we break the peace?”
+
+“Probably not; I will do my utmost to give the Freiherr there time to
+grow beyond his grandmother’s maxims,” said Wildschloss.  “If
+Schlangenwald do not meddle in the matter, he may have the next five
+years to decide whether Adlerstein can hold out against all Germany.”
+
+“Freiherr Kasimir von Adlerstein Wildschloss,” said Eberhard, turning
+solemnly on him, “I do you to wit once for all that threats will not
+serve with me.  If I submit, it will be because I am convinced it is
+right.  Otherwise we had rather both be buried in the ruins of our
+castle, as its last free lords.”
+
+“So!” said the provoking kinsman; “such burials look grim when the time
+comes, but happily it is not coming yet!”
+
+Meantime, as Ebbo said to Friedel, how much might happen—a disruption of
+the empire, a crusade against the Turks, a war in Italy, some grand means
+of making the Diet value the sword of a free baron, without chaining him
+down to gratify the greed of hungry Austria.  If only Wildschloss could
+be shaken off!  But he only became constantly more friendly and
+intrusive, almost paternal.  No wonder, when the mother and her uncle
+made him so welcome, and were so intolerably grateful for his impertinent
+interference, while even Friedel confessed the reasonableness of his
+counsels, as if that were not the very sting of them.
+
+He even asked leave to bring his little daughter Thekla from her convent
+to see the Lady of Adlerstein.  She was a pretty, flaxen-haired maiden of
+five years old, in a round cap, and long narrow frock, with a little
+cross at the neck.  She had never seen any one beyond the walls of the
+nunnery; and, when her father took her from the lay sister’s arms, and
+carried her to the gallery, where sat Hausfrau Johanna, in dark green,
+slashed with cherry colour, Master Gottfried, in sober crimson, with gold
+medal and chain, Freiherrinn Christina, in silver-broidered black, and
+the two Junkern stood near in the shining mail in which they were going
+to the tilt yard, she turned her head in terror, struggled with her
+scarce known father, and shrieked for Sister Grethel.
+
+“It was all too sheen,” she sobbed, in the lay sister’s arms; “she did
+not want to be in Paradise yet, among the saints!  O! take her back!  The
+two bright, holy Michaels would let her go, for indeed she had made but
+one mistake in her Ave.”
+
+Vain was the attempt to make her lift her face from the black serge
+shoulder where she had hidden it.  Sister Grethel coaxed and scolded, Sir
+Kasimir reproved, the housemother offered comfits, and Christina’s soft
+voice was worst of all, for the child, probably taking her for Our Lady
+herself, began to gasp forth a general confession.  “I will never do so
+again!  Yes, it was a fib, but Mother Hildegard gave me a bit of
+marchpane not to tell—”  Here the lay sister took strong measures for
+closing the little mouth, and Christina drew back, recommending that the
+child should be left gradually to discover their terrestrial nature.
+Ebbo had looked on with extreme disgust, trying to hurry Friedel, who had
+delayed to trace some lines for his mother on her broidery pattern.  In
+passing the step where Grethel sat with Thekla on her lap, the clank of
+their armour caused the uplifting of the little flaxen head, and two wide
+blue eyes looked over Grethel’s shoulder, and met Friedel’s sunny glance.
+He smiled; she laughed back again.  He held out his arms, and, though his
+hands were gauntleted, she let him lift her up, and curiously smoothed
+and patted his cheek, as if he had been a strange animal.
+
+“You have no wings,” she said.  “Are you St. George, or St. Michael?”
+
+“Neither the one nor the other, pretty one.  Only your poor cousin
+Friedel von Adlerstein, and here is Ebbo, my brother.”
+
+It was not in Ebbo’s nature not to smile encouragement at the fair little
+face, with its wistful look.  He drew off his glove to caress her silken
+hair, and for a few minutes she was played with by the two brothers like
+a newly-invented toy, receiving their attentions with pretty
+half-frightened graciousness, until Count Rudiger hastened in to summon
+them, and Friedel placed her on his mother’s knee, where she speedily
+became perfectly happy, and at ease.
+
+Her extreme delight, when towards evening the Junkern returned, was
+flattering even to Ebbo; and, when it was time for her to be taken home,
+she made strong resistance, clinging fast to Christina, with screams and
+struggles.  To the lady’s promise of coming to see her she replied,
+“Friedel and Ebbo, too,” and, receiving no response to this request, she
+burst out, “Then I won’t come!  I am the Freiherrinn Thekla, the heiress
+of Adlerstein Wildschloss and Felsenbach.  I won’t be a nun.  I’ll be
+married!  You shall be my husband,” and she made a dart at the nearest
+youth, who happened to be Ebbo.
+
+“Ay, ay, you shall have him.  He will come for you, sweetest Fraulein,”
+said the perplexed Grethel, “so only you will come home!  Nobody will
+come for you if you are naughty.”
+
+“Will you come if I am good?” said the spoilt cloister pet, clinging
+tight to Ebbo.
+
+“Yes,” said her father, as she still resisted, “come back, my child, and
+one day shall you see Ebbo, and have him for a brother.”
+
+Thereat Ebbo shook off the little grasping fingers, almost as if they had
+belonged to a noxious insect.
+
+“The matron’s coif should succeed the widow’s veil.”  He might talk with
+scholarly contempt of the new race of Bohemian impostors; but there was
+no forgetting that sentence.  And in like manner, though his
+grandmother’s allegation that his mother had been bent on captivating Sir
+Kasimir in that single interview at Adlerstein, had always seemed to him
+the most preposterous of all Kunigunde’s forms of outrage, the
+recollection would recur to him; and he could have found it in his heart
+to wish that his mother had never heard of the old lady’s designs as to
+the oubliette.  He did most sincerely wish Master Gottfried had never let
+Wildschloss know of the mode in which his life had been saved.  Yet,
+while it would have seemed to him profane to breathe even to Friedel the
+true secret of his repugnance to this meddlesome kinsman, it was
+absolutely impossible to avoid his most distasteful authority and
+patronage.
+
+And the mother herself was gently, thankfully happy and unsuspicious,
+basking in the tender home affection of which she had so long been
+deprived, proud of her sons, and, though anxious as to Ebbo’s decision,
+with a quiet trust in his foundation of principle, and above all trusting
+to prayer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+THE DOUBLE-HEADED EAGLE
+
+
+ONE summer evening, when shooting at a bird on a pole was in full
+exercise in the tilt-yard, the sports were interrupted by a message from
+the Provost that a harbinger had brought tidings that the Imperial court
+was within a day’s journey.
+
+All was preparation.  Fresh sand had to be strewn on the arena.  New
+tapestry hangings were to deck the galleries, the houses and balconies to
+be brave with drapery, the fountain in the market-place was to play Rhine
+wine, all Ulm was astir to do honour to itself and to the Kaisar, and
+Ebbo stood amid all the bustle, drawing lines in the sand with the stock
+of his arblast, subject to all that oppressive self-magnification so
+frequent in early youth, and which made it seem to him as if the Kaisar
+and the King of the Romans were coming to Ulm with the mere purpose of
+destroying his independence, and as if the eyes of all Germany were
+watching for his humiliation.
+
+“See! see!” suddenly exclaimed Friedel; “look! there is something among
+the tracery of the Dome Kirk Tower.  Is it man or bird?”
+
+“Bird, folly!  Thou couldst see no bird less than an eagle from hence,”
+said Ebbo.  “No doubt they are about to hoist a banner.”
+
+“That is not their wont,” returned Sir Kasimir.
+
+“I see him,” interrupted Ebbo.  “Nay, but he is a bold climber!  We went
+up to that stage, close to the balcony, but there’s no footing beyond but
+crockets and canopies.”
+
+“And a bit of rotten scaffold,” added Friedel.  “Perhaps he is a builder
+going to examine it!  Up higher, higher!”
+
+“A builder!” said Ebbo; “a man with a head and foot like that should be a
+chamois hunter!  Shouldst thou deem it worse than the Red Eyrie,
+Friedel?”
+
+“Yea, truly!  The depth beneath is plainer!  There would be no climbing
+there without—”
+
+“Without what, cousin?” asked Wildschloss.
+
+“Without great cause,” said Friedel.  “It is fearful!  He is like a fly
+against the sky.”
+
+“Beaten again!” muttered Ebbo; “I did think that none of these town-bred
+fellows could surpass us when it came to a giddy height!  Who can he be?”
+
+“Look! look!” burst out Friedel.  “The saints protect him!  He is on that
+narrowest topmost ledge—measuring; his heel is over the parapet—half his
+foot!”
+
+“Holding on by the rotten scaffold pole!  St. Barbara be his speed; but
+he is a brave man!” shouted Ebbo.  “Oh! the pole has broken.”
+
+“Heaven forefend!” cried Wildschloss, with despair on his face unseen by
+the boys, for Friedel had hidden his eyes, and Ebbo was straining his
+with the intense gaze of horror.  He had carried his glance downwards,
+following the 380 feet fall that must be the lot of the adventurer.  Then
+looking up again he shouted, “I see him!  I see him!  Praise to St.
+Barbara!  He is safe!  He has caught by the upright stone work.”
+
+“Where? where?  Show me!” cried Wildschloss, grasping Ebbo’s arm.
+
+“There! clinging to that upright bit of tracery, stretching his foot out
+to yonder crocket.”
+
+“I cannot see.  Mine eyes swim and dazzle,” said Wildschloss.  “Merciful
+heavens! is this another tempting of Providence?  How is it with him now,
+Ebbo?”
+
+“Swarming down another slender bit of the stone network.  It must be easy
+now to one who could keep head and hand steady in such a shock.”
+
+“There!” added Friedel, after a breathless space, “he is on the lower
+parapet, whence begins the stair.  Do you know him, sir?  Who is he?”
+
+“Either a Venetian mountebank,” said Wildschloss, “or else there is only
+one man I know of either so foolhardy or so steady of head.”
+
+“Be he who he may,” said Ebbo, “he is the bravest man that ever I beheld.
+Who is he, Sir Kasimir?”
+
+“An eagle of higher flight than ours, no doubt,” said Wildschloss.  “But
+come; we shall reach the Dome Kirk by the time the climber has wound his
+way down the turret stairs, and we shall see what like he is.”
+
+Their coming was well timed, for a small door at the foot of the tower
+was just opening to give exit to a very tall knight, in one of those
+short Spanish cloaks the collar of which could be raised so as to conceal
+the face.  He looked to the right and left, and had one hand raised to
+put up the collar when he recognized Sir Kasimir, and, holding out both
+hands, exclaimed, “Ha, Adlerstein! well met!  I looked to see thee here.
+No unbonneting; I am not come yet.  I am at Strasburg, with the Kaisar
+and the Archduke, and am not here till we ride in, in purple and in pall
+by the time the good folk have hung out their arras, and donned their
+gold chains, and conned their speeches, and mounted their mules.”
+
+“Well that their speeches are not over the lykewake of his kingly
+kaisarly highness,” gravely returned Sir Kasimir.
+
+“Ha!  Thou sawest?  I came out here to avoid the gaping throng, who don’t
+know what a hunter can do.  I have been in worse case in the Tyrol.
+Snowdrifts are worse footing than stone vine leaves.”
+
+“Where abides your highness?” asked Wildschloss.
+
+“I ride back again to the halting-place for the night, and meet my father
+in time to do my part in the pageant.  I was sick of the addresses, and,
+moreover, the purse-proud Flemings have made such a stiff little fop of
+my poor boy that I am ashamed to look at him, or hear his French accent.
+So I rode off to get a view of this notable Dom in peace, ere it be
+bedizened in holiday garb; and one can’t stir without all the Chapter
+waddling after one.”
+
+“Your highness has found means of distancing them.”
+
+“Why, truly, the Prior would scarce delight in the view from yonder
+parapet,” laughed his highness.  “Ha!  Adlerstein, where didst get such a
+perfect pair of pages?  I would I could match my hounds as well.”
+
+“They are no pages of mine, so please you,” said the knight; “rather this
+is the head of my name.  Let me present to your kingly highness the
+Freiherr von Adlerstein.”
+
+“Thou dost not thyself distinguish between them!” said Maximilian, as
+Friedmund stepped back, putting forward Eberhard, whose bright, lively
+smile of interest and admiration had been the cause of his cousin’s
+mistake.  They would have doffed their caps and bent the knee, but were
+hastily checked by Maximilian.  “No, no, Junkern, I shall owe you no
+thanks for bringing all the street on me!—that’s enough.  Reserve the
+rest for Kaisar Fritz.”  Then, familiarly taking Sir Kasimir’s arm, he
+walked on, saying, “I remember now.  Thou wentest after an inheritance
+from the old Mouser of the Debateable Ford, and wert ousted by a couple
+of lusty boys sprung of a peasant wedlock.”
+
+“Nay, my lord, of a burgher lady, fair as she is wise and virtuous; who,
+spite of all hindrances, has bred up these youths in all good and noble
+nurture.”
+
+“Is this so?” said the king, turning sharp round on the twins.  “Are ye
+minded to quit freebooting, and come a crusading against the Turks with
+me?”
+
+“Everywhere with such a leader!” enthusiastically exclaimed Ebbo.
+
+“What? up there?” said Maximilian, smiling.  “Thou hast the tread of a
+chamois-hunter.”
+
+“Friedel has been on the Red Eyrie,” exclaimed Ebbo; then, thinking he
+had spoken foolishly, he coloured.
+
+“Which is the Red Eyrie?” good-humouredly asked the king.
+
+“It is the crag above our castle,” said Friedel, modestly.
+
+“None other has been there,” added Ebbo, perceiving his auditor’s
+interest; “but he saw the eagle flying away with a poor widow’s kid, and
+the sight must have given him wings, for we never could find the same
+path; but here is one of the feathers he brought down”—taking off his cap
+so as to show a feather rather the worse for wear, and sheltered behind a
+fresher one.
+
+“Nay,” said Friedel, “thou shouldst say that I came to a ledge where I
+had like to have stayed all night, but that ye all came out with men and
+ropes.”
+
+“We know what such a case is!” said the king.  “It has chanced to us to
+hang between heaven and earth; I’ve even had the Holy Sacrament held up
+for my last pious gaze by those who gave me up for lost on the
+mountain-side.  Adlerstein?  The peak above the Braunwasser?  Some day
+shall ye show me this eyrie of yours, and we will see whether we can
+amaze our cousins the eagles.  We see you at our father’s court
+to-morrow?” he graciously added, and Ebbo gave a ready bow of
+acquiescence.
+
+“There,” said the king, as after their dismissal he walked on with Sir
+Kasimir, “never blame me for rashness and imprudence.  Here has this
+height of the steeple proved the height of policy.  It has made a loyal
+subject of a Mouser on the spot.”
+
+“Pray Heaven it may have won a heart, true though proud!” said
+Wildschloss; “but mousing was cured before by the wise training of the
+mother.  Your highness will have taken out the sting of submission, and
+you will scarce find more faithful subjects.”
+
+“How old are the Junkern?”
+
+“Some sixteen years, your highness.”
+
+“That is what living among mountains does for a lad.  Why could not those
+thrice-accursed Flemish towns let me breed up my boy to be good for
+something in the mountains, instead of getting duck-footed and
+muddy-witted in the fens?”
+
+In the meantime Ebbo and Friedel were returning home in that sort of
+passion of enthusiasm that ingenuous boyhood feels when first brought
+into contact with greatness or brilliant qualities.
+
+And brilliance was the striking point in Maximilian.  The Last of the
+Knights, in spite of his many defects, was, by personal qualities, and
+the hereditary influence of long-descended rank, verily a king of men in
+aspect and demeanour, even when most careless and simple.  He was at this
+time a year or two past thirty, unusually tall, and with a form at once
+majestic and full of vigour and activity; a noble, fair, though sunburnt
+countenance; eyes of dark gray, almost black; long fair hair, a keen
+aquiline nose, a lip only beginning to lengthen to the characteristic
+Austrian feature, an expression always lofty, sometimes dreamy, and yet
+at the same time full of acuteness and humour.  His abilities were of the
+highest order, his purposes, especially at this period of his life, most
+noble and becoming in the first prince of Christendom; and, if his life
+were a failure, and his reputation unworthy of his endowments, the cause
+seems to have been in great measure the bewilderment and confusion that
+unusual gifts sometimes cause to their possessor, whose sight their
+conflicting illumination dazzles so as to impair his steadiness of aim,
+while their contending gleams light him into various directions, so that
+one object is deserted for another ere its completion.  Thus Maximilian
+cuts a figure in history far inferior to that made by his grandson,
+Charles V., whom he nevertheless excelled in every personal quality,
+except the most needful of all, force of character; and, in like manner,
+his remote descendant, the narrow-minded Ferdinand of Styria, gained his
+ends, though the able and brilliant Joseph II. was to die broken-hearted,
+calling his reign a failure and mistake.  However, such terms as these
+could not be applied to Maximilian with regard to home affairs.  He has
+had hard measure from those who have only regarded his vacillating
+foreign policy, especially with respect to Italy—ever the temptation and
+the bane of Austria; but even here much of his uncertain conduct was
+owing to the unfulfilled promises of what he himself called his “realm of
+kings,” and a sovereign can only justly be estimated by his domestic
+policy.  The contrast of the empire before his time with the subsequent
+Germany is that of chaos with order.  Since the death of Friedrich II.
+the Imperial title had been a mockery, making the prince who chanced to
+bear it a mere mark for the spite of his rivals; there was no centre of
+justice, no appeal; everybody might make war on everybody, with the sole
+preliminary of exchanging a challenge; “fist-right” was the acknowledged
+law of the land; and, except in the free cities, and under such a happy
+accident as a right-minded prince here and there, the state of Germany
+seems to have been rather worse than that of Scotland from Bruce to the
+union of the Crowns.  Under Maximilian, the Diet became an effective
+council, fist-right was abolished, independent robber-lords put down,
+civilization began to effect an entrance, the system of circles was
+arranged, and the empire again became a leading power in Europe, instead
+of a mere vortex of disorder and misrule.  Never would Charles V. have
+held the position he occupied had he come after an ordinary man, instead
+of after an able and sagacious reformer like that Maximilian who is
+popularly regarded as a fantastic caricature of a knight-errant, marred
+by avarice and weakness of purpose.
+
+At the juncture of which we are writing, none of Maximilian’s less worthy
+qualities had appeared; he had not been rendered shifty and unscrupulous
+by difficulties and disappointments in money matters, and had not found
+it impossible to keep many of the promises he had given in all good
+faith.  He stood forth as the hope of Germany, in salient contrast to the
+feeble and avaricious father, who was felt to be the only obstacle in the
+way of his noble designs of establishing peace and good discipline in the
+empire, and conducting a general crusade against the Turks, whose
+progress was the most threatening peril of Christendom.  His fame was, of
+course, frequently discussed among the citizens, with whom he was very
+popular, not only from his ease and freedom of manner, but because his
+graceful tastes, his love of painting, sculpture, architecture, and the
+mechanical turn which made him an improver of fire-arms and a patron of
+painting and engraving, rendered their society more agreeable to him than
+that of his dull, barbarous nobility.  Ebbo had heard so much of the
+perfections of the King of the Romans as to be prepared to hate him; but
+the boy, as we have seen, was of a generous, sensitive nature, peculiarly
+prone to enthusiastic impressions of veneration; and Maximilian’s
+high-spirited manhood, personal fascination, and individual kindness had
+so entirely taken him by surprise, that he talked of him all the evening
+in a more fervid manner than did even Friedel, though both could scarcely
+rest for their anticipations of seeing him on the morrow in the full
+state of his entry.
+
+Richly clad, and mounted on cream-coloured steeds, nearly as much alike
+as themselves, the twins were a pleasant sight for a proud mother’s eyes,
+as they rode out to take their place in the procession that was to
+welcome the royal guests.  Master Sorel, in ample gown, richly furred,
+with medal and chain of office, likewise went forth as Guildmaster; and
+Christina, with smiling lips and liquid eyes, recollected the days when
+to see him in such array was her keenest pleasure, and the utmost
+splendour her fancy could depict.
+
+Arrayed, as her sons loved to see her, in black velvet, and with
+pearl-bordered cap, Christina sat by her aunt in the tapestried balcony,
+and between them stood or sat little Thekla von Adlerstein Wildschloss,
+whose father had entrusted her to their care, to see the procession pass
+by.  A rich Eastern carpet, of gorgeous colouring, covered the upper
+balustrade, over which they leant, in somewhat close quarters with the
+scarlet-bodiced dames of the opposite house, but with ample space for
+sight up and down the rows of smiling expectants at each balcony, or
+window, equally gay with hangings, while the bells of all the churches
+clashed forth their gayest chimes, and fitful bursts of music were borne
+upon the breeze.  Little Thekla danced in the narrow space for very glee,
+and wondered why any one should live in a cloister when the world was so
+wide and so fair.  And Dame Johanna tried to say something pious of
+worldly temptations, and the cloister shelter; but Thekla interrupted
+her, and, clinging to Christina, exclaimed, “Nay, but I am always naughty
+with Mother Ludmilla in the convent, and I know I should never be naughty
+out here with you and the barons; I should be so happy.”
+
+“Hush! hush! little one; here they come!”
+
+On they came—stout lanzknechts first, the city guard with steel helmets
+unadorned, buff suits, and bearing either harquebuses, halberts, or those
+handsome but terrible weapons, morning stars.  Then followed guild after
+guild, each preceded by the banner bearing its homely emblem—the cauldron
+of the smiths, the hose of the clothiers, the helmet of the armourers,
+the bason of the barbers, the boot of the sutors; even the sausage of the
+cooks, and the shoe of the shoeblacks, were re-presented, as by men who
+gloried in the calling in which they did life’s duty and task.
+
+First in each of these bands marched the prentices, stout, broad,
+flat-faced lads, from twenty to fourteen years of age, with hair like tow
+hanging from under their blue caps, staves in their hands, and knives at
+their girdles.  Behind them came the journeymen, in leathern jerkins and
+steel caps, and armed with halberts or cross-bows; men of all ages, from
+sixty to one or two and twenty, and many of the younger ones with foreign
+countenances and garb betokening that they were strangers spending part
+of their wandering years in studying the Ulm fashions of their craft.
+Each trade showed a large array of these juniors; but the masters who
+came behind were comparatively few, mostly elderly, long-gowned,
+gold-chained personages, with a weight of solid dignity on their wise
+brows—men who respected themselves, made others respect them, and kept
+their city a peaceful, well-ordered haven, while storms raged in the
+realm beyond—men too who had raised to the glory of their God a temple,
+not indeed fulfilling the original design, but a noble effort, and grand
+monument of burgher devotion.
+
+Then came the ragged regiment of scholars, wild lads from every part of
+Germany and Switzerland, some wan and pinched with hardship and
+privation, others sturdy, selfish rogues, evidently well able to take
+care of themselves.  There were many rude, tyrannical-looking lads among
+the older lads; and, though here and there a studious, earnest face might
+be remarked, the prospect of Germany’s future priests and teachers was
+not encouraging.  And what a searching ordeal was awaiting those careless
+lads when the voice of one, as yet still a student, should ring through
+Germany!
+
+Contrasting with these ill-kempt pupils marched the grave professors and
+teachers, in square ecclesiastic caps and long gowns, whose colours
+marked their degrees and the Universities that had conferred them—some
+thin, some portly, some jocund, others dreamy; some observing all the
+humours around, others still intent on Aristotelian ethics; all men of
+high fame, with doctor at the beginning of their names, and “or” or “us”
+at the close of them.  After them rode the magistracy, a burgomaster from
+each guild, and the Herr Provost himself—as great a potentate within his
+own walls as the Doge of Venice or of Genoa, or perhaps greater, because
+less jealously hampered.  In this dignified group was Uncle Gottfried, by
+complacent nod and smile acknowledging his good wife and niece, who
+indeed had received many a previous glance and bow from friends passing
+beneath.  But Master Sorel was no new spectacle in a civic procession,
+and the sight of him was only a pleasant fillip to the excitement of his
+ladies.
+
+Here was jingling of spurs and trampling of horses; heraldic achievements
+showed upon the banners, round which rode the mail-clad retainers of
+country nobles who had mustered to meet their lords.  Then, with still
+more of clank and tramp, rode a bright-faced troop of lads, with
+feathered caps and gay mantles.  Young Count Rudiger looked up with
+courteous salutation; and just behind him, with smiling lips and upraised
+faces, were the pair whose dark eyes, dark hair, and slender forms
+rendered them conspicuous among the fair Teutonic youth.  Each cap was
+taken off and waved, and each pair of lustrous eyes glanced up pleasure
+and exultation at the sight of the lovely “Mutterlein.”  And she?  The
+pageant was well-nigh over to her, save for heartily agreeing with Aunt
+Johanna that there was not a young noble of them all to compare with the
+twin Barons of Adlerstein!  However, she knew she should be called to
+account if she did not look well at “the Romish King;” besides, Thekla
+was shrieking with delight at the sight of her father, tall and splendid
+on his mighty black charger, with a smile for his child, and for the lady
+a bow so low and deferential that it was evidently remarked by those at
+whose approach every lady in the balconies was rising, every head in the
+street was bared.
+
+A tall, thin, shrivelled, but exceedingly stately old man on a gray horse
+was in the centre.  Clad in a purple velvet mantle, and bowing as he
+went, he looked truly the Kaisar, to whom stately courtesy was second
+nature.  On one side, in black and gold, with the jewel of the Golden
+Fleece on his breast, rode Maximilian, responding gracefully to the
+salutations of the people, but his keen gray eye roving in search of the
+object of Sir Kasimir’s salute, and lighting on Christina with such a
+rapid, amused glance of discovery that, in her confusion, she missed what
+excited Dame Johanna’s rapturous admiration—the handsome boy on the
+Emperor’s other side, a fair, plump lad, the young sovereign of the Low
+Countries, beautiful in feature and complexion, but lacking the fire and
+the loftiness that characterized his father’s countenance.  The train was
+closed by the Reitern of the Emperor’s guard—steel-clad mercenaries who
+were looked on with no friendly eyes by the few gazers in the street who
+had been left behind in the general rush to keep up with the attractive
+part of the show.
+
+Pageants of elaborate mythological character impeded the imperial
+progress at every stage, and it was full two hours ere the two youths
+returned, heartily weary of the lengthened ceremonial, and laughing at
+having actually seen the King of the Romans enduring to be conducted from
+shrine to shrine in the cathedral by a large proportion of its
+dignitaries.  Ebbo was sure he had caught an archly disconsolate wink!
+
+Ebbo had to dress for the banquet spread in the town-hall.  Space was
+wanting for the concourse of guests, and Master Sorel had decided that
+the younger Baron should not be included in the invitation.  Friedel
+pardoned him more easily than did Ebbo, who not only resented any slight
+to his double, but in his fits of shy pride needed the aid of his readier
+and brighter other self.  But it might not be, and Sir Kasimir and Master
+Gottfried alone accompanied him, hoping that he would not look as wild as
+a hawk, and would do nothing to diminish the favourable impression he had
+made on the King of the Romans.
+
+Late, according to mediæval hours, was the return, and Ebbo spoke in a
+tone of elation.  “The Kaisar was most gracious, and the king knew me,”
+he said, “and asked for thee, Friedel, saying one of us was nought
+without the other.  But thou wilt go to-morrow, for we are to receive
+knighthood.”
+
+“Already!” exclaimed Friedel, a bright glow rushing to his cheek.
+
+“Yea,” said Ebbo.  “The Romish king said somewhat about waiting to win
+our spurs; but the Kaisar said I was in a position to take rank as a
+knight, and I thanked him, so thou shouldst share the honour.”
+
+“The Kaisar,” said Wildschloss, “is not the man to let a knight’s fee
+slip between his fingers.  The king would have kept off their grip, and
+reserved you for knighthood from his own sword under the banner of the
+empire; but there is no help for it now, and you must make your vassals
+send in their dues.”
+
+“My vassals?” said Ebbo; “what could they send?”
+
+“The aid customary on the knighthood of the heir.”
+
+“But there is—there is nothing!” said Friedel.  “They can scarce pay meal
+and poultry enough for our daily fare; and if we were to flay them alive,
+we should not get sixty groschen from the whole.”
+
+“True enough!  Knighthood must wait till we win it,” said Ebbo, gloomily.
+
+“Nay, it is accepted,” said Wildschloss.  “The Kaisar loves his iron
+chest too well to let you go back.  You must be ready with your round sum
+to the chancellor, and your spur-money and your fee to the heralds, and
+largess to the crowd.”
+
+“Mother, the dowry,” said Ebbo.
+
+“At your service, my son,” said Christina, anxious to chase the cloud
+from his brow.
+
+But it was a deep haul, for the avaricious Friedrich IV. made exorbitant
+charges for the knighting his young nobles; and Ebbo soon saw that the
+improvements at home must suffer for the honours that would have been so
+much better won than bought.
+
+“If your vassals cannot aid, yet may not your kinsman—?” began
+Wildschloss.
+
+“No!” interrupted Ebbo, lashed up to hot indignation.  “No, sir!  Rather
+will my mother, brother, and I ride back this very night to unfettered
+liberty on our mountain, without obligation to any living man.”
+
+“Less hotly, Sir Baron,” said Master Gottfried, gravely.  “You broke in
+on your noble godfather, and you had not heard me speak.  You and your
+brother are the old man’s only heirs, nor do ye incur any obligation that
+need fret you by forestalling what would be your just right.  I will see
+my nephews as well equipped as any young baron of them.”
+
+The mother looked anxiously at Ebbo.  He bent his head with rising
+colour, and said, “Thanks, kind uncle.  From _you_ I have learnt to look
+on goodness as fatherly.”
+
+“Only,” added Friedel, “if the Baron’s station renders knighthood fitting
+for him, surely I might remain his esquire.”
+
+“Never, Friedel!” cried his brother.  “Without thee, nothing.”
+
+“Well said, Freiherr,” said Master Sorel; “what becomes the one becomes
+the other.  I would not have thee left out, my Friedel, since I cannot
+leave thee the mysteries of my craft.”
+
+“To-morrow!” said Friedel, gravely.  “Then must the vigil be kept
+to-night.”
+
+“The boy thinks these are the days of Roland and Karl the Great,” said
+Wildschloss.  “He would fain watch his arms in the moonlight in the Dome
+Kirk!  Alas! no, my Friedel!  Knighthood in these days smacks more of
+bezants than of deeds of prowess.”
+
+“Unbearable fellow!” cried Ebbo, when he had latched the door of the room
+he shared with his brother.  “First, holding up my inexperience to scorn!
+As though the Kaisar knew not better than he what befits me!  Then trying
+to buy my silence and my mother’s gratitude with his hateful advance of
+gold.  As if I did not loathe him enough without!  If I pay my homage,
+and sign the League to-morrow, it will be purely that he may not plume
+himself on our holding our own by sufferance, in deference to him.”
+
+“You will sign it—you will do homage!” exclaimed Friedel.  “How rejoiced
+the mother will be.”
+
+“I had rather depend at once—if depend I must—on yonder dignified Kaisar
+and that noble king than on our meddling kinsman,” said Ebbo.  “I shall
+be his equal now!  Ay, and no more classed with the court Junkern I was
+with to-day.  The dullards!  No one reasonable thing know they but the
+chase.  One had been at Florence; and when I asked him of the Baptistery
+and rare Giotto of whom my uncle told us, he asked if he were a knight of
+the Medici.  All he knew was that there were ortolans at Ser Lorenzo’s
+table; and he and the rest of them talked over wines as many and as hard
+to call as the roll of Æneas’s comrades; and when each one must drink to
+her he loved best, and I said I loved none like my sweet mother, they
+gibed me for a simple dutiful mountaineer.  Yea, and when the servants
+brought a bowl, I thought it was a wholesome draught of spring water
+after all their hot wines and fripperies.  Pah!”
+
+“The rose-water, Ebbo!  No wonder they laughed!  Why, the bowls for our
+fingers came round at the banquet here.”
+
+“Ah! thou hast eyes for their finikin manners!  Yet what know they of
+what we used to long for in polished life!  Not one but vowed he abhorred
+books, and cursed Dr. Faustus for multiplying them.  I may not know the
+taste of a stew, nor the fit of a glove, as they do, but I trust I bear a
+less empty brain.  And the young Netherlanders that came with the
+Archduke were worst of all.  They got together and gabbled French, and
+treated the German Junkern with the very same sauce with which they had
+served me.  The Archduke laughed with them, and when the Provost
+addressed him, made as if he understood not, till his father heard, and
+thundered out, ‘How now, Philip!  Deaf on thy German ear?  I tell thee,
+Herr Probst, he knows his own tongue as well as thou or I, and thou shalt
+hear him speak as becomes the son of an Austrian hunter.’  That Romish
+king is a knight of knights, Friedel.  I could follow him to the world’s
+end.  I wonder whether he will ever come to climb the Red Eyrie.”
+
+“It does not seem the world’s end when one is there,” said Friedel, with
+strange yearnings in his breast.
+
+“Even the Dom steeple never rose to its full height,” he added, standing
+in the window, and gazing pensively into the summer sky.  “Oh, Ebbo! this
+knighthood has come very suddenly after our many dreams; and, even though
+its outward tokens be lowered, it is still a holy, awful thing.”
+
+Nurtured in mountain solitude, on romance transmitted through the pure
+medium of his mother’s mind, and his spirit untainted by contact with the
+world, Friedmund von Adlerstein looked on chivalry with the temper of a
+Percival or Galahad, and regarded it with a sacred awe.  Eberhard, though
+treating it more as a matter of business, was like enough to his brother
+to enter into the force of the vows they were about to make; and if the
+young Barons of Adlerstein did not perform the night-watch over their
+armour, yet they kept a vigil that impressed their own minds as deeply,
+and in early morn they went to confession and mass ere the gay parts of
+the city were astir.
+
+“Sweet niece,” said Master Sorel, as he saw the brothers’ grave, earnest
+looks, “thou hast done well by these youths; yet I doubt me at times
+whether they be not too much lifted out of this veritable world of ours.”
+
+“Ah, fair uncle, were they not above it, how could they face its
+temptations?”
+
+“True, my child; but how will it be when they find how lightly others
+treat what to them is so solemn?”
+
+“There must be temptations for them, above all for Ebbo,” said Christina,
+“but still, when I remember how my heart sank when their grandmother
+tried to bring them up to love crime as sport and glory, I cannot but
+trust that the good work will be wrought out, and my dream fulfilled,
+that they may be lights on earth and stars in heaven.  Even this matter
+of homage, that seemed so hard to my Ebbo, has now been made easy to him
+by his veneration for the Emperor.”
+
+It was even so.  If the sense that he was the last veritable _free_ lord
+of Adlerstein rushed over Ebbo, he was, on the other hand, overmastered
+by the kingliness of Friedrich and Maximilian, and was aware that this
+submission, while depriving him of little or no actual power, brought him
+into relations with the civilized world, and opened to him paths of true
+honour.  So the ceremonies were gone through, his oath of allegiance was
+made, investiture was granted to him by the delivery of a sword, and both
+he and Friedel were dubbed knights.  Then they shared another banquet,
+where, as away from the Junkern and among elder men, Ebbo was happier
+than the day before.  Some of the knights seemed to him as rude and
+ignorant as the Schneiderlein, but no one talked to him nor observed his
+manners, and he could listen to conversation on war and policy such as
+interested him far more than the subjects affected by youths a little
+older than himself.  Their lonely life and training had rendered the
+minds of the brothers as much in advance of their fellows as they were
+behind them in knowledge of the world.
+
+The crass obtuseness of most of the nobility made it a relief to return
+to the usual habits of the Sorel household when the court had left Ulm.
+Friedmund, anxious to prove that his new honours were not to alter his
+home demeanour, was drawing on a block of wood from a tinted pen-and-ink
+sketch; Ebbo was deeply engaged with a newly-acquired copy of Virgil; and
+their mother was embroidering some draperies for the long-neglected
+castle chapel,—all sitting, as Master Gottfried loved to have them, in
+his studio, whence he had a few moments before been called away, when, as
+the door slowly opened, a voice was heard that made both lads start and
+rise.
+
+“Yea, truly, Herr Guildmaster, I would see these masterpieces.  Ha!  What
+have you here for masterpieces?  Our two new double-ganger knights?”  And
+Maximilian entered in a simple riding-dress, attended by Master
+Gottfried, and by Sir Kasimir of Adlerstein Wildschloss.
+
+Christina would fain have slipped out unperceived, but the king was
+already removing his cap from his fair curling locks, and bending his
+head as he said, “The Frau Freiherrinn von Adlerstein?  Fair lady, I
+greet you well, and thank you in the Kaisar’s name and mine for having
+bred up for us two true and loyal subjects.”
+
+“May they so prove themselves, my liege!” said Christina, bending low.
+
+“And not only loyal-hearted,” added Maximilian, smiling, “but
+ready-brained, which is less frequent among our youth.  What is thy book,
+young knight?  Virgilius Maro?  Dost thou read the Latin?” he added, in
+that tongue.
+
+“Not as well as we wish, your kingly highness,” readily answered Ebbo, in
+Latin, “having learnt solely of our mother till we came hither.”
+
+“Never fear for that, my young blade,” laughed the king.  “Knowst not
+that the wiseacres thought me too dull for teaching till I was past ten
+years?  And what is thy double about?  Drawing on wood?  How now!  An
+able draughtsman, my young knight?”
+
+“My nephew Sir Friedmund is good to the old man,” said Gottfried, himself
+almost regretting the lad’s avocation.  “My eyes are failing me, and he
+is aiding me with the graving of this border.  He has the knack that no
+teaching will impart to any of my present journeymen.”
+
+“Born, not made,” quoth Maximilian.  “Nay,” as Friedel coloured deeper at
+the sense that Ebbo was ashamed of him, “no blushes, my boy; it is a rare
+gift.  I can make a hundred knights any day, but the Almighty alone can
+make a genius.  It was this very matter of graving that led me hither.”
+
+For Maximilian had a passion for composition, and chiefly for
+autobiography, and his head was full of that curious performance, _Der
+Weisse König_, which occupied many of the leisure moments of his life,
+being dictated to his former writing-master, Marcus Sauerwein.  He had
+already designed the portrayal of his father as the old white king, and
+himself as the young white king, in a series of woodcuts illustrating the
+narrative which culminated in the one romance of his life, his brief
+happy marriage with Mary of Burgundy; and he continued eagerly to talk to
+Master Gottfried about the mystery of graving, and the various scenes in
+which he wished to depict himself learning languages from native
+speakers—Czech from a peasant with a basket of eggs, English from the
+exiles at the Burgundian court, who had also taught him the use of the
+longbow, building from architects and masons, painting from artists, and,
+more imaginatively, astrology from a wonderful flaming sphere in the sky,
+and the black art from a witch inspired by a long-tailed demon perched on
+her shoulder.  No doubt “the young white king” made an exceedingly
+prominent figure in the discourse, but it was so quaint and so brilliant
+that it did not need the charm of royal condescension to entrance the
+young knights, who stood silent auditors.  Ebbo at least was convinced
+that no species of knowledge or skill was viewed by his kaisarly kingship
+as beneath his dignity; but still he feared Friedel’s being seized upon
+to be as prime illustrator to the royal autobiography—a lot to which,
+with all his devotion to Maximilian, he could hardly have consigned his
+brother, in the certainty that the jeers of the ruder nobles would pursue
+the craftsman baron.
+
+However, for the present, Maximilian was keen enough to see that the
+boy’s mechanical skill was not as yet equal to his genius; so he only
+encouraged him to practise, adding that he heard there was a rare lad,
+one Dürer, at Nuremburg, whose productions were already wonderful.  “And
+what is this?” he asked; “what is the daintily-carved group I see
+yonder?”
+
+“Your highness means, ‘The Dove in the Eagle’s Nest,’” said Kasimir.  “It
+is the work of my young kinsmen, and their appropriate device.”
+
+“As well chosen as carved,” said Maximilian, examining it.  “Well is it
+that a city dove should now and then find her way to the eyrie.  Some of
+my nobles would cut my throat for the heresy, but I am safe here, eh, Sir
+Kasimir?  Fare ye well, ye dove-trained eaglets.  We will know one
+another better when we bear the cross against the infidel.”
+
+The brothers kissed his hand, and he descended the steps from the hall
+door.  Ere he had gone far, he turned round upon Sir Kasimir with a merry
+smile: “A very white and tender dove indeed, and one who might easily
+nestle in another eyrie, methinks.”
+
+“Deems your kingly highness that consent could be won?” asked Wildschloss
+
+“From the Kaisar?  Pfui, man, thou knowst as well as I do the golden key
+to his consent.  So thou wouldst risk thy luck again!  Thou hast no male
+heir.”
+
+“And I would fain give my child a mother who would deal well with her.
+Nay, to say sooth, that gentle, innocent face has dwelt with me for many
+years.  But for my pre-contract, I had striven long ago to win her, and
+had been a happier man, mayhap.  And, now I have seen what she has made
+of her sons, I feel I could scarce find her match among our nobility.”
+
+“Nor elsewhere,” said the king; “and I honour thee for not being so
+besotted in our German haughtiness as not to see that it is our free
+cities that make refined and discreet dames.  I give you good speed,
+Adlerstein; but, if I read aright the brow of one at least of these young
+fellows, thou wilt scarce have a willing or obedient stepson.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+THE RIVAL EYRIE
+
+
+EBBO trusted that his kinsman of Wildschloss was safe gone with the
+Court, and his temper smoothed and his spirits rose in proportion while
+preparations for a return to Adlerstein were being completed—preparations
+by which the burgher lady might hope to render the castle far more
+habitable, not to say baronial, than it had ever been.
+
+The lady herself felt thankful that her stay at Ulm had turned out well
+beyond all anticipations in the excellent understanding between her uncle
+and her sons, and still more in Ebbo’s full submission and personal
+loyalty towards the imperial family.  The die was cast, and the first
+step had been taken towards rendering the Adlerstein family the peaceful,
+honourable nobles she had always longed to see them.
+
+She was one afternoon assisting her aunt in some of the duties of her
+wirthschaft, when Master Gottfried entered the apartment with an air of
+such extreme complacency that both turned round amazed; the one
+exclaiming, “Surely funds have come in for finishing the spire!” the
+other, “Have they appointed thee Provost for next year, house-father?”
+
+“Neither the one nor the other,” was the reply.  “But heard you not the
+horse’s feet?  Here has the Lord of Adlerstein Wildschloss been with me
+in full state, to make formal proposals for the hand of our child,
+Christina.”
+
+“For Christina!” cried Hausfrau Johanna with delight; “truly that is
+well.  Truly our maiden has done honour to her breeding.  A second
+nobleman demanding her—and one who should be able richly to endow her!”
+
+“And who will do so,” said Master Gottfried.  “For morning gift he
+promises the farms and lands of Grünau—rich both in forest and corn
+glebe.  Likewise, her dower shall be upon Wildschloss—where the soil is
+of the richest pasture, and there are no less than three mills, whence
+the lord obtains large rights of multure.  Moreover, the Castle was added
+to and furnished on his marriage with the late baroness, and might serve
+a Kurfürst; and though the jewels of Freiherrinn Valeska must be
+inherited by her daughter, yet there are many of higher price which have
+descended from his own ancestresses, and which will all be hers.”
+
+“And what a wedding we will have!” exclaimed Johanna; “it shall be truly
+baronial.  I will take my hood and go at once to neighbour Sophie
+Lemsberg, who was wife to the Markgraf’s Under Keller-Meister.  She will
+tell me point device the ceremonies befitting the espousals of a baron’s
+widow.”
+
+Poor Christina had sat all this time with drooping head and clasped
+hands, a tear stealing down as the formal terms of the treaty sent her
+spirit back to the urgent, pleading, imperious voice that had said, “Now,
+little one, thou wilt not shut me out;” and as she glanced at the ring
+that had lain on that broad palm, she felt as if her sixteen cheerful
+years had been an injury to her husband in his nameless bloody grave.
+But protection was so needful in those rude ages, and second marriages so
+frequent, that reluctance was counted as weakness.  She knew her uncle
+and aunt would never believe that aught but compulsion had bound her to
+the rude outlaw, and her habit of submission was so strong that, only
+when her aunt was actually rising to go and consult her gossip, she found
+breath to falter,
+
+“Hold, dear aunt—my sons—”
+
+“Nay, child, it is the best thing thou couldst do for them.  Wonders hast
+thou wrought, yet are they too old to be without fatherly authority.  I
+speak not of Friedel; the lad is gentle and pious, though spirited, but
+for the baron.  The very eye and temper of my poor brother Hugh—thy
+father, Stine—are alive again in him.  Yea, I love the lad the better for
+it, while I fear.  He minds me precisely of Hugh ere he was ’prenticed to
+the weapon-smith, and all became bitterness.”
+
+“Ah, truly,” said Christina, raising her eyes “all would become
+bitterness with my Ebbo were I to give a father’s power to one whom he
+would not love.”
+
+“Then were he sullen and unruly, indeed!” said the old burgomaster with
+displeasure; “none have shown him more kindness, none could better aid
+him in court and empire.  The lad has never had restraint enough.  I
+blame thee not, child, but he needs it sorely, by thine own showing.”
+
+“Alas, uncle! mine be the blame, but it is over late.  My boy will rule
+himself for the love of God and of his mother, but he will brook no hand
+over him—least of all now he is a knight and thinks himself a man.
+Uncle, I should be deprived of both my sons, for Friedel’s very soul is
+bound up with his brother’s.  I pray thee enjoin not this thing on me,”
+she implored.
+
+“Child!” exclaimed Master Gottfried, “thou thinkst not that such a
+contract as this can be declined for the sake of a wayward Junker!”
+
+“Stay, house-father, the little one will doubtless hear reason and
+submit,” put in the aunt.  “Her sons were goodly and delightsome to her
+in their upgrowth, but they are well-nigh men.  They will be away to
+court and camp, to love and marriage; and how will it be with her then,
+young and fair as she still is?  Well will it be for her to have a
+stately lord of her own, and a new home of love and honour springing
+round her.”
+
+“True,” continued Sorel; “and though she be too pious and wise to reck
+greatly of such trifles, yet it may please her dreamy brain to hear that
+Sir Kasimir loves her even like a paladin, and the love of a tried man of
+six-and-forty is better worth than a mere kindling of youthful fancy.”
+
+“Mine Eberhard loved me!” murmured Christina, almost to herself, but her
+aunt caught the word.
+
+“And what was such love worth?  To force thee into a stolen match, and
+leave thee alone and unowned to the consequences!”
+
+“Peace!” exclaimed Christina, with crimson cheek and uplifted head.
+“Peace!  My own dear lord loved me with true and generous love!  None but
+myself knows how much.  Not a word will I hear against that tender
+heart.”
+
+“Yes, peace,” returned Gottfried in a conciliatory tone,—“peace to the
+brave Sir Eberhard.  Thine aunt meant no ill of him.  He truly would
+rejoice that the wisdom of his choice should receive such testimony, and
+that his sons should be thus well handled.  Nay, little as I heed such
+toys, it will doubtless please the lads that the baron will obtain of the
+Emperor letters of nobility for this house, which verily sprang of a good
+Walloon family, and so their shield will have no blank.  The Romish king
+promises to give thee rank with any baroness, and hath fully owned what a
+pearl thou art, mine own sweet dove!  Nay, Sir Kasimir is coming
+to-morrow in the trust to make the first betrothal with Graf von Kaulwitz
+as a witness, and I thought of asking the Provost on the other hand.”
+
+“To-morrow!” exclaimed Johanna; “and how is she to be meetly clad?  Look
+at this widow-garb; and how is time to be found for procuring other
+raiment?  House-father, a substantial man like you should better
+understand!  The meal too!  I must to gossip Sophie!”
+
+“Verily, dear mother and father,” said Christina, who had rallied a
+little, “have patience with me.  I may not lightly or suddenly betroth
+myself; I know not that I can do so at all, assuredly not unless my sons
+were heartily willing.  Have I your leave to retire?”
+
+“Granted, my child, for meditation will show thee that this is too fair a
+lot for any but thee.  Much had I longed to see thee wedded ere thy sons
+outgrew thy care, but I shunned proposing even one of our worthy
+guildmasters, lest my young Freiherr should take offence; but this
+knight, of his own blood, true and wise as a burgher, and faithful and
+God-fearing withal, is a better match than I durst hope, and is no doubt
+a special reward from thy patron saint.”
+
+“Let me entreat one favour more,” implored Christina.  “Speak of this to
+no one ere I have seen my sons.”
+
+She made her way to her own chamber, there to weep and flutter.  Marriage
+was a matter of such high contract between families that the parties
+themselves had usually no voice in the matter, and only the widowed had
+any chance of a personal choice; nor was this always accorded in the case
+of females, who remained at the disposal of their relatives.  Good
+substantial wedded affection was not lacking, but romantic love was
+thought an unnecessary preliminary, and found a vent in extravagant
+adoration, not always in reputable quarters.  Obedience first to the
+father, then to the husband, was the first requisite; love might shift
+for itself; and the fair widow of Adlerstein, telling her beads in sheer
+perplexity, knew not whether her strong repugnance to this marriage and
+warm sympathy with her son Ebbo were not an act of rebellion.  Yet each
+moment did her husband rise before her mind more vividly, with his rugged
+looks, his warm, tender heart, his dawnings of comprehension, his
+generous forbearance and reverential love—the love of her youth—to be
+equalled by no other.  The accomplished courtier and polished man of the
+world might be his superior, but she loathed the superiority, since it
+was to her husband.  Might not his one chosen dove keep heart-whole for
+him to the last?  She recollected that coarsest, cruellest reproach of
+all that her mother-in-law had been wont to fling at her,—that she, the
+recent widow, the new-made mother of Eberhard’s babes, in her grief, her
+terror, and her weakness had sought to captivate this suitor by her
+blandishments.  The taunt seemed justified, and her cheeks burned with
+absolute shame “My husband! my loving Eberhard! left with none but me to
+love thee, unknown to thine own sons!  I cannot, I will not give my heart
+away from thee!  Thy little bride shall be faithful to thee, whatever
+betide.  When we meet beyond the grave I will have been thine only, nor
+have set any before thy sons.  Heaven forgive me if I be undutiful to my
+uncle; but thou must be preferred before even him!  Hark!” and she
+started as if at Eberhard’s foot-step; then smiled, recollecting that
+Ebbo had his father’s tread.  But her husband had been too much in awe of
+her to enter with that hasty agitated step and exclamation, “Mother,
+mother, what insolence is this!”
+
+“Hush, Ebbo!  I prayed mine uncle to let me speak to thee.”
+
+“It is true, then,” said Ebbo, dashing his cap on the ground; “I had
+soundly beaten that grinning ’prentice for telling Heinz.”
+
+“Truly the house rings with the rumour, mother,” said Friedel, “but we
+had not believed it.”
+
+“I believed Wildschloss assured enough for aught,” said Ebbo, “but I
+thought he knew where to begin.  Does he not know who is head of the
+house of Adlerstein, since he must tamper with a mechanical craftsman,
+cap in hand to any sprig of nobility!  I would have soon silenced his
+overtures!”
+
+“Is it in sooth as we heard?” asked Friedel, blushing to the ears, for
+the boy was shy as a maiden.  “Mother, we know what you would say,” he
+added, throwing himself on his knees beside her, his arm round her waist,
+his cheek on her lap, and his eyes raised to hers.
+
+She bent down to kiss him.  “Thou knewst it, Friedel, and now must thou
+aid me to remain thy father’s true widow, and to keep Ebbo from being
+violent.”
+
+Ebbo checked his hasty march to put his hand on her chair and kiss her
+brow.  “Motherling, I will restrain myself, so you will give me your word
+not to desert us.”
+
+“Nay, Ebbo,” said Friedel, “the motherling is too true and loving for us
+to bind her.”
+
+“Children,” she answered, “hear me patiently.  I have been communing with
+myself, and deeply do I feel that none other can I love save him who is
+to you a mere name, but to me a living presence.  Nor would I put any
+between you and me.  Fear me not, Ebbo.  I think the mothers and sons of
+this wider, fuller world do not prize one another as we do.  But, my son,
+this is no matter for rage or ingratitude.  Remember it is no small
+condescension in a noble to stoop to thy citizen mother.”
+
+“He knew what painted puppets noble ladies are,” growled Ebbo.
+
+“Moreover,” continued Christina, “thine uncle is highly gratified, and
+cannot believe that I can refuse.  He understands not my love for thy
+father, and sees many advantages for us all.  I doubt me if he believes I
+have power to resist his will, and for thee, he would not count thine
+opposition valid.  And the more angry and vehement thou art, the more
+will he deem himself doing thee a service by overruling thee.”
+
+“Come home, mother.  Let Heinz lead our horses to the door in the dawn,
+and when we are back in free Adlerstein it will be plain who is master.”
+
+“Such a flitting would scarce prove our wisdom,” said Christina, “to run
+away with thy mother like a lover in a ballad.  Nay, let me first deal
+gently with thine uncle, and speak myself with Sir Kasimir, so that I may
+show him the vanity of his suit.  Then will we back to Adlerstein without
+leaving wounds to requite kindness.”
+
+Ebbo was wrought on to promise not to attack the burgomaster on the
+subject, but he was moody and silent, and Master Gottfried let him alone,
+considering his gloom as another proof of his need of fatherly authority,
+and as a peace-lover forbearing to provoke his fiery spirit.
+
+But when Sir Kasimir’s visit was imminent, and Christina had refused to
+make the change in her dress by which a young widow was considered to lay
+herself open to another courtship, Master Gottfried called the twins
+apart.
+
+“My young lords,” he said, “I fear me ye are vexing your gentle mother by
+needless strife at what must take place.”
+
+“Pardon me, good uncle,” said Ebbo, “I utterly decline the honour of Sir
+Kasimir’s suit to my mother.”
+
+Master Gottfried smiled.  “Sons are not wont to be the judges in such
+cases, Sir Eberhard.”
+
+“Perhaps not,” he answered; “but my mother’s will is to the nayward, nor
+shall she be coerced.”
+
+“It is merely because of you and your pride,” said Master Gottfried.
+
+“I think not so,” rejoined the calmer Friedel; “my mother’s love for my
+father is still fresh.”
+
+“Young knights,” said Master Gottfried, “it would scarce become me to
+say, nor you to hear, how much matter of fancy such love must have been
+towards one whom she knew but for a few short months, though her pure
+sweet dreams, through these long years, have moulded him into a hero.
+Boys, I verily believe ye love her truly.  Would it be well for her still
+to mourn and cherish a dream while yet in her fresh age, capable of new
+happiness, fuller than she has ever enjoyed?”
+
+“She is happy with us,” rejoined Ebbo.
+
+“And ye are good lads and loving sons, though less duteous in manner than
+I could wish.  But look you, you may not ever be with her, and when ye
+are absent in camp or court, or contracting a wedlock of your own, would
+you leave her to her lonesome life in your solitary castle?”
+
+Friedel’s unselfishness might have been startled, but Ebbo boldly
+answered, “All mine is hers.  No joy to me but shall be a joy to her.  We
+can make her happier than could any stranger.  Is it not so, Friedel?”
+
+“It is,” said Friedel, thoughtfully.
+
+“Ah, rash bloods, promising beyond what ye can keep.  Nature will be too
+strong for you.  Love your mother as ye may, what will she be to you when
+a bride comes in your way?  Fling not away in wrath, Sir Baron; it was so
+with your parents both before you; and what said the law of the good God
+at the first marriage?  How can you withstand the nature He has given?”
+
+“Belike I may wed,” said Ebbo, bluntly; “but if it be not for my mother’s
+happiness, call me man-sworn knight.”
+
+“Not so,” good-humouredly answered Gottfried, “but boy-sworn paladin, who
+talks of he knows not what.  Speak knightly truth, Sir Baron, and own
+that this opposition is in verity from distaste to a stepfather’s rule.”
+
+“I own that I will not brook such rule,” said Ebbo; “nor do I know what
+we have done to deserve that it should be thrust on us.  You have never
+blamed Friedel, at least; and verily, uncle, my mother’s eye will lead me
+where a stranger’s hand shall never drive me.  Did I even think she had
+for this man a quarter of the love she bears to my dead father, I would
+strive for endurance; but in good sooth we found her in tears, praying us
+to guard her from him.  I may be a boy, but I am man enough to prevent
+her from being coerced.”
+
+“Was this so, Friedel?” asked Master Gottfried, moved more than by all
+that had gone before.  “Ach, I thought ye all wiser.  And spake she not
+of Sir Kasimir’s offers?—Interest with the Romish king?—Yea, and a grant
+of nobility and arms to this house, so as to fill the blank in your
+scutcheon?”
+
+“My father never asked if she were noble,” said Ebbo.  “Nor will I barter
+her for a cantle of a shield.”
+
+“There spake a manly spirit,” said his uncle, delighted.  “Her worth hath
+taught thee how little to prize these gewgaws!  Yet, if you look to
+mingling with your own proud kind, ye may fall among greater slights than
+ye can brook.  It may matter less to you, Sir Baron, but Friedel here,
+ay, and your sons, will be ineligible to the choicest orders of
+knighthood, and the canonries and chapters that are honourable
+endowments.”
+
+Friedel looked as if he could bear it, and Eberhard said, “The order of
+the Dove of Adlerstein is enough for us.”
+
+“Headstrong all, headstrong all,” sighed Master Gottfried.  “One romantic
+marriage has turned all your heads.”
+
+The Baron of Adlerstein Wildschloss, unprepared for the opposition that
+awaited him, was riding down the street equipped point device, and with a
+goodly train of followers, in brilliant suits.  Private wooing did not
+enter into the honest ideas of the burghers, and the suitor was ushered
+into the full family assembly, where Christina rose and came forward a
+few steps to meet him, curtseying as low as he bowed, as he said, “Lady,
+I have preferred my suit to you through your honour-worthy uncle, who is
+good enough to stand my friend.”
+
+“You are over good, sir.  I feel the honour, but a second wedlock may not
+be mine.”
+
+“Now,” murmured Ebbo to his brother, as the knight and lady seated
+themselves in full view, “now will the smooth-tongued fellow talk her out
+of her senses.  Alack! that gipsy prophecy!”
+
+Wildschloss did not talk like a young wooer; such days were over for
+both; but he spoke as a grave and honourable man, deeply penetrated with
+true esteem and affection.  He said that at their first meeting he had
+been struck with her sweetness and discretion, and would soon after have
+endeavoured to release her from her durance, but that he was bound by the
+contract already made with the Trautbachs, who were dangerous neighbours
+to Wildschloss.  He had delayed his distasteful marriage as long as
+possible, and it had caused him nothing but trouble and strife; his
+children would not live, and Thekla, the only survivor, was, as his sole
+heiress, a mark for the cupidity of her uncle, the Count of Trautbach,
+and his almost savage son Lassla; while the right to the Wildschloss
+barony would become so doubtful between her and Ebbo, as heir of the male
+line, that strife and bloodshed would be well-nigh inevitable.  These
+causes made it almost imperative that he should re-marry, and his own
+strong preference and regard for little Thekla directed his wishes
+towards the Freiherrinn von Adlerstein.  He backed his suit with courtly
+compliments, as well as with representations of his child’s need of a
+mother’s training, and the twins’ equal want of fatherly guidance,
+dilating on the benefits he could confer on them.
+
+Christina felt his kindness, and had full trust in his intentions.  “No”
+was a difficult syllable to her, but she had that within her which could
+not accept him; and she firmly told him that she was too much bound to
+both her Eberhards.  But there was no daunting him, nor preventing her
+uncle and aunt from encouraging him.  He professed that he would wait,
+and give her time to consider; and though she reiterated that
+consideration would not change her mind, Master Gottfried came forward to
+thank him, and express his confidence of bringing her to reason.
+
+“While I, sir,” said Ebbo, with flashing eyes, and low but resentful
+voice, “beg to decline the honour in the name of the elder house of
+Adlerstein.”
+
+He held himself upright as a dart, but was infinitely annoyed by the
+little mocking bow and smile that he received in return, as Sir Kasimir,
+with his long mantle, swept out of the apartment, attended by Master
+Gottfried.
+
+“Burgomaster Sorel,” said the boy, standing in the middle of the floor as
+his uncle returned, “let me hear whether I am a person of any
+consideration in this family or not?”
+
+“Nephew baron,” quietly replied Master Gottfried, “it is not the use of
+us Germans to be dictated to by youths not yet arrived at years of
+discretion.”
+
+“Then, mother,” said Ebbo, “we leave this place to-morrow morn.”  And at
+her nod of assent the house-father looked deeply grieved, the
+house-mother began to clamour about ingratitude.  “Not so,” answered
+Ebbo, fiercely.  “We quit the house as poor as we came, in homespun and
+with the old mare.”
+
+“Peace, Ebbo!” said his mother, rising; “peace, I entreat, house-mother!
+pardon, uncle, I pray thee.  O, why will not all who love me let me
+follow that which I believe to be best!”
+
+“Child,” said her uncle, “I cannot see thee domineered over by a youth
+whose whole conduct shows his need of restraint.”
+
+“Nor am I,” said Christina.  “It is I who am utterly averse to this
+offer.  My sons and I are one in that; and, uncle, if I pray of you to
+consent to let us return to our castle, it is that I would not see the
+visit that has made us so happy stained with strife and dissension!
+Sure, sure, you cannot be angered with my son for his love for me.”
+
+“For the self-seeking of his love,” said Master Gottfried.  “It is to
+gratify his own pride that he first would prevent thee from being
+enriched and ennobled, and now would bear thee away to the scant—Nay,
+Freiherr, I will not seem to insult you, but resentment would make you
+cruel to your mother.”
+
+“Not cruel!” said Friedel, hastily.  “My mother is willing.  And verily,
+good uncle, methinks that we all were best at home.  We have benefited
+much and greatly by our stay; we have learnt to love and reverence you;
+but we are wild mountaineers at the best; and, while our hearts are
+fretted by the fear of losing our sweet mother, we can scarce be as
+patient or submissive as if we had been bred up by a stern father.  We
+have ever judged and acted for ourselves, and it is hard to us not to do
+so still, when our minds are chafed.”
+
+“Friedel,” said Ebbo, sternly, “I will have no pardon asked for
+maintaining my mother’s cause.  Do not thou learn to be smooth-tongued.”
+
+“O thou wrong-headed boy!” half groaned Master Gottfried.  “Why did not
+all this fall out ten years sooner, when thou wouldst have been amenable?
+Yet, after all, I do not know that any noble training has produced a more
+high-minded loving youth,” he added, half relenting as he looked at the
+gallant, earnest face, full of defiance indeed, but with a certain
+wistful appealing glance at “the motherling,” softening the liquid
+lustrous dark eye.  “Get thee gone, boy, I would not quarrel with you;
+and it may be, as Friedel says, that we are best out of one another’s
+way.  You are used to lord it, and I can scarce make excuses for you.”
+
+“Then,” said Ebbo, scarce appeased, “I take home my mother, and you, sir,
+cease to favour Kasimir’s suit.”
+
+“No, Sir Baron.  I cease not to think that nothing would be so much for
+your good.  It is because I believe that a return to your own old castle
+will best convince you all that I will not vex your mother by further
+opposing your departure.  When you perceive your error may it only not be
+too late!  Such a protector is not to be found every day.”
+
+“My mother shall never need any protector save myself,” said Ebbo; “but,
+sir, she loves you, and owes all to you.  Therefore I will not be at
+strife with you, and there is my hand.”
+
+He said it as if he had been the Emperor reconciling himself to all the
+Hanse towns in one.  Master Gottfried could scarce refrain from shrugging
+his shoulders, and Hausfrau Johanna was exceedingly angry with the
+petulant pride and insolence of the young noble; but, in effect, all were
+too much relieved to avoid an absolute quarrel with the fiery lad to take
+exception at minor matters.  The old burgher was forbearing; Christina,
+who knew how much her son must have swallowed to bring him to this
+concession for love of her, thought him a hero worthy of all sacrifices;
+and peace-making Friedel, by his aunt’s side, soon softened even her, by
+some of the persuasive arguments that old dames love from gracious,
+graceful, great-nephews.
+
+And when, by and by, Master Gottfried went out to call on Sir Kasimir,
+and explain how he had thought it best to yield to the hot-tempered lad,
+and let the family learn how to be thankful for the goods they had
+rejected, he found affairs in a state that made him doubly anxious that
+the young barons should be safe on their mountain without knowing of
+them.  The Trautbach family had heard of Wildschloss’s designs, and they
+had set abroad such injurious reports respecting the Lady of Adlerstein,
+that Sir Kasimir was in the act of inditing a cartel to be sent by Count
+Kaulwitz, to demand an explanation—not merely as the lady’s suitor, but
+as the only Adlerstein of full age.  Now, if Ebbo had heard of the
+rumour, he would certainly have given the lie direct, and taken the whole
+defence on himself; and it may be feared that, just as his cause might
+have been, Master Gottfried’s faith did not stretch to believing that it
+would make his sixteen-year-old arm equal to the brutal might of Lassla
+of Trautbach.  So he heartily thanked the Baron of Wildschloss, agreed
+with him that the young knights were not as yet equal to the maintenance
+of the cause, and went home again to watch carefully that no report
+reached either of his nephews.  Nor did he breathe freely till he had
+seen the little party ride safe off in the early morning, in much more
+lordly guise than when they had entered the city.
+
+As to Wildschloss and his nephew of Trautbach, in spite of their
+relationship they had a sharp combat on the borders of their own estates,
+in which both were severely wounded; but Sir Kasimir, with the
+misericorde in his grasp, forced Lassla to retract whatever he had said
+in dispraise of the Lady of Adlerstein.  Wily old Gottfried took care
+that the tidings should be sent in a form that might at once move
+Christina with pity and gratitude towards her champion, and convince her
+sons that the adversary was too much hurt for them to attempt a fresh
+challenge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+THE EAGLE AND THE SNAKE
+
+
+THE reconciliation made Ebbo retract his hasty resolution of
+relinquishing all the benefits resulting from his connection with the
+Sorel family, and his mother’s fortune made it possible to carry out many
+changes that rendered the castle and its inmates far more prosperous in
+appearance than had ever been the case before.  Christina had once again
+the appliances of a _wirthschaft_, such as she felt to be the suitable
+and becoming appurtenance of a right-minded Frau, gentle or simple, and
+she felt so much the happier and more respectable.
+
+A chaplain had also been secured.  The youths had insisted on his being
+capable of assisting their studies, and, a good man had been found who
+was fearfully learned, having studied at all possible universities, but
+then failing as a teacher, because he was so dreamy and absent as to be
+incapable of keeping the unruly students in order.  Jobst Schön was his
+proper name, but he was translated into Jodocus Pulcher.  The chapel was
+duly adorned, the hall and other chambers were fitted up with some degree
+of comfort; the castle court was cleansed, the cattle sheds removed to
+the rear, and the serfs were presented with seed, and offered payment in
+coin if they would give their labour in fencing and clearing the
+cornfield and vineyard which the barons were bent on forming on the sunny
+slope of the ravine.  Poverty was over, thanks to the marriage portion,
+and yet Ebbo looked less happy than in the days when there was but a bare
+subsistence; and he seemed to miss the full tide of city life more than
+did his brother, who, though he had enjoyed Ulm more heartily at the
+time, seemed to have returned to all his mountain delights with greater
+zest than ever.  At his favourite tarn, he revelled in the vast stillness
+with the greater awe for having heard the hum of men, and his minstrel
+dreams had derived fresh vigour from contact with the active world.  But,
+as usual, he was his brother’s chief stay in the vexations of a reformer.
+The serfs had much rather their lord had turned out a freebooter than an
+improver.  Why should they sow new seeds, when the old had sufficed their
+fathers?  Work, beyond the regulated days when they scratched up the soil
+of his old enclosure, was abhorrent to them.  As to his offered coin,
+they needed nothing it would buy, and had rather bask in the sun or sleep
+in the smoke.  A vineyard had never been heard of on Adlerstein mountain:
+it was clean contrary to his forefathers’ habits; and all came of the bad
+drop of restless burgher blood, that could not let honest folk rest.
+
+Ebbo stormed, not merely with words, but blows, became ashamed of his
+violence, tried to atone for it by gifts and kind words, and in return
+was sulkily told that he would bring more good to the village by rolling
+the fiery wheel straight down hill at the wake, than by all his
+new-fangled ways.  Had not Koppel and a few younger men been more open to
+influence, his agricultural schemes could hardly have begun; but
+Friedel’s persuasions were not absolutely without success, and every rood
+that was dug was achieved by his patience and perseverance.
+
+Next came home the Graf von Schlangenwald.  He had of late inhabited his
+castle in Styria, but in a fierce quarrel with some of his neighbours he
+had lost his eldest son, and the pacification enforced by the King of the
+Romans had so galled and infuriated him that he had deserted that part of
+the country and returned to Swabia more fierce and bitter than ever.
+Thenceforth began a petty border warfare such as had existed when
+Christina first knew Adlerstein, but had of late died out.  The shepherd
+lad came home weeping with wrath.  Three mounted Schlangenwaldern had
+driven off his four best sheep, and beaten himself with their halberds,
+though he was safe on Adlerstein ground.  Then a light thrown by a
+Schlangenwald reiter consumed all Jobst’s pile of wood.  The swine did
+not come home, and were found with spears sticking in them; the great
+broad-horned bull that Ebbo had brought from the pastures of Ulm vanished
+from the Alp below the Gemsbock’s Pass, and was known to be salted for
+winter use at Schlangenwald.
+
+Still Christina tried to persuade her sons that this might be only the
+retainers’ violence, and induced Ebbo to write a letter, complaining of
+the outrages, but not blaming the Count, only begging that his followers
+might be better restrained.  The letter was conveyed by a lay brother—no
+other messenger being safe.  Ebbo had protested from the first that it
+would be of no use, but he waited anxiously for the answer.
+
+Thus it stood, when conveyed to him by a tenant of the Ruprecht
+cloister:—
+
+    “Wot you, Eberhard, Freiherr von Adlerstein, that your house have
+    injured me by thought, word, and deed.  Your great-grandfather
+    usurped my lands at the ford.  Your grandfather stole my cattle and
+    burnt my mills.  Then, in the war, he slew my brother Johann and
+    lamed for life my cousin Matthias.  Your father slew eight of my
+    retainers and spoiled my crops.  You yourself claim my land at the
+    ford, and secure the spoil which is justly mine.  Therefore do I
+    declare war and feud against you.  Therefore to you and all yours, to
+    your helpers and helpers’ helpers, am I a foe.  And thereby shall I
+    have maintained my honour against you and yours.
+
+                                         WOLFGANG, Graf von Schlangenwald.
+                               HIEROM, Graf von Schlangenwald—his cousin.”
+
+                                                               &c. &c. &c.
+
+And a long list of names, all connected with Schlangenwald, followed; and
+a large seal, bearing the snake of Schlangenwald, was appended thereto.
+
+“The old miscreant!” burst out Ebbo; “it is a feud brief.”
+
+“A feud brief!” exclaimed Friedel; “they are no longer according to the
+law.”
+
+“Law?—what cares he for law or mercy either?  Is this the way men act by
+the League?  Did we not swear to send no more feud letters, nor have
+recourse to fist-right?”
+
+“We must appeal to the Markgraf of Wurtemburg,” said Friedel.
+
+It was the only measure in their power, though Ebbo winced at it; but his
+oaths were recent, and his conscience would not allow him to transgress
+them by doing himself justice.  Besides, neither party could take the
+castle of the other, and the only reprisals in his power would have been
+on the defenceless peasants of Schlangenwald.  He must therefore lay the
+whole matter before the Markgraf, who was the head of the Swabian League,
+and bound to redress his wrongs.  He made his arrangements without
+faltering, selecting the escort who were to accompany him, and insisting
+on leaving Friedel to guard his mother and the castle.  He would not for
+the world have admitted the suggestion that the counsel and introduction
+of Adlerstein Wildschloss would have been exceedingly useful to him.
+
+Poor Christina!  It was a great deal too like that former departure, and
+her heart was heavy within her!  Friedel was equally unhappy at letting
+his brother go without him, but it was quite necessary that he and the
+few armed men who remained should show themselves at all points open to
+the enemy in the course of the day, lest the Freiherr’s absence should be
+remarked.  He did his best to cheer his mother, by reminding her that
+Ebbo was not likely to be taken at unawares as their father had been; and
+he shared the prayers and chapel services, in which she poured out her
+anxiety.
+
+The blue banner came safe up the Pass again, but Wurtemburg had been
+formally civil to the young Freiherr; but he had laughed at the fend
+letter as a mere old-fashioned habit of Schangenwald’s that it was better
+not to notice, and he evidently regarded the stealing of a bull or the
+misusing of a serf as far too petty a matter for his attention.  It was
+as if a judge had been called by a crying child to settle a nursery
+quarrel.  He told Ebbo that, being a free Baron of the empire, he must
+keep his bounds respected; he was free to take and hang any spoiler he
+could catch, but his bulls were his own affair: the League was not for
+such gear.
+
+And a knight who had ridden out of Stuttgard with Ebbo had told him that
+it was no wonder that this had been his reception, for not only was
+Schlangenwald an old intimate of the Markgraf, but Swabia was claimed as
+a fief of Wurtemburg, so that Ebbo’s direct homage to the Emperor,
+without the interposition of the Markgraf, had made him no object of
+favour.
+
+“What could be done?” asked Ebbo.
+
+“Fire some Schlangenwald hamlet, and teach him to respect yours,” said
+the knight.
+
+“The poor serfs are guiltless.”
+
+“Ha! ha! as if they would not rob any of yours.  Give and take, that’s
+the way the empire wags, Sir Baron.  Send him a feud letter in return,
+with a goodly file of names at its foot, and teach him to respect you.”
+
+“But I have sworn to abstain from fist-right.”
+
+“Much you gain by so abstaining.  If the League will not take the trouble
+to right you, right yourself.”
+
+“I shall appeal to the Emperor, and tell him how his League is
+administered.”
+
+“Young sir, if the Emperor were to guard every cow in his domains he
+would have enough to do.  You will never prosper with him without some
+one to back your cause better than that free tongue of yours.  Hast no
+sister that thou couldst give in marriage to a stout baron that could aid
+you with strong arm and prudent head?”
+
+“I have only one twin brother.”
+
+“Ah! the twins of Adlerstein!  I remember me.  Was not the other
+Adlerstein seeking an alliance with your lady mother?  Sure no better aid
+could be found.  He is hand and glove with young King Max.”
+
+“That may never be,” said Ebbo, haughtily.  And, sure that he should
+receive the same advice, he decided against turning aside to consult his
+uncle at Ulm, and returned home in a mood that rejoiced Heinz and Hatto
+with hopes of the old days, while it filled his mother with dreary dismay
+and apprehension.
+
+“Schlangenwald should suffer next time he transgressed,” said Ebbo.  “It
+should not again be said that he himself was a coward who appealed to the
+law because his hand could not keep his head.”
+
+The “next time” was when the first winter cold was setting in.  A party
+of reitern came to harry an outlying field, where Ulrich had raised a
+scanty crop of rye.  Tidings reached the castle in such good time that
+the two brothers, with Heinz, the two Ulm grooms, Koppel, and a troop of
+serfs, fell on the marauders before they had effected much damage, and
+while some remained to trample out the fire, the rest pursued the enemy
+even to the village of Schlangenwald.
+
+“Burn it, Herr Freiherr,” cried Heinz, hot with victory.  “Let them learn
+how to make havoc of our corn.”
+
+But a host of half-naked beings rushed out shrieking about sick children,
+bed-ridden grandmothers, and crippled fathers, and falling on their
+knees, with their hands stretched out to the young barons.  Ebbo turned
+away his head with hot tears in his eyes.  “Friedel, what can we do?”
+
+“Not barbarous murder,” said Friedel.
+
+“But they brand us for cowards!”
+
+“The cowardice were in striking here,” and Friedel sprang to withhold
+Koppel, who had lighted a bundle of dried fern ready to thrust into the
+thatch.
+
+“Peasants!” said Ebbo, with the same impulse, “I spare you.  You did not
+this wrong.  But bear word to your lord, that if he will meet me with
+lance and sword, he will learn the valour of Adlerstein.”
+
+The serfs flung themselves before him in transports of gratitude, but he
+turned hastily away and strode up the mountain, his cheek glowing as he
+remembered, too late, that his defiance would be scoffed at, as a boy’s
+vaunt.  By and by he arrived at the hamlet, where he found a prisoner, a
+scowling, abject fellow, already well beaten, and now held by two serfs.
+
+“The halter is ready, Herr Freiherr,” said old Ulrich, “and yon rowan
+stump is still as stout as when your Herr grandsire hung three
+lanzknechts on it in one day.  We only waited your bidding.”
+
+“Quick then, and let me hear no more,” said Ebbo, about to descend the
+pass, as if hastening from the execution of a wolf taken in a gin.
+
+“Has he seen the priest?” asked Friedel.
+
+The peasants looked as if this were one of Sir Friedel’s unaccountable
+fancies.  Ebbo paused, frowned, and muttered, but seeing a move as if to
+drag the wretch towards the stunted bush overhanging an abyss, he
+shouted, “Hold, Ulrich!  Little Hans, do thou run down to the castle, and
+bring Father Jodocus to do his office!”
+
+The serfs were much disgusted.  “It never was so seen before, Herr
+Freiherr,” remonstrated Heinz; “fang and hang was ever the word.”
+
+“What shrift had my lord’s father, or mine?” added Koppel.
+
+“Look you!” said Ebbo, turning sharply.  “If Schlangenwald be a godless
+ruffian, pitiless alike to soul and body, is that a cause that I should
+stain myself too?”
+
+“It were true vengeance,” growled Koppel.
+
+“And now,” grumbled Ulrich, “will my lady hear, and there will be feeble
+pleadings for the vermin’s life.”
+
+Like mutterings ensued, the purport of which was caught by Friedel, and
+made him say to Ebbo, who would again have escaped the disagreeableness
+of the scene, “We had better tarry at hand.  Unless we hold the folk in
+some check there will be no right execution.  They will torture him to
+death ere the priest comes.”
+
+Ebbo yielded, and began to pace the scanty area of the flat rock where
+the need-fire was wont to blaze.  After a time he exclaimed: “Friedel,
+how couldst ask me?  Knowst not that it sickens me to see a mountain cat
+killed, save in full chase.  And thou—why, thou art white as the snow
+crags!”
+
+“Better conquer the folly than that he there should be put to needless
+pain,” said Friedel, but with labouring breath that showed how terrible
+was the prospect to his imaginative soul not inured to death-scenes like
+those of his fellows.
+
+Just then a mocking laugh broke forth.  “Ha!” cried Ebbo, looking keenly
+down, “what do ye there?  Fang and hang may be fair; fang and torment is
+base!  What was it, Lieschen?”
+
+“Only, Herr Freiherr, the caitiff craved drink, and the fleischerinn gave
+him a cup from the stream behind the slaughter-house, where we killed the
+swine.  Fit for the like of him!”
+
+“By heavens, when I forbade torture!” cried Ebbo, leaping from the rock
+in time to see the disgusting draught held to the lips of the captive,
+whose hands were twisted back and bound with cruel tightness; for the
+German boor, once roused from his lazy good-nature, was doubly savage
+from stolidity.
+
+“Wretches!” cried Ebbo, striking right and left with the back of his
+sword, among the serfs, and then cutting the thong that was eating into
+the prisoner’s flesh, while Friedel caught up a wooden bowl, filled it
+with pure water, and offered it to the captive, who drank deeply.
+
+“Now,” said Ebbo, “hast ought to say for thyself?”
+
+A low curse against things in general was the only answer.
+
+“What brought thee here?” continued Ebbo, in hopes of extracting some
+excuse for pardon; but the prisoner only hung his head as one stupefied,
+brutally indifferent and hardened against the mere trouble of answering.
+Not another word could be extracted, and Ebbo’s position was very
+uncomfortable, keeping guard over his condemned felon, with the sulky
+peasants herding round, in fear of being balked of their prey; and the
+reluctance growing on him every moment to taking life in cold blood.
+Right of life and death was a heavy burden to a youth under seventeen,
+unless he had been thoughtless and reckless, and from this Ebbo had been
+prevented by his peculiar life.  The lion cub had never tasted blood.
+
+The situation was prolonged beyond expectation.
+
+Many a time had the brothers paced their platform of rock, the criminal
+had fallen into a dose, and women and boys were murmuring that they must
+call home their kine and goats, and it was a shame to debar them of the
+sight of the hanging, long before Hans came back between crying and
+stammering, to say that Father Jodocus had fallen into so deep a study
+over his book, that he only muttered “Coming,” then went into another
+musing fit, whence no one could rouse him to do more than say “Coming!
+Let him wait.”
+
+“I must go and bring him, if the thing is to be done,” said Friedel.
+
+“And let it last all night!” was the answer.  “No, if the man were to
+die, it should be at once, not by inches.  Hark thee, rogue!” stirring
+him with his foot.
+
+“Well, sir,” said the man, “is the hanging ready yet?  You’ve been long
+enough about it for us to have twisted the necks of every Adlerstein of
+you all.”
+
+“Look thee, caitiff!” said Ebbo; “thou meritest the rope as well as any
+wolf on the mountain, but we have kept thee so long in suspense, that if
+thou canst say a word for thy life, or pledge thyself to meddle no more
+with my lands, I’ll consider of thy doom.”
+
+“You have had plenty of time to consider it,” growled the fellow.
+
+A murmur, followed by a wrathful shout, rose among the villagers.
+“Letting off the villain!  No!  No!  Out upon him!  He dares not!”
+
+“Dare!” thundered Ebbo, with flashing eyes.  “Rascals as ye are, think ye
+to hinder me from daring?  Your will to be mine?  There, fellow; away
+with thee!  Up to the Gemsbock’s Pass!  And whoso would follow him, let
+him do so at his peril!”
+
+The prisoner was prompt to gather himself up and rush like a hunted
+animal to the path, at the entrance of which stood both twins, with drawn
+swords, to defend the escape.  Of course no one ventured to follow; and
+surly discontented murmurs were the sole result as the peasants
+dispersed.  Ebbo, sheathing his sword, and putting his arm into his
+brother’s, said: “What, Friedel, turned stony-hearted?  Hadst never a
+word for the poor caitiff?”
+
+“I knew thou wouldst never do the deed,” said Friedel, smiling.
+
+“It was such wretched prey,” said Ebbo.  “Yet shall I be despised for
+this!  Would that thou hadst let me string him up shriftless, as any
+other man had done, and there would have been an end of it!”
+
+And even his mother’s satisfaction did not greatly comfort Ebbo, for he
+was of the age to feel more ashamed of a solecism than a crime.
+Christina perceived that this was one of his most critical periods of
+life, baited as he was by the enemy of his race, and feeling all the
+disadvantages which heart and conscience gave him in dealing with a man
+who had neither, at a time when public opinion was always with the most
+masterful.  The necessity of arming his retainers and having fighting men
+as a guard were additional temptations to hereditary habits of violence;
+and that so proud and fiery a nature as his should never become involved
+in them was almost beyond hope.  Even present danger seemed more around
+than ever before.  The estate was almost in a state of siege, and
+Christina never saw her sons quit the castle without thinking of their
+father’s fate, and passing into the chapel to entreat for their return
+unscathed in body or soul.  The snow, which she had so often hailed as a
+friend, was never more welcome than this winter; not merely as shutting
+the enemy out, and her sons in, but as cutting off all danger of a visit
+from her suitor, who would now come armed with his late sufferings in her
+behalf; and, moreover, with all the urgent need of a wise and respected
+head and protector for her sons.  Yet the more evident the expediency
+became, the greater grew her distaste.
+
+Still the lonely life weighed heavily on Ebbo.  Light-hearted Friedel was
+ever busy and happy, were he chasing the grim winter game—the bear and
+wolf—with his brother, fencing in the hall, learning Greek with the
+chaplain, reading or singing to his mother, or carving graceful angel
+forms to adorn the chapel.  Or he could at all times soar into a minstrel
+dream of pure chivalrous semi-allegorical romance, sometimes told over
+the glowing embers to his mother and brother.  All that came to Friedel
+was joy, from battling with the bear on a frozen rock, to persuading rude
+little Hans to come to the Frau Freiherrinn to learn his Paternoster.
+But the elder twin might hunt, might fence, might smile or kindle at his
+brother’s lay, but ever with a restless gloom on him, a doubt of the
+future which made him impatient of the present, and led to a sharpness
+and hastiness of manner that broke forth in anger at slight offences.
+
+“The matron’s coif succeeding the widow’s veil,” Friedel heard him
+muttering even in sleep, and more than once listened to it as Ebbo leant
+over the battlements—as he looked over the white world to the gray mist
+above the city of Ulm.
+
+“Thou, who mockest my forebodings and fancies, to dwell on that gipsy
+augury!” argued Friedel.  “As thou saidst at the time, Wildschloss’s
+looks gave shrewd cause for it.”
+
+“The answer is in mine own heart,” answered Ebbo.  “Since our stay at
+Ulm, I have ever felt as though the sweet motherling were less my own!
+And the same with my house and lands.  Rule as I will, a mocking laugh
+comes back to me, saying: ‘Thou art but a boy, Sir Baron, thou dost but
+play at lords and knights.’  If I had hung yon rogue of a reiter, I
+wonder if I had felt my grasp more real?”
+
+“Nay,” said Friedel, glancing from the sparkling white slopes to the pure
+blue above, “our whole life is but a play at lords and knights, with the
+blessed saints as witnesses of our sport in the tilt-yard.”
+
+“Were it merely that,” said Ebbo, impatiently, “I were not so galled.
+Something hangs over us, Friedel!  I long that these snows would melt,
+that I might at least know what it is!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+BRIDGING THE FORD
+
+
+The snow melted, the torrent became a flood, then contracted itself, but
+was still a broad stream, when one spring afternoon Ebbo showed his
+brother some wains making for the ford, adding, “It cannot be rightly
+passable.  They will come to loss.  I shall get the men together to aid
+them.”
+
+He blew a blast on his horn, and added, “The knaves will be alert enough
+if they hope to meddle with honest men’s luggage.”
+
+“See,” and Friedel pointed to the thicket to the westward of the meadow
+around the stream, where the beech trees were budding, but not yet
+forming a full mass of verdure, “is not the Snake in the wood?  Methinks
+I spy the glitter of his scales.”
+
+“By heavens, the villains are lying in wait for the travellers at our
+landing-place,” cried Ebbo, and again raising the bugle to his lips, he
+sent forth three notes well known as a call to arms.  Their echoes came
+back from the rocks, followed instantly by lusty jodels, and the brothers
+rushed into the hall to take down their light head-pieces and corslets,
+answering in haste their mother’s startled questions, by telling of the
+endangered travellers, and the Schlangenwald ambush.  She looked white
+and trembled, but said no word to hinder them; only as she clasped
+Friedel’s corslet, she entreated them to take fuller armour.
+
+“We must speed the short way down the rock,” said Ebbo, “and cannot be
+cumbered with heavy harness.  Sweet motherling, fear not; but let a meal
+be spread for our rescued captives.  Ho, Heinz, ’tis against the
+Schlangenwald rascals.  Art too stiff to go down the rock path?”
+
+“No; nor down the abyss, could I strike a good stroke against
+Schlangenwald at the bottom of it,” quoth Heinz.
+
+“Nor see vermin set free by the Freiherr,” growled Koppel; but the words
+were lost in Ebbo’s loud commands to the men, as Friedel and Hatto handed
+down the weapons to them.
+
+The convoy had by this time halted, evidently to try the ford.  A
+horseman crossed, and found it practicable, for a waggon proceeded to
+make the attempt.
+
+“Now is our time,” said Ebbo, who was standing on the narrow ledge
+between the castle and the precipitous path leading to the meadow.  “One
+waggon may get over, but the second or third will stick in the ruts that
+it leaves.  Now we will drop from our crag, and if the Snake falls on
+them, why, then for a pounce of the Eagle.”
+
+The two young knights, so goodly in their bright steel, knelt for their
+mother’s blessing, and then sprang like chamois down the ivy-twined
+steep, followed by their men, and were lost to sight among the bushes and
+rocks.  Yet even while her frame quivered with fear, her heart swelled at
+the thought what a gulf there was between these days and those when she
+had hidden her face in despair, while Ermentrude watched the Debateable
+Ford.
+
+She watched now in suspense, indeed, but with exultation instead of
+shame, as two waggons safely crossed; but the third stuck fast, and
+presently turned over in the stream, impelled sideways by the efforts of
+the struggling horses.  Then, amid endeavours to disentangle the animals
+and succour the driver, the travellers were attacked by a party of armed
+men, who dashed out of the beechwood, and fell on the main body of the
+waggons, which were waiting on the bit of bare shingly soil that lay
+between the new and old channels.  A wild mêlée was all that Christina
+could see—weapons raised, horses starting, men rushing from the river,
+while the clang and the shout rose even to the castle.
+
+Hark!  Out rings the clear call, “The Eagle to the rescue!”  There they
+speed over the meadow, the two slender forms with glancing helms!  O
+overrun not the followers, rush not into needless danger!  There is
+Koppel almost up with them with his big axe—Heinz’s broad shoulders near.
+Heaven strike with them!  Visit not their forefathers’ sin on those pure
+spirits.  Some are flying.  Some one has fallen!  O heavens! on which
+side?  Ah! it is into the Schlangenwald woods that the fugitives direct
+their flight.  Three—four—the whole troop pursued!  Go not too far!  Run
+not into needless risk!  Your work is done, and gallantly.  Well done,
+young knights of Adlerstein!  Which of you is it that stands pointing out
+safe standing-ground for the men that are raising the waggon?  Which of
+you is it who stands in converse with a burgher form?  Thanks and
+blessings! the lads are safe, and full knightly hath been their first
+emprise.
+
+A quarter of an hour later, a gay step mounted the ascent, and Friedel’s
+bright face laughed from his helmet: “There, mother, will you crown your
+knights?  Could you see Ebbo bear down the chief squire? for the old
+Snake was not there himself.  And whom do you think we rescued, besides a
+whole band of Venetian traders to whom he had joined himself?  Why, my
+uncle’s friend, the architect, of whom he used to speak—Master Moritz
+Schleiermacher.”
+
+“Moritz Schleiermacher!  I knew him as a boy.”
+
+“He had been laying out a Lustgarten for the Romish king at Innspruck,
+and he is a stout man of his hands, and attempted defence; but he had
+such a shrewd blow before we came up, that he lay like one dead; and when
+he was lifted up, he gazed at us like one moon-struck, and said, ‘Are my
+eyes dazed, or are these the twins of Adlerstein, that are as like as
+face to mirror?  Lads, lads, your uncle looked not to hear of you acting
+in this sort.’  But soon we and his people let him know how it was, and
+that eagles do not have the manner of snakes.”
+
+“Poor Master Moritz!  Is he much hurt?  Is Ebbo bringing him up hither?”
+
+“No, mother, he is but giddied and stunned, and now must you send down
+store of sausage, sourkraut, meat, wine, and beer; for the wains cannot
+all cross till daylight, and we must keep ward all night lest the
+Schlangenwalden should fall on them again.  Plenty of good cheer, mother,
+to make a right merry watch.”
+
+“Take heed, Friedel mine; a merry watch is scarce a safe one.”
+
+“Even so, sweet motherling, and therefore must Ebbo and I share it.  You
+must mete out your liquor wisely, you see, enough for the credit of
+Adlerstein, and enough to keep out the marsh fog, yet not enough to make
+us snore too soundly.  I am going to take my lute; it would be using it
+ill not to let it enjoy such a chance as a midnight watch.”
+
+So away went the light-hearted boy, and by and by Christina saw the red
+watch-fire as she gazed from her turret window.  She would have been
+pleased to see how, marshalled by a merchant who had crossed the desert
+from Egypt to Palestine, the waggons were ranged in a circle, and the
+watches told off, while the food and drink were carefully portioned out.
+
+Freiherr Ebbo, on his own ground, as champion and host, was far more at
+ease than in the city, and became very friendly with the merchants and
+architect as they sat round the bright fire, conversing, or at times
+challenging the mountain echoes by songs to the sound of Friedel’s lute.
+When the stars grew bright, most lay down to sleep in the waggons, while
+others watched, pacing up and down till Karl’s waggon should be over the
+mountain, and the vigil was relieved.
+
+No disturbance took place, and at sunrise a hasty meal was partaken of,
+and the work of crossing the river was set in hand.
+
+“Pity,” said Moritz, the architect, “that this ford were not spanned by a
+bridge, to the avoiding of danger and spoil.”
+
+“Who could build such a bridge?” asked Ebbo.
+
+“Yourself, Herr Freiherr, in union with us burghers of Ulm.  It were well
+worth your while to give land and stone, and ours to give labour and
+skill, provided we fixed a toll on the passage, which would be willingly
+paid to save peril and delay.”
+
+The brothers caught at the idea, and the merchants agreed that such a
+bridge would be an inestimable boon to all traffickers between Constance,
+Ulm, and Augsburg, and would attract many travellers who were scared away
+by the evil fame of the Debateable Ford.  Master Moritz looked at the
+stone of the mountain, pronounced it excellent material, and already
+sketched the span of the arches with a view to winter torrents.  As to
+the site, the best was on the firm ground above the ford; but here only
+one side was Adlerstein, while on the other Ebbo claimed both banks, and
+it was probable that an equally sound foundation could be obtained, only
+with more cost and delay.
+
+After this survey, the travellers took leave of the barons, promising to
+write when their fellow-citizens should have been sounded as to the
+bridge; and Ebbo remained in high spirits, with such brilliant purposes
+that he had quite forgotten his gloomy forebodings.  “Peace instead of
+war at home,” he said; “with the revenue it will bring, I will build a
+mill, and set our lads to work, so that they may become less dull and
+doltish than their parents.  Then will we follow the Emperor with a train
+that none need despise!  No one will talk now of Adlerstein not being
+able to take care of himself!”
+
+Letters came from Ulm, saying that the guilds of mercers and wine
+merchants were delighted with the project, and invited the Baron of
+Adlerstein to a council at the Rathhaus.  Master Sorel begged the mother
+to come with her sons to be his guest; but fearing the neighbourhood of
+Sir Kasimir, she remained at home, with Heinz for her seneschal while her
+sons rode to the city.  There Ebbo found that his late exploit and his
+future plan had made him a person of much greater consideration than on
+his last visit, and he demeaned himself with far more ease and affability
+in consequence.  He had affairs on his hands too, and felt more than one
+year older.
+
+The two guilds agreed to build the bridge, and share the toll with the
+Baron in return for the ground and materials; but they preferred the plan
+that placed one pier on the Schlangenwald bank, and proposed to write to
+the Count an offer to include him in the scheme, awarding him a share of
+the profits in proportion to his contribution.  However vexed at the turn
+affairs had taken, Ebbo could offer no valid objection, and was obliged
+to affix his signature to the letter in company with the guildmasters.
+
+It was despatched by the city pursuivants—
+
+    The only men who safe might ride;
+    Their errands on the border side;
+
+and a meeting was appointed in the Rathhaus for the day of their expected
+return.  The higher burghers sat on their carved chairs in the grand old
+hall, the lesser magnates on benches, and Ebbo, in an elbowed seat far
+too spacious for his slender proportions, met a glance from Friedel that
+told him his merry brother was thinking of the frog and the ox.  The
+pursuivants entered—hardy, shrewd-looking men, with the city arms decking
+them wherever there was room for them.
+
+“Honour-worthy sirs,” they said, “no letter did the Graf von
+Schlangenwald return.”
+
+“Sent he no message?” demanded Moritz Schleiermacher.
+
+“Yea, worthy sir, but scarce befitting this reverend assembly.”  On being
+pressed, however, it was repeated: “The Lord Count was pleased to swear
+at what he termed the insolence of the city in sending him heralds, ‘as
+if,’ said he, ‘the dogs,’ your worships, ‘were his equals.’  Then having
+cursed your worships, he reviled the crooked writing of Herr Clerk
+Diedrichson, and called his chaplain to read it to him.  Herr Priest
+could scarce read three lines for his foul language about the ford.
+‘Never,’ said he, ‘would he consent to raising a bridge—a mean trick,’ so
+said he, ‘for defrauding him of his rights to what the flood sent him.’”
+
+“But,” asked Ebbo, “took he no note of our explanation, that if he give
+not the upper bank, we will build lower, where both sides are my own?”
+
+“He passed it not entirely over,” replied the messenger.
+
+“What said he—the very words?” demanded Ebbo, with the paling cheek and
+low voice that made his passion often seem like patience.
+
+“He said—(the Herr Freiherr will pardon me for repeating the words)—he
+said, ‘Tell the misproud mongrel of Adlerstein that he had best sit firm
+in his own saddle ere meddling with his betters, and if he touch one
+pebble of the Braunwasser, he will rue it.  And before your city-folk
+take up with him or his, they had best learn whether he have any right at
+all in the case.’”
+
+“His right is plain,” said Master Gottfried; “full proofs were given in,
+and his investiture by the Kaisar forms a title in itself.  It is mere
+bravado, and an endeavour to make mischief between the Baron and the
+city.”
+
+“Even so did I explain, Herr Guildmaster,” said the pursuivant; “but,
+pardon me, the Count laughed me to scorn, and quoth he, ‘asked the Kaisar
+for proof of his father’s death!’”
+
+“Mere mischief-making, as before,” said Master Gottfried, while his
+nephews started with amaze.  “His father’s death was proved by an
+eye-witness, whom you still have in your train, have you not, Herr
+Freiherr?”
+
+“Yea,” replied Ebbo, “he is at Adlerstein now, Heinrich Bauermann, called
+the Schneiderlein, a lanzknecht, who alone escaped the slaughter, and
+from whom we have often heard how my father died, choked in his own
+blood, from a deep breast-wound, immediately after he had sent home his
+last greetings to my lady mother.”
+
+“Was the corpse restored?” asked the able Rathsherr Ulrich.
+
+“No,” said Ebbo.  “Almost all our retainers had perished, and when a
+friar was sent to the hostel to bring home the remains, it appeared that
+the treacherous foe had borne them off—nay, my grandfather’s head was
+sent to the Diet!”
+
+The whole assembly agreed that the Count could only mean to make the
+absence of direct evidence about a murder committed eighteen years ago
+tell in sowing distrust between the allies.  The suggestion was not worth
+a thought, and it was plain that no site would be available except the
+Debateable Strand.  To this, however, Ebbo’s title was assailable, both
+on account of his minority, as well as his father’s unproved death, and
+of the disputed claim to the ground.  The Rathsherr, Master Gottfried,
+and others, therefore recommended deferring the work till the Baron
+should be of age, when, on again tendering his allegiance, he might
+obtain a distinct recognition of his marches.  But this policy did not
+consort with the quick spirit of Moritz Schleiermacher, nor with the
+convenience of the mercers and wine-merchants, who were constant
+sufferers by the want of a bridge, and afraid of waiting four years, in
+which a lad like the Baron might return to the nominal instincts of his
+class, or the Braunwasser might take back the land it had given; whilst
+Ebbo himself was urgent, with all the defiant fire of youth, to begin
+building at once in spite of all gainsayers.
+
+“Strife and blood will it cost,” said Master Sorel, gravely.
+
+“What can be had worth the having save at cost of strife and blood?” said
+Ebbo, with a glance of fire.
+
+“Youth speaks of counting the cost.  Little knows it what it saith,”
+sighed Master Gottfried.
+
+“Nay,” returned the Rathsherr, “were it otherwise, who would have the
+heart for enterprise?”
+
+So the young knights mounted, and had ridden about half the way in
+silence, when Ebbo exclaimed, “Friedel”—and as his brother started, “What
+art musing on?”
+
+“What thou art thinking of,” said Friedel, turning on him an eye that had
+not only something of the brightness but of the penetration of a sunbeam.
+
+“I do not think thereon at all,” said Ebbo, gloomily.  “It is a figment
+of the old serpent to hinder us from snatching his prey from him.”
+
+“Nevertheless,” said Friedel, “I cannot but remember that the Genoese
+merchant of old told us of a German noble sold by his foes to the Moors.”
+
+“Folly!  That tale was too recent to concern my father.”
+
+“I did not think it did,” said Friedel; “but mayhap that noble’s family
+rest equally certain of his death.”
+
+“Pfui!” said Ebbo, hotly; “hast not heard fifty times how he died even in
+speaking, and how Heinz crossed his hands on his breast?  What wouldst
+have more?”
+
+“Hardly even that,” said Friedel, slightly smiling.
+
+“Tush!” hastily returned his brother, “I meant only by way of proof.
+Would an honest old fellow like Heinz be a deceiver?”
+
+“Not wittingly.  Yet I would fain ride to that hostel and make
+inquiries!”
+
+“The traitor host met his deserts, and was broken on the wheel for
+murdering a pedlar a year ago,” said Ebbo.  “I would I knew where my
+father was buried, for then would I bring his corpse honourably back; but
+as to his being a living man, I will not have it spoken of to trouble my
+mother.”
+
+“To trouble her?” exclaimed Friedel.
+
+“To trouble her,” repeated Ebbo.  “Long since hath passed the pang of his
+loss, and there is reason in what old Sorel says, that he must have been
+a rugged, untaught savage, with little in common with the gentle one, and
+that tender memory hath decked him out as he never could have been.  Nay,
+Friedel, it is but sense.  What could a man have been under the
+granddame’s breeding?”
+
+“It becomes not thee to say so!” returned Friedel.  “Nay, he could learn
+to love our mother.”
+
+“One sign of grace, but doubtless she loved him the better for their
+having been so little together.  Her heart is at peace, believing him in
+his grave; but let her imagine him in Schlangenwald’s dungeon, or some
+Moorish galley, if thou likest it better, and how will her mild spirit be
+rent!”
+
+“It might be so,” said Friedel, thoughtfully.  “It may be best to keep
+this secret from her till we have fuller certainty.”
+
+“Agreed then,” said Ebbo, “unless the Wildschloss fellow should again
+molest us, when his answer is ready.”
+
+“Is this just towards my mother?” said Friedel.
+
+“Just!  What mean’st thou?  Is it not our office and our dearest right to
+shield our mother from care?  And is not her chief wish to be rid of the
+Wildschloss suit?”
+
+Nevertheless Ebbo was moody all the way home, but when there he devoted
+himself in his most eager and winning way to his mother, telling her of
+Master Gottfried’s woodcuts, and Hausfrau Johanna’s rheumatism, and of
+all the news of the country, in especial that the Kaisar was at Lintz,
+very ill with a gangrene in his leg, said to have been caused by his
+habit of always kicking doors open, and that his doctors thought of
+amputation, a horrible idea in the fifteenth century.  The young baron
+was evidently bent on proving that no one could make his mother so happy
+as he could; and he was not far wrong there.
+
+Friedel, however, could not rest till he had followed Heinz to the
+stable, and speaking over the back of the old white mare, the only other
+survivor of the massacre, had asked him once more for the particulars, a
+tale he was never loth to tell; but when Friedel further demanded whether
+he was certain of having seen the death of his younger lord, he replied,
+as if hurt: “What, think you I would have quitted him while life was yet
+in him?”
+
+“No, certainly, good Heinz; yet I would fain know by what tokens thou
+knewest his death.”
+
+“Ah!  Sir Friedel; when you have seen a stricken field or two, you will
+not ask how I know death from life.”
+
+“Is a swoon so utterly unlike death?”
+
+“I say not but that an inexperienced youth might be mistaken,” said
+Heinz; “but for one who had learned the bloody trade, it were impossible.
+Why ask, sir?”
+
+“Because,” said Friedel, low and mysteriously—“my brother would not have
+my mother know it, but—Count Schlangenwald demanded whether we could
+prove my father’s death.”
+
+“Prove!  He could not choose but die with three such wounds, as the old
+ruffian knows.  I shall bless the day, Sir Friedmund, when I see you or
+your brother give back those strokes!  A heavy reckoning be his.”
+
+“We all deem that line only meant to cross our designs,” said Friedel.
+“Yet, Heinz, I would I knew how to find out what passed when thou wast
+gone.  Is there no servant at the inn—no retainer of Schlangenwald that
+aught could be learnt from?”
+
+“By St. Gertrude,” roughly answered the Schneiderlein, “if you cannot be
+satisfied with the oath of a man like me, who would have given his life
+to save your father, I know not what will please you.”
+
+Friedel, with his wonted good-nature, set himself to pacify the warrior
+with assurances of his trust; yet while Ebbo plunged more eagerly into
+plans for the bridge-building, Friedel drew more and more into his old
+world of musings; and many a summer afternoon was spent by him at the
+Ptarmigan’s Mere, in deep communings with himself, as one revolving a
+purpose.
+
+Christina could not but observe, with a strange sense of foreboding,
+that, while one son was more than ever in the lonely mountain heights,
+the other was far more at the base.  Master Moritz Schleiermacher was a
+constant guest at the castle, and Ebbo was much taken up with his
+companionship.  He was a strong, shrewd man, still young, but with much
+experience, and he knew how to adapt himself to intercourse with the
+proud nobility, preserving an independent bearing, while avoiding all
+that haughtiness could take umbrage at; and thus he was acquiring a
+greater influence over Ebbo than was perceived by any save the watchful
+mother, who began to fear lest her son was acquiring an infusion of
+worldly wisdom and eagerness for gain that would indeed be a severance
+between him and his brother.
+
+If she had known the real difference that unconsciously kept her sons
+apart, her heart would have ached yet more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+FRIEDMUND IN THE CLOUDS
+
+
+THE stone was quarried high on the mountain, and a direct road was made
+for bringing it down to the water-side.  The castle profited by the road
+in accessibility, but its impregnability was so far lessened.  However,
+as Ebbo said, it was to be a friendly harbour, instead of a robber crag,
+and in case of need the communication could easily be destroyed.  The
+blocks of stone were brought down, and wooden sheds were erected for the
+workmen in the meadow.
+
+In August, however, came tidings that, after two amputations of his
+diseased limb, the Kaisar Friedrich III. had died—it was said from over
+free use of melons in the fever consequent on the operation.  His death
+was not likely to make much change in the government, which had of late
+been left to his son.  At this time the King of the Romans (for the title
+of Kaisar was conferred only by coronation by the Pope, and this
+Maximilian never received) was at Innspruck collecting troops for the
+deliverance of Styria and Carinthia from a horde of invading Turks.  The
+Markgraf of Wurtemburg sent an intimation to all the Swabian League that
+the new sovereign would be best pleased if their homage were paid to him
+in his camp at the head of their armed retainers.
+
+Here was the way of enterprise and honour open at last, and the young
+barons of Adlerstein eagerly prepared for it, equipping their vassals and
+sending to Ulm to take three or four men-at-arms into their pay, so as to
+make up twenty lances as the contingent of Adlerstein.  It was decided
+that Christina should spend the time of their absence at Ulm, whither her
+sons would escort her on their way to the camp.  The last busy day was
+over, and in the summer evening Christina was sitting on the castle steps
+listening to Ebbo’s eager talk of his plans of interesting his hero, the
+King of the Romans, in his bridge, and obtaining full recognition of his
+claim to the Debateable Strand, where the busy workmen could be seen far
+below.
+
+Presently Ebbo, as usual when left to himself, grew restless for want of
+Friedel, and exclaiming, “The musing fit is on him!—he will stay all
+night at the tarn if I fetch him not,” he set off in quest of him,
+passing through the hamlet to look for him in the chapel on his way.
+
+Not finding Friedel there, he was, however, some way up towards the tarn,
+when he met his brother wearing the beamy yet awestruck look that he
+often brought from the mountain height, yet with a steadfast expression
+of resolute purpose on his face.
+
+“Ah, dreamer!” said Ebbo, “I knew where to seek thee!  Ever in the
+clouds!”
+
+“Yes, I have been to the tarn,” said Friedel, throwing his arm round his
+brother’s neck in their boyish fashion.  “It has been very dear to me,
+and I longed to see its gray depths once more.”
+
+“Once!  Yea manifold times shalt thou see them,” said Ebbo.
+“Schleiermacher tells me that these are no Janissaries, but a mere
+miscreant horde, even by whom glory can scarce be gained, and no peril at
+all.”
+
+“I know not,” said Friedel, “but it is to me as if I were taking my leave
+of all these purple hollows and heaven-lighted peaks cleaving the sky.
+All the more, Ebbo, since I have made up my mind to a resolution.”
+
+“Nay, none of the old monkish fancies,” cried Ebbo, “against them thou
+art sworn, so long as I am true knight.”
+
+“No, it is not the monkish fancy, but I am convinced that it is my duty
+to strive to ascertain my father’s fate.  Hold, I say not that it is
+thine.  Thou hast thy charge here—”
+
+“Looking for a dead man,” growled Ebbo; “a proper quest!”
+
+“Not so,” returned Friedel.  “At the camp it will surely be possible to
+learn, through either Schlangenwald or his men, how it went with my
+father.  Men say that his surviving son, the Teutonic knight, is of very
+different mould.  He might bring something to light.  Were it proved to
+be as the Schneiderlein avers, then would our conscience be at rest; but,
+if he were in Schlangenwald’s dungeon—”
+
+“Folly!  Impossible!”
+
+“Yet men have pined eighteen years in dark vaults,” said Friedel; “and,
+when I think that so may he have wasted for the whole of our lives that
+have been so free and joyous on his own mountain, it irks me to bound on
+the heather or gaze at the stars.”
+
+“If the serpent hath dared,” cried Ebbo, “though it is mere folly to
+think of it, we would summon the League and have his castle about his
+ears!  Not that I believe it.”
+
+“Scarce do I,” said Friedel; “but there haunts me evermore the
+description of the kindly German chained between the decks of the
+Corsair’s galley.  Once and again have I dreamt thereof.  And, Ebbo,
+recollect the prediction that so fretted thee.  Might not yon
+dark-cheeked woman have had some knowledge of the East and its captives?”
+
+Ebbo started, but resumed his former tone.  “So thou wouldst begin thine
+errantry like Sir Hildebert and Sir Hildebrand in the ‘Rose garden’?
+Have a care.  Such quests end in mortal conflict between the unknown
+father and son.”
+
+“I should know him,” said Friedel, enthusiastically, “or, at least, he
+would know my mother’s son in me; and, could I no otherwise ransom him, I
+would ply the oar in his stead.”
+
+“A fine exchange for my mother and me,” gloomily laughed Ebbo, “to lose
+thee, my sublimated self, for a rude, savage lord, who would straightway
+undo all our work, and rate and misuse our sweet mother for being more
+civilized than himself.”
+
+“Shame, Ebbo!” cried Friedel, “or art thou but in jest?”
+
+“So far in jest that thou wilt never go, puissant Sir Hildebert,”
+returned Ebbo, drawing him closer.  “Thou wilt learn—as I also trust to
+do—in what nameless hole the serpent hid his remains.  Then shall they be
+duly coffined and blazoned.  All the monks in the cloisters for twenty
+miles round shall sing requiems, and thou and I will walk bareheaded,
+with candles in our hands, by the bier, till we rest him in the Blessed
+Friedmund’s chapel; and there Lucas Handlein shall carve his tomb, and
+thou shalt sit for the likeness.”
+
+“So may it end,” said Friedel, “but either I will know him dead, or
+endeavour somewhat in his behalf.  And that the need is real, as well as
+the purpose blessed, I have become the more certain, for, Ebbo, as I rose
+to descend the hill, I saw on the cloud our patron’s very form—I saw
+myself kneel before him and receive his blessing.”
+
+Ebbo burst out laughing.  “Now know I that it is indeed as saith
+Schleiermacher,” he said, “and that these phantoms of the Blessed
+Friedmund are but shadows cast by the sun on the vapours of the ravine.
+See, Friedel, I had gone to seek thee at the chapel, and meeting Father
+Norbert, I bent my knee, that I might take his farewell blessing.  I had
+the substance, thou the shadow, thou dreamer!”
+
+Friedel was as much mortified for the moment as his gentle nature could
+be.  Then he resumed his sweet smile, saying, “Be it so!  I have oft read
+that men are too prone to take visions and special providences to
+themselves, and now I have proved the truth of the saying.”
+
+“And,” said Ebbo, “thou seest thy purpose is as baseless as thy vision?”
+
+“No, Ebbo.  It grieves me to differ from thee, but my resolve is older
+than the fancy, and may not be shaken because I was vain enough to
+believe that the Blessed Friedmund could stoop to bless me.”
+
+“Ha!” shouted Ebbo, glad to see an object on which to vent his secret
+annoyance.  “Who goes there, skulking round the rocks?  Here, rogue, what
+art after here?”
+
+“No harm,” sullenly replied a half-clad boy.
+
+“Whence art thou?  From Schlangenwald, to spy what more we can be robbed
+of?  The lash—”
+
+“Hold,” interposed Friedel.  “Perchance the poor lad had no evil
+purposes.  Didst lose thy way?”
+
+“No, sir, my mother sent me.”
+
+“I thought so,” cried Ebbo.  “This comes of sparing the nest of thankless
+adders!”
+
+“Nay,” said Friedel, “mayhap it is because they are not thankless that
+the poor fellow is here.”
+
+“Sir,” said the boy, coming nearer, “I will tell _you_—_you_ I will
+tell—not him who threatens.  Mother said you spared our huts, and the
+lady gave us bread when we came to the castle gate in winter, and she
+would not see the reiters lay waste your folk’s doings down there without
+warning you.”
+
+“My good lad!  What saidst thou?” cried Ebbo, but the boy seemed dumb
+before him, and Friedel repeated the question ere he answered: “All the
+lanzknechts and reiters are at the castle, and the Herr Graf has taken
+all my father’s young sheep for them, a plague upon him.  And our folk
+are warned to be at the muster rock to-morrow morn, each with a bundle of
+straw and a pine brand; and Black Berend heard the body squire say the
+Herr Graf had sworn not to go to the wars till every stick at the ford be
+burnt, every stone drowned, every workman hung.”
+
+Ebbo, in a transport of indignation and gratitude, thrust his hand into
+his pouch, and threw the boy a handful of groschen, while Friedel gave
+warm thanks, in the utmost haste, ere both brothers sprang with headlong
+speed down the wild path, to take advantage of the timely intelligence.
+
+The little council of war was speedily assembled, consisting of the
+barons, their mother, Master Moritz Schleiermacher, Heinz, and Hatto.  To
+bring up to the castle the workmen, their families, and the more valuable
+implements, was at once decided; and Christina asked whether there would
+be anything left worth defending, and whether the Schlangenwalden might
+not expend their fury on the scaffold, which could be newly supplied from
+the forest, the huts, which could be quickly restored, and the stones,
+which could hardly be damaged.  The enemy must proceed to the camp in a
+day or two, and the building would be less assailable by their return;
+and, besides, it was scarcely lawful to enter on a private war when the
+imperial banner was in the field.
+
+“Craving your pardon, gracious lady,” said the architect, “that blame
+rests with him who provokes the war.  See, lord baron, there is time to
+send to Ulm, where the two guilds, our allies, will at once equip their
+trained bands and despatch them.  We meanwhile will hold the knaves in
+check, and, by the time our burghers come up, the snake brood will have
+had such a lesson as they will not soon forget.  Said I well, Herr
+Freiherr?”
+
+“Right bravely,” said Ebbo.  “It consorts not with our honour or rights,
+with my pledges to Ulm, or the fame of my house, to shut ourselves up and
+see the rogues work their will scatheless.  My own score of men, besides
+the stouter masons, carpenters, and serfs, will be fully enough to make
+the old serpent of the wood rue the day, even without the aid of the
+burghers.  Not a word against it, dearest mother.  None is so wise as
+thou in matters of peace, but honour is here concerned.”
+
+“My question is,” persevered the mother, “whether honour be not better
+served by obeying the summons of the king against the infidel, with the
+men thou hast called together at his behest?  Let the count do his worst;
+he gives thee legal ground of complaint to lay before the king and the
+League, and all may there be more firmly established.”
+
+“That were admirable counsel, lady,” said Schleiermacher, “well suited to
+the honour-worthy guildmaster Sorel, and to our justice-loving city; but,
+in matters of baronial rights and aggressions, king and League are wont
+to help those that help themselves, and those that are over nice as to
+law and justice come by the worst.”
+
+“Not the worst in the long run,” said Friedel.
+
+“Thine unearthly code will not serve us here, Friedel mine,” returned his
+brother.  “Did I not defend the work I have begun, I should be branded as
+a weak fool.  Nor will I see the foes of my house insult me without
+striking a fair stroke.  Hap what hap, the Debateable Ford shall be
+debated!  Call in the serfs, Hatto, and arm them.  Mother, order a good
+supper for them.  Master Moritz, let us summon thy masons and carpenters,
+and see who is a good man with his hands among them.”
+
+Christina saw that remonstrance was vain.  The days of peril and violence
+were coming back again; and all she could take comfort in was, that, if
+not wholly right, her son was far from wholly wrong, and that with a free
+heart she could pray for a blessing on him and on his arms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+THE FIGHT AT THE FORD
+
+
+BY the early September sunrise the thicket beneath the pass was
+sheltering the twenty well-appointed reiters of Adlerstein, each
+standing, holding his horse by the bridle, ready to mount at the instant.
+In their rear were the serfs and artisans, some with axes, scythes, or
+ploughshares, a few with cross-bows, and Jobst and his sons with the long
+blackened poles used for stirring their charcoal fires.  In advance were
+Master Moritz and the two barons, the former in a stout plain steel
+helmet, cuirass, and gauntlets, a sword, and those new-fashioned weapons,
+pistols; the latter in full knightly armour, exactly alike, from the
+gilt-spurred heel to the eagle-crested helm, and often moving restlessly
+forward to watch for the enemy, though taking care not to be betrayed by
+the glitter of their mail.  So long did they wait that there was even a
+doubt whether it might not have been a false alarm; the boy was
+vituperated, and it was proposed to despatch a spy to see whether
+anything were doing at Schlangenwald.
+
+At length a rustling and rushing were heard; then a clank of armour.
+Ebbo vaulted into the saddle, and gave the word to mount; Schleiermacher,
+who always fought on foot, stepped up to him.  “Keep back your men, Herr
+Freiherr.  Let his design be manifest.  We must not be said to have
+fallen on him on his way to the muster.”
+
+“It would be but as he served my father!” muttered Ebbo, forced, however,
+to restrain himself, though with boiling blood, as the tramp of horses
+shook the ground, and bright armour became visible on the further side of
+the stream.
+
+For the first time, the brothers beheld the foe of their line.  He was
+seated on a clumsy black horse, and sheathed in full armour, and was
+apparently a large heavy man, whose powerful proportions were becoming
+unwieldy as he advanced in life.  The dragon on his crest and shield
+would have made him known to the twins, even without the deadly curse
+that passed the Schneiderlein’s lips at the sight.  As the armed troop,
+out-numbering the Adlersteiners by about a dozen, and followed by a
+rabble with straw and pine brands, came forth on the meadow, the count
+halted and appeared to be giving orders.
+
+“The ruffian!  He is calling them on!  Now—” began Ebbo.
+
+“Nay, there is no sign yet that he is not peacefully on his journey to
+the camp,” responded Moritz; and, chafing with impatient fury, the knight
+waited while Schlangenwald rode towards the old channel of the
+Braunwasser, and there, drawing his rein, and sitting like a statue in
+his stirrups, he could hear him shout: “The lazy dogs are not astir yet.
+We will give them a réveille.  Forward with your brands!”
+
+“Now!” and Ebbo’s cream-coloured horse leapt forth, as the whole band
+flashed into the sunshine from the greenwood covert.
+
+“Who troubles the workmen on my land?” shouted Ebbo.
+
+“Who you may be I care not,” replied the count, “but when I find
+strangers unlicensed on my lands, I burn down their huts.  On, fellows!”
+
+“Back, fellows!” called Ebbo.  “Whoso touches a stick on Adlerstein
+ground shall suffer.”
+
+“So!” said the count, “this is the burgher-bred, burgher-fed varlet, that
+calls himself of Adlerstein!  Boy, thou had best be warned.  Wert thou
+true-blooded, it were worth my while to maintain my rights against thee.
+Craven as thou art, not even with spirit to accept my feud, I would fain
+not have the trouble of sweeping thee from my path.”
+
+“Herr Graf, as true Freiherr and belted knight, I defy thee!  I proclaim
+my right to this ground, and whoso damages those I place there must do
+battle with me.”
+
+“Thou wilt have it then,” said the count, taking his heavy lance from his
+squire, closing his visor, and wheeling back his horse, so as to give
+space for his career.
+
+Ebbo did the like, while Friedel on one side, and Hierom von
+Schlangenwald on the other, kept their men in array, awaiting the issue
+of the strife between their leaders—the fire of seventeen against the
+force of fifty-six.
+
+They closed in full shock, with shivered lances and rearing, pawing
+horses, but without damage to either.  Each drew his sword, and they were
+pressing together, when Heinz, seeing a Schlangenwalder aiming with his
+cross-bow, rode at him furiously, and the mêlée became general; shots
+were fired, not only from cross-bows, but from arquebuses, and in the
+throng Friedel lost sight of the main combat between his brother and the
+count.
+
+Suddenly however there was a crash, as of falling men and horses, with a
+shout of victory strangely mingled with a cry of agony, and both sides
+became aware that their leaders had fallen.  Each party rushed to its
+fallen head.  Friedel beheld Ebbo under his struggling horse, and an
+enemy dashing at his throat, and, flying to the rescue, he rode down the
+assailant, striking him with his sword; and, with the instinct of driving
+the foe as far as possible from his brother, he struck with a sort of
+frenzy, shouting fiercely to his men, and leaping over the dry bed of the
+river, rushing onward with an intoxication of ardour that would have
+seemed foreign to his gentle nature, but for the impetuous desire to
+protect his brother.  Their leaders down, the enemy had no one to rally
+them, and, in spite of their superiority in number, gave way in confusion
+before the furious onset of Adlerstein.  So soon, however, as Friedel
+perceived that he had forced the enemy far back from the scene of
+conflict, his anxiety for his brother returned, and, leaving the
+retainers to continue the pursuit, he turned his horse.  There, on the
+green meadow, lay on the one hand Ebbo’s cream-coloured charger, with his
+master under him, on the other the large figure of the count; and several
+other prostrate forms likewise struggled on the sand and pebbles of the
+strand, or on the turf.
+
+“Ay,” said the architect, who had turned with Friedel, “’twas a gallant
+feat, Sir Friedel, and I trust there is no great harm done.  Were it the
+mere dint of the count’s sword, your brother will be little the worse.”
+
+“Ebbo!  Ebbo mine, look up!” cried Friedel, leaping from his horse, and
+unclasping his brother’s helmet.
+
+“Friedel!” groaned a half-suffocated voice.  “O take away the horse.”
+
+One or two of the artisans were at hand, and with their help the dying
+steed was disengaged from the rider, who could not restrain his moans,
+though Friedel held him in his arms, and endeavoured to move him as
+gently as possible.  It was then seen that the deep gash from the count’s
+sword in the chest was not the most serious injury, but that an arquebus
+ball had pierced his thigh, before burying itself in the body of his
+horse; and that the limb had been further crushed and wrenched by the
+animal’s struggles.  He was nearly unconscious, and gasped with anguish,
+but, after Moritz had bathed his face and moistened his lips, as he lay
+in his brother’s arms, he looked up with clearer eyes, and said: “Have I
+slain him?  It was the shot, not he, that sent me down.  Lives he?
+See—thou, Friedel—thou.  Make him yield.”
+
+Transferring Ebbo to the arms of Schleiermacher, Friedel obeyed, and
+stepped towards the fallen foe.  The wrongs of Adlerstein were indeed
+avenged, for the blood was welling fast from a deep thrust above the
+collar-bone, and the failing, feeble hand was wandering uncertainly among
+the clasps of the gorget.
+
+“Let me aid,” said Friedel, kneeling down, and in his pity for the dying
+man omitting the summons to yield, he threw back the helmet, and beheld a
+grizzled head and stern hard features, so embrowned by weather and
+inflamed by intemperance, that even approaching death failed to blanch
+them.  A scowl of malignant hate was in the eyes, and there was a thrill
+of angry wonder as they fell on the lad’s face.  “Thou again,—thou whelp!
+I thought at least I had made an end of thee,” he muttered, unheard by
+Friedel, who, intent on the thought that had recurred to him with greater
+vividness than ever, was again filling Ebbo’s helmet with water.  He
+refreshed the dying man’s face with it, held it to his lips, and said:
+“Herr Graf, variance and strife are ended now.  For heaven’s sake, say
+where I may find my father!”
+
+“So!  Wouldst find him?” replied Schlangenwald, fixing his look on the
+eager countenance of the youth, while his hand, with a dying man’s
+nervous agitation, was fumbling at his belt.
+
+“I would bless you for ever, could I but free him.”
+
+“Know then,” said the count, speaking very slowly, and still holding the
+young knight’s gaze with a sort of intent fascination, by the stony glare
+of his light gray eyes, “know that thy villain father is a Turkish slave,
+unless he be—as I hope—where his mongrel son may find him.”
+
+Therewith came a flash, a report; Friedel leaped back, staggered, fell;
+Ebbo started to a sitting posture, with horrified eyes, and a loud
+shriek, calling on his brother; Moritz sprang to his feet, shouting,
+“Shame! treason!”
+
+“I call you to witness that I had not yielded,” said the count.  “There’s
+an end of the brood!” and with a grim smile, he straightened his limbs,
+and closed his eyes as a dead man, ere the indignant artisans fell on him
+in savage vengeance.
+
+All this had passed like a flash of lightning, and Friedel had almost at
+the instant of his fall flung himself towards his brother, and raising
+himself on one hand, with the other clasped Ebbo’s, saying, “Fear not; it
+is nothing,” and he was bending to take Ebbo’s head again on his knee,
+when a gush of dark blood, from his left side, caused Moritz to exclaim,
+“Ah!  Sir Friedel, the traitor did his work!  That is no slight hurt.”
+
+“Where?  How?  The ruffian!” cried Ebbo, supporting himself on his elbow,
+so as to see his brother, who rather dreamily put his hand to his side,
+and, looking at the fresh blood that immediately dyed it, said, “I do not
+feel it.  This is more numb dulness than pain.”
+
+“A bad sign that,” said Moritz, apart to one of the workmen, with whom he
+held counsel how to carry back to the castle the two young knights, who
+remained on the bank, Ebbo partly extended on the ground, partly
+supported on the knee and arm of Friedel, who sat with his head drooping
+over him, their looks fixed on one another, as if conscious of nothing
+else on earth.
+
+“Herr Freiherr,” said Moritz, presently, “have you breath to wind your
+bugle to call the men back from the pursuit?”
+
+Ebbo essayed, but was too faint, and Friedel, rousing himself from the
+stupor, took the horn from him, and made the mountain echoes ring again,
+but at the expense of a great effusion of blood.
+
+By this time, however, Heinz was riding back, and a moment his exultation
+changed to rage and despair, when he saw the condition of his young
+lords.  Master Schleiermacher proposed to lay them on some of the planks
+prepared for the building, and carry them up the new road.
+
+“Methinks,” said Friedel, “that I could ride if I were lifted on
+horseback, and thus would our mother be less shocked.”
+
+“Well thought,” said Ebbo.  “Go on and cheer her.  Show her thou canst
+keep the saddle, however it may be with me,” he added, with a groan of
+anguish.
+
+Friedel made the sign of the cross over him.  “The holy cross keep us and
+her, Ebbo,” he said, as he bent to assist in laying his brother on the
+boards, where a mantle had been spread; then kissed his brow, saying, “We
+shall be together again soon.”
+
+Ebbo was lifted on the shoulders of his bearers, and Friedel strove to
+rise, with the aid of Heinz, but sank back, unable to use his limbs; and
+Schleiermacher was the more concerned.  “It goes so with the backbone,”
+he said.  “Sir Friedmund, you had best be carried.”
+
+“Nay, for my mother’s sake!  And I would fain be on my good steed’s back
+once again!” he entreated.  And when with much difficulty he had been
+lifted to the back of his cream-colour, who stood as gently and patiently
+as if he understood the exigency of the moment, he sat upright, and waved
+his hand as he passed the litter, while Ebbo, on his side, signed to him
+to speed on and prepare their mother.  Long, however, before the castle
+was reached, dizzy confusion and leaden helplessness, when no longer
+stimulated by his brother’s presence, so grew on him that it was with
+much ado that Heinz could keep him in his saddle; but, when he saw his
+mother in the castle gateway, he again collected his forces, bade Heinz
+withdraw his supporting arm, and, straightening himself, waved a greeting
+to her, as he called cheerily; “Victory, dear mother.  Ebbo has
+overthrown the count, and you must not be grieved if it be at some cost
+of blood.”
+
+“Alas, my son!” was all Christina could say, for his effort at gaiety
+formed a ghastly contrast with the gray, livid hue that overspread his
+fair young face, his bloody armour, and damp disordered hair, and even
+his stiff unearthly smile.
+
+“Nay, motherling,” he added, as she came so near that he could put his
+arm round her neck, “sorrow not, for Ebbo will need thee much.  And,
+mother,” as his face lighted up, “there is joy coming to you.  Only I
+would that I could have brought him.  Mother, he died not under the
+Schlangenwald swords.”
+
+“Who?  Not Ebbo?” cried the bewildered mother.
+
+“Your own Eberhard, our father,” said Friedel, raising her face to him
+with his hand, and adding, as he met a startled look, “The cruel count
+owned it with his last breath.  He is a Turkish slave, and surely heaven
+will give him back to comfort you, even though we may not work his
+freedom!  O mother, I had so longed for it, but God be thanked that at
+least certainty was bought by my life.”  The last words were uttered
+almost unconsciously, and he had nearly fallen, as the excitement faded;
+but, as they were lifting him down, he bent once more and kissed the
+glossy neck of his horse.  “Ah! poor fellow, thou too wilt be lonely.
+May Ebbo yet ride thee!”
+
+The mother had no time for grief.  Alas!  She might have full time for
+that by and by!  The one wish of the twins was to be together, and
+presently both were laid on the great bed in the upper chamber, Ebbo in a
+swoon from the pain of the transport, and Friedel lying so as to meet the
+first look of recovery.  And, after Ebbo’s eyes had re-opened, they
+watched one another in silence for a short space, till Ebbo said: “Is
+that the hue of death on thy face, brother?”
+
+“I well believe so,” said Friedel.
+
+“Ever together,” said Ebbo, holding his hand.  “But alas!  My mother!
+Would I had never sent thee to the traitor.”
+
+“Ah!  So comes her comfort,” said Friedel.  “Heard you not?  He owned
+that my father was among the Turks.”
+
+“And I,” cried Ebbo.  “I have withheld thee!  O Friedel, had I listened
+to thee, thou hadst not been in this fatal broil!”
+
+“Nay, ever together,” repeated Friedel.  “Through Ulm merchants will my
+mother be able to ransom him.  I know she will, so oft have I dreamt of
+his return.  Then, mother, you will give him our duteous greetings;” and
+he smiled again.
+
+Like one in a dream Christina returned his smile, because she saw he
+wished it, just as the moment before she had been trying to staunch his
+wound.
+
+It was plain that the injuries, except Ebbo’s sword-cut, were far beyond
+her skill, and she could only endeavour to check the bleeding till better
+aid could be obtained from Ulm.  Thither Moritz Schleiermacher had
+already sent, and he assured her that he was far from despairing of the
+elder baron, but she derived little hope from his words, for gunshot
+wounds were then so ill understood as generally to prove fatal.
+
+Moreover, there was an undefined impression that the two lives must end
+in the same hour, even as they had begun.  Indeed, Ebbo was suffering so
+terribly, and was so much spent with pain and loss of blood, that he
+seemed sinking much faster than Friedel, whose wound bled less freely,
+and who only seemed benumbed and torpid, except when he roused himself to
+speak, or was distressed by the writhings and moans which, however, for
+his sake, Ebbo restrained as much as he could.
+
+To be together seemed an all-sufficient consolation, and, when the
+chaplain came sorrowfully to give them the last rites of the Church, Ebbo
+implored him to pray that he might not be left behind long in purgatory.
+
+“Friedel,” he said, clasping his brother’s hand, “is even like the holy
+Sebastian or Maurice; but I—I was never such as he.  O father, will it be
+my penance to be left alone when he is in paradise?”
+
+“What is that?” said Friedel, partially roused by the sound of his name,
+and the involuntary pressure of his hand.  “Nay, Ebbo; one repentance,
+one cross, one hope,” and he relapsed into a doze, while Ebbo murmured
+over a broken, brief confession—exhausting by its vehemence of
+self-accusation for his proud spirit, his wilful neglect of his lost
+father, his hot contempt of prudent counsel.
+
+Then, when the priest came round to Friedel’s side, and the boy was
+wakened to make his shrift, the words were contrite and humble, but calm
+and full of trust.  They were like two of their own mountain streams, the
+waters almost equally undefiled by external stain—yet one struggling,
+agitated, whirling giddily round; the other still, transparent, and the
+light of heaven smiling in its clearness.
+
+The farewell greetings of the Church on earth breathed soft and sweet in
+their loftiness, and Friedel, though lying motionless, and with closed
+eyes, never failed in the murmured response, whether fully conscious or
+not, while his brother only attended by fits and starts, and was
+evidently often in too much pain to know what was passing.
+
+Help was nearer than had been hoped.  The summons despatched the night
+before had been responded to by the vintners and mercers; their train
+bands had set forth, and their captain, a cautious man, never rode into
+the way of blows without his surgeon at hand.  And so it came to pass
+that, before the sun was low on that long and grievous day, Doctor
+Johannes Butteman was led into the upper chamber, where the mother looked
+up to him with a kind of hopeless gratitude on her face, which was nearly
+as white as those of her sons.  The doctor soon saw that Friedel was past
+human aid; but, when he declared that there was fair hope for the other
+youth, Friedel, whose torpor had been dispelled by the examination,
+looked up with his beaming smile, saying, “There, motherling.”
+
+The doctor then declared that he could not deal with the Baron’s wound
+unless he were the sole occupant of the bed, and this sentence brought
+the first cloud of grief or dread to Friedel’s brow, but only for a
+moment.  He looked at his brother, who had again fainted at the first
+touch of his wounded limb, and said, “It is well.  Tell the dear Ebbo
+that I cannot help it if after all I go to the praying, and leave him the
+fighting.  Dear, dear Ebbo!  One day together again and for ever!  I
+leave thee for thine own sake.”  With much effort he signed the cross
+again on his brother’s brow, and kissed it long and fervently.  Then, as
+all stood round, reluctant to effect this severance, or disturb one on
+whom death was visibly fast approaching, he struggled up on his elbow,
+and held out the other hand, saying, “Take me now, Heinz, ere Ebbo revive
+to be grieved.  The last sacrifice,” he further whispered, whilst almost
+giving himself to Heinz and Moritz to be carried to his own bed in the
+turret chamber.
+
+There, even as they laid him down, began what seemed to be the mortal
+agony, and, though he was scarcely sensible, his mother felt that her
+prime call was to him, while his brother was in other hands.  Perhaps it
+was well for her.  Surgical practice was rough, and wounds made by
+fire-arms were thought to have imbibed a poison that made treatment be
+supposed efficacious in proportion to the pain inflicted.  When Ebbo was
+recalled by the torture to see no white reflection of his own face on the
+pillow beside him, and to feel in vain for the grasp of the cold damp
+hand, a delirious frenzy seized him, and his struggles were frustrating
+the doctor’s attempts, when a low soft sweet song stole through the open
+door.
+
+“Friedel!” he murmured, and held his breath to listen.  All through the
+declining day did the gentle sound continue; now of grand chants or hymns
+caught from the cathedral choir, now of songs of chivalry or saintly
+legend so often sung over the evening fire; the one flowing into the
+other in the wandering of failing powers, but never failing in the tender
+sweetness that had distinguished Friedel through life.  And, whenever
+that voice was heard, let them do to him what they would, Ebbo was still
+absorbed in intense listening so as not to lose a note, and lulled almost
+out of sense of suffering by that swan-like music.  If his attendants
+made such noise as to break in on it, or if it ceased for a moment, the
+anguish returned, but was charmed away by the weakest, faintest
+resumption of the song.  Probably Friedel knew not, with any earthly
+sense, what he was doing, but to the very last he was serving his twin
+brother as none other could have aided him in his need.
+
+The September sun had set, twilight was coming on, the doctor had worked
+his stern will, and Ebbo, quivering in every fibre, lay spent on his
+pillow, when his mother glided in, and took her seat near him, though
+where she hoped he would not notice her presence.  But he raised his
+eyelids, and said, “He is not singing now.”
+
+“Singing indeed, but where we cannot hear him,” she answered.  “‘Whiter
+than the snow, clearer than the ice-cave, more solemn than the choir.
+They will come at last.’  That was what he said, even as he entered
+there.”  And the low dove-like tone and tender calm face continued upon
+Ebbo the spell that the chant had left.  He dozed as though still lulled
+by its echo.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+THE WOUNDED EAGLE
+
+
+THE star and the spark in the stubble!  Often did the presage of her
+dream occur to Christina, and assist in sustaining her hopes during the
+days that Ebbo’s life hung in the balance, and he himself had hardly
+consciousness to realize either his brother’s death or his own state,
+save as much as was shown by the words, “Let him not be taken away,
+mother; let him wait for me.”
+
+Friedmund did wait, in his coffin before the altar in the castle chapel,
+covered with a pall of blue velvet, and great white cross, mournfully
+sent by Hausfrau Johanna; his sword, shield, helmet, and spurs laid on
+it, and wax tapers burning at the head and feet.  And, when Christina
+could leave the one son on his couch of suffering, it was to kneel beside
+the other son on his narrow bed of rest, and recall, like a breath of
+solace, the heavenly loveliness and peace that rested on his features
+when she had taken her last long look at them.
+
+Moritz Schleiermacher assisted at Sir Friedmund’s first solemn requiem,
+and then made a journey to Ulm, whence he returned to find the Baron’s
+danger so much abated that he ventured on begging for an interview with
+the lady, in which he explained his purpose of repairing at once to the
+imperial camp, taking with him a letter from the guilds concerned in the
+bridge, and using his personal influence with Maximilian to obtain not
+only pardon for the combat, but authoritative sanction to the erection.
+Dankwart of Schlangenwald, the Teutonic knight, and only heir of old
+Wolfgang, was supposed to be with the Emperor, and it might be possible
+to come to terms with him, since his breeding in the Prussian
+commanderies had kept him aloof from the feuds of his father and brother.
+This mournful fight had to a certain extent equalized the injuries on
+either side, since the man whom Friedel had cut down was Hierom, one of
+the few remaining scions of Schlangenwald, and there was thus no
+dishonour in trying to close the deadly feud, and coming to an amicable
+arrangement about the Debateable Strand, the cause of so much bloodshed.
+What was now wanted was Freiherr Eberhard’s signature to the letter to
+the Emperor, and his authority for making terms with the new count; and
+haste was needed, lest the Markgraf of Wurtemburg should represent the
+affray in the light of an outrage against a member of the League.
+
+Christina saw the necessity, and undertook if possible to obtain her
+son’s signature, but, at the first mention of Master Moritz and the
+bridge, Ebbo turned away his head, groaned, and begged to hear no more of
+either.  He thought of his bold declaration that the bridge must be
+built, even at the cost of blood!  Little did he then guess of whose
+blood!  And in his bitterness of spirit he felt a jealousy of that
+influence of Schleiermacher, which had of late come between him and his
+brother.  He hated the very name, he said, and hid his face with a
+shudder.  He hoped the torrent would sweep away every fragment of the
+bridge.
+
+“Nay, Ebbo mine, wherefore wish ill to a good work that our blessed one
+loved?  Listen, and let me tell you my dream for making yonder strand a
+peaceful memorial of our peaceful boy.”
+
+“To honour Friedel?” and he gazed on her with something like interest in
+his eyes.
+
+“Yes, Ebbo, and as he would best brook honour.  Let us seek for ever to
+end the rival claims to yon piece of meadow by praying this knight of a
+religious order, the new count, to unite with us in building there—or as
+near as may be safe—a church of holy peace, and a cell for a priest, who
+may watch over the bridge ward, and offer the holy sacrifice for the
+departed of either house.  There will we place our gentle Friedel to be
+the first to guard the peace of the ford, and there will we sleep
+ourselves when our time shall come, and so may the cruel feud of many
+generations be slaked for ever.”
+
+“In his blood!” sighed Ebbo.  “Ah! would that it had been mine, mother.
+It is well, as well as anything can be again.  So shall the spot where he
+fell be made sacred, and fenced from rude feet, and we shall see his fair
+effigy keeping his armed watch there.”
+
+And Christina was thankful to see his look of gratification, sad though
+it was.  She sat down near his bed, and began to write a letter in their
+joint names to Graf Dankwart von Schlangenwald, proposing that thus,
+after the even balance of the wrongs of the two houses, their mutual
+hostility might be laid to rest for ever by the consecration of the cause
+of their long contention.  It was a stiff and formal letter, full of the
+set pious formularies of the age, scarcely revealing the deep
+heart-feeling within; but it was to the purpose, and Ebbo, after hearing
+it read, heartily approved, and consented to sign both it and those that
+Schleiermacher had brought.  Christina held the scroll, and placed the
+pen in the fingers that had lately so easily wielded the heavy sword, but
+now felt it a far greater effort to guide the slender quill.
+
+Moritz Schleiermacher went his way in search of the King of the Romans,
+far off in Carinthia.  A full reply could not be expected till the
+campaign was over, and all that was known for some time was through a
+messenger sent back to Ulm by Schleiermacher with the intelligence that
+Maximilian would examine into the matter after his return, and that Count
+Dankwart would reply when he should come to perform his father’s
+obsequies after the army was dispersed.  There was also a letter of kind
+though courtly condolence from Kasimir of Wildschloss, much grieving for
+gallant young Sir Friedmund, proffering all the advocacy he could give
+the cause of Adlerstein, and covertly proffering the protection that she
+and her remaining son might now be more disposed to accept.  Christina
+suppressed this letter, knowing it would only pain and irritate Ebbo, and
+that she had her answer ready.  Indeed, in her grief for one son, and her
+anxiety for the other, perhaps it was this letter that first made her
+fully realize the drift of those earnest words of Friedel’s respecting
+his father.
+
+Meantime the mother and son were alone together, with much of suffering
+and of sorrow, yet with a certain tender comfort in the being all in all
+to one another, with none to intermeddle with their mutual love and
+grief.  It was to Christina as if something of Friedel’s sweetness had
+passed to his brother in his patient helplessness, and that, while thus
+fully engrossed with him, she had both her sons in one.  Nay, in spite of
+all the pain, grief, and weariness, these were times when both dreaded
+any change, and the full recovery, when not only would the loss of
+Friedel be every moment freshly brought home to his brother, but when
+Ebbo would go in quest of his father.
+
+For on this the young Baron had fixed his mind as a sacred duty, from the
+moment he had seen that life was to be his lot.  He looked on his neglect
+of indications of the possibility of his father’s life in the light of a
+sin that had led to all his disasters, and not only regarded the intended
+search as a token of repentance, but as a charge bequeathed to him by his
+less selfish brother.  He seldom spoke of his intention, but his mother
+was perfectly aware of it, and never thought of it without such an agony
+of foreboding dread as eclipsed all the hope that lay beyond.  She could
+only turn away her mind from the thought, and be thankful for what was
+still her own from day to day.
+
+“Art weary, my son?” asked Christina one October afternoon, as Ebbo lay
+on his bed, languidly turning the pages of a noble folio of the Legends
+of the Saints that Master Gottfried had sent for his amusement.  It was
+such a book as fixed the ardour a few years later of the wounded
+Navarrese knight, Inigo de Loyola, but Ebbo handled it as if each page
+were lead.
+
+“Only thinking how Friedel would have glowed towards these as his own
+kinsmen,” said Ebbo.  “Then should I have cared to read of them!” and he
+gave a long sigh.
+
+“Let me take away the book,” she said.  “Thou hast read long, and it is
+dark.”
+
+“So dark that there must surely be a snow-cloud.”
+
+“Snow is falling in the large flakes that our Friedel used to call
+winter-butterflies.”
+
+“Butterflies that will swarm and shut us in from the weary world,” said
+Ebbo.  “And alack! when they go, what a turmoil it will be!  Councils in
+the Rathhaus, appeals to the League, wranglings with the Markgraf, wise
+saws, overweening speeches, all alike dull and dead.”
+
+“It will scarce be so when strength and spirit have returned, mine Ebbo.”
+
+“Never can life be more to me than the way to him,” said the lonely boy;
+“and I—never like him—shall miss the road without him.”
+
+While he thus spoke in the listless dejection of sorrow and weakness,
+Hatto’s aged step was on the stair.  “Gracious lady,” he said, “here is a
+huntsman bewildered in the hills, who has been asking shelter from the
+storm that is drifting up.”
+
+“See to his entertainment, then, Hatto,” said the lady.
+
+“My lady—Sir Baron,” added Hatto, “I had not come up but that this guest
+seems scarce gear for us below.  He is none of the foresters of our
+tract.  His hair is perfumed, his shirt is fine holland, his buff suit is
+of softest skin, his baldric has a jewelled clasp, and his arblast!  It
+would do my lord baron’s heart good only to cast eyes on the perfect make
+of that arblast!  He has a lordly tread, and a stately presence, and,
+though he has a free tongue, and made friends with us as he dried his
+garments, he asked after my lord like his equal.”
+
+“O mother, must you play the chatelaine?” asked Ebbo.  “Who can the
+fellow be?  Why did none ever so come when they would have been more
+welcome?”
+
+“Welcomed must he be,” said Christina, rising, “and thy state shall be my
+excuse for not tarrying longer with him than may be needful.”
+
+Yet, though shrinking from a stranger’s face, she was not without hope
+that the variety might wholesomely rouse her son from his depression, and
+in effect Ebbo, when left with Hatto, minutely questioned him on the
+appearance of the stranger, and watched, with much curiosity, for his
+mother’s return.
+
+“Ebbo mine,” she said, entering, after a long interval, “the knight asks
+to see thee either after supper, or to-morrow morn.”
+
+“Then a knight he is?”
+
+“Yea, truly, a knight truly in every look and gesture, bearing his head
+like the leading stag of the herd, and yet right gracious.”
+
+“Gracious to you, mother, in your own hall?” cried Ebbo, almost fiercely.
+
+“Ah! jealous champion, thou couldst not take offence!  It was the manner
+of one free and courteous to every one, and yet with an inherent
+loftiness that pervades all.”
+
+“Gives he no name?” said Ebbo.
+
+“He calls himself Ritter Theurdank, of the suite of the late Kaisar, but
+I should deem him wont rather to lead than to follow.”
+
+“Theurdank,” repeated Eberhard, “I know no such name!  So, motherling,
+are you going to sup?  I shall not sleep till I have seen him!”
+
+“Hold, dear son.”  She leant over him and spoke low.  “See him thou must,
+but let me first station Heinz and Koppel at the door with halberts, not
+within earshot, but thou art so entirely defenceless.”
+
+She had the pleasure of seeing him laugh.  “Less defenceless than when
+the kinsman of Wildschloss here visited us, mother?  I see for whom thou
+takest him, but let it be so; a spiritual knight would scarce wreak his
+vengeance on a wounded man in his bed.  I will not have him insulted with
+precautions.  If he has freely risked himself in my hands, I will as
+freely risk myself in his.  Moreover, I thought he had won thy heart.”
+
+“Reigned over it, rather,” said Christina.  “It is but the disguise that
+I suspect and mistrust.  Bid me not leave thee alone with him, my son.”
+
+“Nay, dear mother,” said Ebbo, “the matters on which he is like to speak
+will brook no presence save our own, and even that will be hard enough to
+bear.  So prop me more upright!  So!  And comb out these locks somewhat
+smoother.  Thanks, mother.  Now can he see whether he will choose
+Eberhard of Adlerstein for friend or foe.”
+
+By the time supper was ended, the only light in the upper room came from
+the flickering flames of the fire of pine knots on the hearth.  It
+glanced on the pale features and dark sad eyes of the young Baron, sad in
+spite of the eager look of scrutiny that he turned on the figure that
+entered at the door, and approached so quickly that the partial light
+only served to show the gloss of long fair hair, the glint of a jewelled
+belt, and the outline of a tall, well-knit, agile frame.
+
+“Welcome, Herr Ritter,” he said; “I am sorry we have been unable to give
+you a fitter reception.”
+
+“No host could be more fully excused than you,” said the stranger, and
+Ebbo started at his voice.  “I fear you have suffered much, and still
+have much to suffer.”
+
+“My sword wound is healing fast,” said Ebbo; “it is the shot in my broken
+thigh that is so tedious and painful.”
+
+“And I dare be sworn the leeches made it worse.  I have hated all leeches
+ever since they kept me three days a prisoner in a ’pothecary’s shop
+stinking with drugs.  Why, I have cured myself with one pitcher of water
+of a raging fever, in their very despite!  How did they serve thee, my
+poor boy?”
+
+“They poured hot oil into the wound to remove the venom of the lead,”
+said Ebbo.
+
+“Had it been my case the lead should have been in their own brains first,
+though that were scarce needed, the heavy-witted Hans Sausages.  Why
+should there be more poison in lead than in steel?  I have asked all my
+surgeons that question, nor ever had a reasonable answer.  Greater havoc
+of warriors do they make than ever with the arquebus—ay, even when every
+lanzknecht bears one.”
+
+“Alack!” Ebbo could not help exclaiming, “where will be room for
+chivalry?”
+
+“Talk not old world nonsense,” said Theurdank; “chivalry is in the heart,
+not in the weapon.  A youth beforehand enough with the world to be
+building bridges should know that, when all our troops are provided with
+such an arm, then will their platoons in serried ranks be as a solid wall
+breathing fire, and as impregnable as the lines of English archers with
+long bows, or the phalanx of Macedon.  And, when each man bears a pistol
+instead of the misericorde, his life will be far more his own.”
+
+Ebbo’s face was in full light, and his visitor marked his contracted brow
+and trembling lip.  “Ah!” he said, “thou hast had foul experience of
+these weapons.”
+
+“Not mine own hurt,” said Ebbo; “that was but fair chance of war.”
+
+“I understand,” said the knight; “it was the shot that severed the goodly
+bond that was so fair to see.  Young man, none has grieved more truly
+than King Max.”
+
+“And well he may,” said Ebbo.  “He has not lost merely one of his best
+servants, but all the better half of another.”
+
+“There is still stuff enough left to make that _one_ well worth having,”
+said Theurdank, kindly grasping his hand, “though I would it were more
+substantial!  How didst get old Wolfgang down, boy?  He must have been a
+tough morsel for slight bones like these, even when better covered than
+now.  Come, tell me all.  I promised the Markgraf of Wurtemburg to look
+into the matter when I came to be guest at St. Ruprecht’s cloister, and I
+have some small interest too with King Max.”
+
+His kindliness and sympathy were more effectual with Ebbo than the desire
+to represent his case favourably, for he was still too wretched to care
+for policy; but he answered Theurdank’s questions readily, and explained
+how the idea of the bridge had originated in the vigil beside the broken
+waggons.
+
+“I hope,” said Theurdank, “the merchants made up thy share?  These
+overthrown goods are a seignorial right of one or other of you lords of
+the bank.”
+
+“True, Herr Ritter; but we deemed it unknightly to snatch at what
+travellers lost by misfortune.”
+
+“Freiherr Eberhard, take my word for it, while thou thus holdest, all the
+arquebuses yet to be cut out of the Black Forest will not mar thy
+chivalry.  Where didst get these ways of thinking?”
+
+“My brother was a very St. Sebastian!  My mother—”
+
+“Ah! her sweet wise face would have shown it, even had not poor Kasimir
+of Adlerstein raved of her.  Ah! lad, thou hast crossed a case of true
+love there!  Canst not brook even such a gallant stepfather?”
+
+“I may not,” said Ebbo, with spirit; “for with his last breath
+Schlangenwald owned that my own father died not at the hostel, but may
+now be alive as a Turkish slave.”
+
+“The devil!” burst out Theurdank.  “Well! that might have been a pretty
+mess!  A Turkish slave, saidst thou!  What year chanced all this
+matter—thy grandfather’s murder and all the rest?”
+
+“The year before my birth,” said Ebbo.  “It was in the September of
+1475.”
+
+“Ha!” muttered Theurdank, musing to himself; “that was the year the
+dotard Schenk got his overthrow at the fight of Rain on Sare from the
+Moslem.  Some composition was made by them, and old Wolfgang was not
+unlikely to have been the go-between.  So!  Say on, young knight,” he
+added, “let us to the matter in hand.  How rose the strife that kept back
+two troops from our—from the banner of the empire?”
+
+Ebbo proceeded with the narration, and concluded it just as the bell now
+belonging to the chapel began to toll for compline, and Theurdank
+prepared to obey its summons, first, however, asking if he should send
+any one to the patient.  Ebbo thanked him, but said he needed no one till
+his mother should come after prayers.
+
+“Nay, I told thee I had some leechcraft.  Thou art weary, and must rest
+more entirely;”—and, giving him little choice, Theurdank supported him
+with one arm while removing the pillows that propped him, then laid him
+tenderly down, saying, “Good night, and the saints bless thee, brave
+young knight.  Sleep well, and recover in spite of the leeches.  I cannot
+afford to lose both of you.”
+
+Ebbo strove to follow mentally the services that were being performed in
+the chapel, and whose “Amens” and louder notes pealed up to him, devoid
+of the clear young tones that had sung their last here below, but swelled
+by grand bass notes that as much distracted Ebbo’s attention as the
+memory of his guest’s conversation; and he impatiently awaited his
+mother’s arrival.
+
+At length, lamp in hand, she appeared with tears shining in her eyes, and
+bending over him said,
+
+“He hath done honour to our blessed one, my Ebbo; he knelt by him, and
+crossed him with holy water, and when he led me from the chapel he told
+me any mother in Germany might envy me my two sons even now.  Thou must
+love him now, Ebbo.”
+
+“Love him as one loves one’s loftiest model,” said Ebbo—“value the old
+castle the more for sheltering him.”
+
+“Hath he made himself known to thee?”
+
+“Not openly, but there is only one that he can be.”
+
+Christina smiled, thankful that the work of pardon and reconciliation had
+been thus softened by the personal qualities of the enemy, whose conduct
+in the chapel had deeply moved her.
+
+“Then all will be well, blessedly well,” she said.
+
+“So I trust,” said Ebbo, “but the bell broke our converse, and he laid me
+down as tenderly as—O mother, if a father’s kindness be like his, I have
+truly somewhat to regain.”
+
+“Knew he aught of the fell bargain?” whispered Christina.
+
+“Not he, of course, save that it was a year of Turkish inroads.  He will
+speak more perchance to-morrow.  Mother, not a word to any one, nor let
+us betray our recognition unless it be his pleasure to make himself
+known.”
+
+“Certainly not,” said Christina, remembering the danger that the
+household might revenge Friedel’s death if they knew the foe to be in
+their power.  Knowing as she did that Ebbo’s admiration was apt to be
+enthusiastic, and might now be rendered the more fervent by fever and
+solitude, she was still at a loss to understand his dazzled, fascinated
+state.
+
+When Heinz entered, bringing the castle key, which was always laid under
+the Baron’s pillow, Ebbo made a movement with his hand that surprised
+them both, as if to send it elsewhere—then muttered, “No, no, not till he
+reveals himself,” and asked, “Where sleeps the guest?”
+
+“In the grandmother’s room, which we fitted for a guest-chamber, little
+thinking who our first would be,” said his mother.
+
+“Never fear, lady; we will have a care to him,” said Heinz, somewhat
+grimly.
+
+“Yes, have a care,” said Ebbo, wearily; “and take care all due honour is
+shown to him!  Good night, Heinz.”
+
+“Gracious lady,” said Heinz, when by a sign he had intimated to her his
+desire of speaking with her unobserved by the Baron, “never fear; I know
+who the fellow is as well as you do.  I shall be at the foot of the
+stairs, and woe to whoever tries to step up them past me.”
+
+“There is no reason to apprehend treason, Heinz, yet to be on our guard
+can do no harm.”
+
+“Nay, lady, I could look to the gear for the oubliette if you would speak
+the word.”
+
+“For heaven’s sake, no, Heinz.  This man has come hither trusting to our
+honour, and you could not do your lord a greater wrong, nor one that he
+could less pardon, than by any attempt on our guest.”
+
+“Would that he had never eaten our bread!” muttered Heinz.  “Vipers be
+they all, and who knows what may come next?”
+
+“Watch, watch, Heinz; that is all,” implored Christina, “and, above all,
+not a word to any one else.”
+
+And Christina dismissed the man-at-arms gruff and sullen, and herself
+retired ill at ease between fears of, and for, the unwelcome guest whose
+strange powers of fascination had rendered her, in his absence, doubly
+distrustful.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+RITTER THEURDANK
+
+
+THE snow fell all night without ceasing, and was still falling on the
+morrow, when the guest explained his desire of paying a short visit to
+the young Baron, and then taking his departure.  Christina would gladly
+have been quit of him, but she felt bound to remonstrate, for their
+mountain was absolutely impassable during a fall of snow, above all when
+accompanied by wind, since the drifts concealed fearful abysses, and the
+shifting masses insured destruction to the unwary wayfarer; nay, natives
+themselves had perished between the hamlet and the castle.
+
+“Not the hardiest cragsman, not my son himself,” she said, “could venture
+on such a morning to guide you to—”
+
+“Whither, gracious dame?” asked Theurdank, half smiling.
+
+“Nay, sir, I would not utter what you would not make known.”
+
+“You know me then?”
+
+“Surely, sir, for our noble foe, whose generous trust in our honour must
+win my son’s heart.”
+
+“So!” he said, with a peculiar smile, “Theurdank—Dankwart—I see!  May I
+ask if your son likewise smelt out the Schlangenwald?”
+
+“Verily, Sir Count, my Ebbo is not easily deceived.  He said our guest
+could be but one man in all the empire.”
+
+Theurdank smiled again, saying, “Then, lady, you shudder not at a man
+whose kin and yours have shed so much of one another’s blood?”
+
+“Nay, ghostly knight, I regard you as no more stained therewith than are
+my sons by the deeds of their grandfather.”
+
+“If there were more like you, lady,” returned Theurdank, “deadly feuds
+would soon be starved out.  May I to your son?  I have more to say to
+him, and I would fain hear his views of the storm.”
+
+Christina could not be quite at ease with Theurdank in her son’s room,
+but she had no choice, and she knew that Heinz was watching on the turret
+stair, out of hearing indeed, but as ready to spring as a cat who sees
+her young ones in the hand of a child that she only half trusts.
+
+Ebbo lay eagerly watching for his visitor, who greeted him with the same
+almost paternal kindness he had evinced the night before, but consulted
+him upon the way from the castle.  Ebbo confirmed his mother’s opinion
+that the path was impracticable so long as the snow fell, and the wind
+tossed it in wild drifts.
+
+“We have been caught in snow,” he said, “and hard work have we had to get
+home!  Once indeed, after a bear hunt, we fully thought the castle stood
+before us, and lo! it was all a cruel snow mist in that mocking shape.  I
+was even about to climb our last Eagle’s Step, as I thought, when behold,
+it proved to be the very brink of the abyss.”
+
+“Ah! these ravines are well-nigh as bad as those of the Inn.  I’ve known
+what it was to be caught on the ledge of a precipice by a sharp wind,
+changing its course, mark’st thou, so swiftly that it verily tore my hold
+from the rock, and had well-nigh swept me into a chasm of mighty depth.
+There was nothing for it but to make the best spring I might towards the
+crag on the other side, and grip for my life at my alpenstock, which by
+Our Lady’s grace was firmly planted, and I held on till I got breath
+again, and felt for my footing on the ice-glazed rock.”
+
+“Ah!” said Eberhard with a long breath, after having listened with a
+hunter’s keen interest to this hair’s-breadth escape, “it sounds like a
+gust of my mountain air thus let in on me.”
+
+“Truly it is dismal work for a lusty hunter to lie here,” said Theurdank,
+“but soon shalt thou take thy crags again in full vigour, I hope.  How
+call’st thou the deep gray lonely pool under a steep frowning crag
+sharpened well-nigh to a spear point, that I passed yester afternoon?”
+
+“The Ptarmigan’s Mere, the Red Eyrie,” murmured Ebbo, scarcely able to
+utter the words as he thought of Friedel’s delight in the pool, his
+exploit at the eyrie, and the gay bargain made in the streets of Ulm,
+that he should show the scaler of the Dom steeple the way to the eagle’s
+nest.
+
+“I remember,” said his guest gravely, coming to his side.  “Ah, boy! thy
+brother’s flight has been higher yet.  Weep freely; fear me not.  Do I
+not know what it is, when those who were over-good for earth have found
+their eagle’s wings, and left us here?”
+
+Ebbo gazed up through his tears into the noble, mournful face that was
+bent kindly over him.  “I will not seek to comfort thee by counselling
+thee to forget,” said Theurdank.  “I was scarce thine elder when my life
+was thus rent asunder, and to hoar hairs, nay, to the grave itself, will
+she be my glory and my sorrow.  Never owned I brother, but I trow ye two
+were one in no common sort.”
+
+“Such brothers as we saw at Ulm were little like us,” returned Ebbo, from
+the bottom of his heart.  “We were knit together so that all will begin
+with me as if it were the left hand remaining alone to do it!  I am glad
+that my old life may not even in shadow be renewed till after I have gone
+in quest of my father.”
+
+“Be not over hasty in that quest,” said the guest, “or the infidels may
+chance to gain two Freiherren instead of one.  Hast any designs?”
+
+Ebbo explained that he thought of making his way to Genoa to consult the
+merchant Gian Battista dei Battiste, whose description of the captive
+German noble had so strongly impressed Friedel.  Ebbo knew the difference
+between Turks and Moors, but Friedel’s impulse guided him, and he further
+thought that at Genoa he should learn the way to deal with either variety
+of infidel.  Theurdank thought this a prudent course, since the Genoese
+had dealings both at Tripoli and Constantinople; and, moreover, the
+transfer was not impossible, since the two different hordes of Moslems
+trafficked among themselves when either had made an unusually successful
+razzia.
+
+“Shame,” he broke out, “that these Eastern locusts, these ravening
+hounds, should prey unmolested on the fairest lands of the earth, and our
+German nobles lie here like swine, grunting and squealing over the
+plunder they grub up from one another, deaf to any summons from heaven or
+earth!  Did not Heaven’s own voice speak in thunder this last year, even
+in November, hurling the mighty thunderbolt of Alsace, an ell long,
+weighing two hundred and fifteen pounds?  Did I not cause it to be hung
+up in the church of Encisheim, as a witness and warning of the plagues
+that hang over us?  But no, nothing will quicken them from their sloth
+and drunkenness till the foe are at their doors; and, if a man arise of
+different mould, with some heart for the knightly, the good, and the
+true, then they kill him for me!  But thou, Adlerstein, this pious quest
+over, thou wilt return to me.  Thou hast head to think and heart to feel
+for the shame and woe of this misguided land.”
+
+“I trust so, my lord,” said Ebbo.  “Truly, I have suffered bitterly for
+pursuing my own quarrel rather than the crusade.”
+
+“I meant not thee,” said Theurdank, kindly.  “Thy bridge is a benefit to
+me, as much as, or more than, ever it can be to thee.  Dost know Italian?
+There is something of Italy in thine eye.”
+
+“My mother’s mother was Italian, my lord; but she died so early that her
+language has not descended to my mother or myself.”
+
+“Thou shouldst learn it.  It will be pastime while thou art bed-fast, and
+serve thee well in dealing with the Moslem.  Moreover, I may have work
+for thee in Welschland.  Books?  I will send thee books.  There is the
+whole chronicle of Karl the Great, and all his Palsgrafen, by Pulci and
+Boiardo, a brave Count and gentleman himself, governor of Reggio, and
+worthy to sing of deeds of arms; so choice, too, as to the names of his
+heroes, that they say he caused his church bells to be rung when he had
+found one for Rodomonte, his infidel Hector.  He has shown up Roland as a
+love-sick knight, though, which is out of all accord with Archbishop
+Turpin.  Wilt have him?”
+
+“When we were together, we used to love tales of chivalry.”
+
+“Ah!  Or wilt have the stern old Ghibelline Florentine, who explored the
+three realms of the departed?  Deep lore, and well-nigh unsearchable, is
+his; but I love him for the sake of his Beatrice, who guided him.  May we
+find such guides in our day!”
+
+“I have heard of him,” said Ebbo.  “If he will tell me where my Friedel
+walks in light, then, my lord, I would read him with all my heart.”
+
+“Or wouldst thou have rare Franciscus Petrarca?  I wot thou art too young
+as yet for the yearnings of his sonnets, but their voice is sweet to the
+bereft heart.”
+
+And he murmured over, in their melodious Italian flow, the lines on
+Laura’s death:—
+
+    “Not pallid, but yet whiter than the snow
+    By wind unstirred that on a hillside lies;
+    Rest seemed as on a weary frame to grow,
+    A gentle slumber pressed her lovely eyes.”
+
+“Ah!” he added aloud to himself, “it is ever to me as though the poet had
+watched in that chamber at Ghent.”
+
+Such were the discourses of that morning, now on poetry and book lore;
+now admiration of the carvings that decked the room; now talk on grand
+architectural designs, or improvements in fire-arms, or the discussion of
+hunting adventures.  There seemed nothing in art, life, or learning in
+which the versatile mind of Theurdank was not at home, or that did not
+end in some strange personal reminiscence of his own.  All was so kind,
+so gracious, and brilliant, that at first the interview was full of
+wondering delight to Ebbo, but latterly it became very fatiguing from the
+strain of attention, above all towards a guest who evidently knew that he
+was known, while not permitting such recognition to be avowed.  Ebbo
+began to long for an interruption, but, though he could see by the
+lightened sky that the weather had cleared up, it would have been
+impossible to have suggested to any guest that the way might now probably
+be open, and more especially to such a guest as this.  Considerate as his
+visitor had been the night before, the pleasure of talk seemed to have
+done away with the remembrance of his host’s weakness, till Ebbo so
+flagged that at last he was scarcely alive to more than the continued
+sound of the voice, and all the pain that for a while had been in
+abeyance seemed to have mastered him; but his guest, half reading his
+books, half discoursing, seemed too much immersed in his own plans,
+theories, and adventures, to mark the condition of his auditor.
+
+Interruption came at last, however.  There was a sudden knock at the door
+at noon, and with scant ceremony Heinz entered, followed by three other
+of the men-at-arms, fully equipped.
+
+“Ha! what means this?” demanded Ebbo.
+
+“Peace, Sir Baron,” said Heinz, advancing so as to place his large person
+between Ebbo’s bed and the strange hunter.  “You know nothing of it.  We
+are not going to lose you as well as your brother, and we mean to see how
+this knight likes to serve as a hostage instead of opening the gates as a
+traitor spy.  On him, Koppel! it is thy right.”
+
+“Hands off! at your peril, villains!” exclaimed Ebbo, sitting up, and
+speaking in the steady resolute voice that had so early rendered him
+thoroughly their master, but much perplexed and dismayed, and entirely
+unassisted by Theurdank, who stood looking on with almost a smile, as if
+diverted by his predicament.
+
+“By your leave, Herr Freiherr,” said Heinz, putting his hand on his
+shoulder, “this is no concern of yours.  While you cannot guard yourself
+or my lady, it is our part to do so.  I tell you his minions are on their
+way to surprise the castle.”
+
+Even as Heinz spoke, Christina came panting into the room, and, hurrying
+to her son’s side, said, “Sir Count, is this just, is this honourable,
+thus to return my son’s welcome, in his helpless condition?”
+
+“Mother, are you likewise distracted?” exclaimed Ebbo.  “What is all this
+madness?”
+
+“Alas, my son, it is no frenzy!  There are armed men coming up the
+Eagle’s Stairs on the one hand and by the Gemsbock’s Pass on the other!”
+
+“But not a hair of your head shall they hurt, lady,” said Heinz.  “This
+fellow’s limbs shall be thrown to them over the battlements.  On,
+Koppel!”
+
+“Off, Koppel!” thundered Ebbo.  “Would you brand me with shame for ever?
+Were he all the Schlangenwalds in one, he should go as freely as he came;
+but he is no more Schlangenwald than I am.”
+
+“He has deceived you, my lord,” said Heinz.  “My lady’s own letter to
+Schlangenwald was in his chamber.  ’Tis a treacherous disguise.”
+
+“Fool that thou art!” said Ebbo.  “I know this gentleman well.  I knew
+him at Ulm.  Those who meet him here mean me no ill.  Open the gates and
+receive them honourably!  Mother, mother, trust me, all is well.  I know
+what I am saying.”
+
+The men looked one upon another.  Christina wrung her hands, uncertain
+whether her son were not under some strange fatal deception.
+
+“My lord has his fancies,” growled Koppel.  “I’ll not be balked of my
+right of vengeance for his scruples!  Will he swear that this fellow is
+what he calls himself?”
+
+“I swear,” said Ebbo, slowly, “that he is a true loyal knight, well known
+to me.”
+
+“Swear it distinctly, Sir Baron,” said Heinz.  “We have all too deep a
+debt of vengeance to let off any one who comes here lurking in the
+interest of our foe.  Swear that this is Theurdank, or we send his head
+to greet his friends.”
+
+Drops stood on Ebbo’s brow, and his breath laboured as he felt his senses
+reeling, and his powers of defence for his guest failing him.  Even
+should the stranger confess his name, the people of the castle might not
+believe him; and here he stood like one indifferent, evidently measuring
+how far his young host would go in his cause.
+
+“I cannot swear that his real name is Theurdank,” said Ebbo, rallying his
+forces, “but this I swear, that he is neither friend nor fosterer of
+Schlangenwald, that I know him, and I had rather die than that the
+slightest indignity were offered him.”  Here, and with a great effort
+that terribly wrenched his wounded leg, he reached past Heinz, and
+grasped his guest’s hand, pulling him as near as he could.
+
+“Sir,” he said, “if they try to lay hands on you, strike my death-blow!”
+
+A bugle-horn was wound outside.  The men stood daunted—Christina in
+extreme terror for her son, who lay gasping, breathless, but still
+clutching the stranger’s hand, and with eyes of fire glaring on the
+mutinous warriors.  Another bugle-blast!  Heinz was almost in the act of
+grappling with the silent foe, and Koppel cried as he raised his halbert,
+“Now or never!” but paused.
+
+“Never, so please you,” said the strange guest.  “What if your young lord
+could not forswear himself that my name is Theurdank!  Are you foes to
+all the world save Theurdank?”
+
+“No masking,” said Heinz, sternly.  “Tell your true name as an honest
+man, and we will judge whether you be friend or foe.”
+
+“My name is a mouthful, as your master knows,” said the guest, slowly,
+looking with strangely amused eyes on the confused lanzknechts, who were
+trying to devour their rage.  “I was baptized Maximilianus; Archduke of
+Austria, by birth; by choice of the Germans, King of the Romans.”
+
+“The Kaisar!”
+
+Christina dropped on her knee; the men-at-arms tumbled backwards; Ebbo
+pressed the hand he held to his lips, and fainted away.  The bugle
+sounded for the third time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+PEACE
+
+
+SLOWLY and painfully did Ebbo recover from his swoon, feeling as if the
+means of revival were rending him away from his brother.  He was so
+completely spent that he was satisfied with a mere assurance that nothing
+was amiss, and presently dropped into a profound slumber, whence he awoke
+to find it still broad daylight, and his mother sitting by the side of
+his bed, all looking so much as it had done for the last six weeks, that
+his first inquiry was if all that had happened had been but a strange
+dream.  His mother would scarcely answer till she had satisfied herself
+that his eye was clear, his voice steady, his hand cool, and that, as she
+said, “That Kaisar had done him no harm.”
+
+“Ah, then it was true!  Where is he?  Gone?” cried Ebbo, eagerly.
+
+“No, in the hall below, busy with letters they have brought him.  Lie
+still, my boy; he has done thee quite enough damage for one day.”
+
+“But, mother, what are you saying!  Something disloyal, was it not?”
+
+“Well, Ebbo, I was very angry that he should have half killed you when he
+could so easily have spoken one word.  Heaven forgive me if I did wrong,
+but I could not help it.”
+
+“Did _he_ forgive you, mother?” said Ebbo, anxiously.
+
+“He—oh yes.  To do him justice he was greatly concerned; devised ways of
+restoring thee, and now has promised not to come near thee again without
+my leave,” said the mother, quite as persuaded of her own rightful sway
+in her son’s sick chamber as ever Kunigunde had been of her dominion over
+the castle.
+
+“And is he displeased with me?  Those cowardly vindictive rascals, to
+fall on him, and set me at nought!  Before him, too!” exclaimed Ebbo,
+bitterly.
+
+“Nay, Ebbo, he thought thy part most gallant.  I heard him say so, not
+only to me, but below stairs—both wise and true.  Thou didst know him
+then?”
+
+“From the first glance of his princely eye—the first of his keen smiles.
+I had seen him disguised before.  I thought you knew him too, mother; I
+never guessed that your mind was running on Schlangenwald when we talked
+at cross purposes last night.”
+
+“Would that I had; but though I breathed no word openly, I encouraged
+Heinz’s precautions.  My boy, I could not help it; my heart would tremble
+for my only one, and I saw he could not be what he seemed.”
+
+“And what doth he here?  Who were the men who were advancing?”
+
+“They were the followers he had left at St. Ruprecht’s, and likewise
+Master Schleiermacher and Sir Kasimir of Wildschloss.”
+
+“Ha!”
+
+“What—he had not told thee?”
+
+“No.  He knew that I knew him, was at no pains to disguise himself, yet
+evidently meant me to treat him as a private knight.  But what brought
+Wildschloss here?”
+
+“It seems,” said Christina, “that, on the return from Carinthia, the
+Kaisar expressed his intention of slipping away from his army in his own
+strange fashion, and himself inquiring into the matter of the Ford.  So
+he took with him his own personal followers, the new Graf von
+Schlangenwald, Herr Kasimir, and Master Schleiermacher.  The others he
+sent to Schlangenwald; he himself lodged at St. Ruprecht’s, appointing
+that Sir Kasimir should meet him there this morning.  From the convent he
+started on a chamois hunt, and made his way hither; but, when the snow
+came on, and he returned not, his followers became uneasy, and came in
+search of him.”
+
+“Ah!” said Ebbo, “he meant to intercede for Wildschloss—it might be he
+would have tried his power.  No, for that he is too generous.  How looked
+Wildschloss, mother?”
+
+“How could I tell how any one looked save thee, my poor wan boy?  Thou
+art paler than ever!  I cannot have any king or kaisar of them all come
+to trouble thee.”
+
+“Nay, motherling, there is much more trouble and unrest to me in not
+knowing how my king will treat us after such a requital!  Prithee let him
+know that I am at his service.”
+
+And, after having fed and refreshed her patient, the gentle potentate of
+his chamber consented to intimate her consent to admit the invader.  But
+not till after delay enough to fret the impatient nerves of illness did
+Maximilian appear, handing her in, and saying, in the cheery voice that
+was one of his chief fascinations,
+
+“Yea, truly, fair dame, I know thou wouldst sooner trust Schlangenwald
+himself than me alone with thy charge.  How goes it, my true knight?”
+
+“Well, right well, my liege,” said Ebbo, “save for my shame and grief.”
+
+“Thou art the last to be ashamed for that,” said the good-natured prince.
+“Have I never seen my faithful vassals more bent on their own feuds than
+on my word?—I who reign over a set of kings, who brook no will but their
+own.”
+
+“And may we ask your pardon,” said Ebbo, “not only for ourselves, but for
+the misguided men-at-arms?”
+
+“What! the grewsome giant that was prepared with the axe, and the honest
+lad that wanted to do his duty by his father?  I honour that lad,
+Freiherr; I would enrol him in my guard, but that probably he is better
+off here than with _Massimiliano pochi danari_, as the Italians call me.
+But what I came hither to say was this,” and he spoke gravely: “thou art
+sincere in desiring reconciliation with the house of Schlangenwald?”
+
+“With all my heart,” said Ebbo, “do I loathe the miserable debt of blood
+for blood!”
+
+“And,” said Maximilian, “Graf Dankwart is of like mind.  Bred from
+pagedom in his Prussian commandery, he has never been exposed to the
+irritations that have fed the spirit of strife, and he will be thankful
+to lay it aside.  The question next is how to solemnize this
+reconciliation, ere your retainers on one side or the other do something
+to set you by the ears together again, which, judging by this morning’s
+work, is not improbable.”
+
+“Alas! no,” said Ebbo, “while I am laid by.”
+
+“Had you both been in our camp, you should have sworn friendship in my
+chapel.  Now must Dankwart come hither to thee, as I trow he had best do,
+while I am here to keep the peace.  See, friend Ebbo, we will have him
+here to-morrow; thy chaplain shall deck the altar here, the Father Abbot
+shall say mass, and ye shall swear peace and brotherhood before me.
+And,” he added, taking Ebbo’s hand, “I shall know how to trust thine
+oaths as of one who sets the fear of God above that of his king.”
+
+This was truly the only chance of impressing on the wild vassals of the
+two houses an obligation that perhaps might override their ancient
+hatred; and the Baron and his mother gladly submitted to the arrangement.
+Maximilian withdrew to give directions for summoning the persons required
+and Christina was soon obliged to leave her son, while she provided for
+her influx of guests.
+
+Ebbo was alone till nearly the end of the supper below stairs.  He had
+been dozing, when a cautious tread came up the turret steps, and he
+started, and called out, “Who goes there?  I am not asleep.”
+
+“It is your kinsman, Freiherr,” said a well-known voice; “I come by your
+mother’s leave.”
+
+“Welcome, Sir Cousin,” said Ebbo, holding out his hand.  “You come to
+find everything changed.”
+
+“I have knelt in the chapel,” said Wildschloss, gravely.
+
+“And he loved you better than I!” said Ebbo.
+
+“Your jealousy of me was a providential thing, for which all may be
+thankful,” said Wildschloss gravely; “yet it is no small thing to lose
+the hope of so many years!  However, young Baron, I have grave matter for
+your consideration.  Know you the service on which I am to be sent?  The
+Kaisar deems that the Armenians or some of the Christian nations on the
+skirts of the Ottoman empire might be made our allies, and attack the
+Turk in his rear.  I am chosen as his envoy, and shall sail so soon as I
+can make my way to Venice.  I only knew of the appointment since I came
+hither, he having been led thereto by letters brought him this day; and
+mayhap by the downfall of my hopes.  He was peremptory, as his mood is,
+and seemed to think it no small favour,” added Wildschloss, with some
+annoyance.  “And meantime, what of my poor child?  There she is in the
+cloister at Ulm, but an inheritance is a very mill-stone round the neck
+of an orphan maid.  That insolent fellow, Lassla von Trautbach, hath
+already demanded to espouse the poor babe; he—a blood-stained, dicing,
+drunken rover, with whom I would not trust a dog that I loved!  Yet my
+death would place her at the disposal of his father, who would give her
+at once to him.  Nay, even his aunt, the abbess, will believe nothing
+against him, and hath even striven with me to have her betrothed at once.
+On the barest rumour of my death will they wed the poor little thing, and
+then woe to her, and woe to my vassals!”
+
+“The King,” suggested Ebbo.  “Surely she might be made his ward.”
+
+“Young man,” said Sir Kasimir, bending over him, and speaking in an
+undertone, “he may well have won your heart.  As friend, when one is at
+his side, none can be so winning, or so sincere as he; but with all his
+brilliant gifts, he says truly of himself that he is a mere reckless
+huntsman.  To-day, while I am with him, he would give me half Austria, or
+fight single-handed in my cause or Thekla’s.  Next month, when I am out
+of sight, comes Trautbach, just when his head is full of keeping the
+French out of Italy, or reforming the Church, or beating the Turk, or
+parcelling the empire into circles, or, maybe, of a new touch-hole for a
+cannon—nay, of a flower-garden, or of walking into a lion’s den.  He just
+says, ‘Yea, well,’ to be rid of the importunity, and all is over with my
+poor little maiden.  Hare-brained and bewildered with schemes has he been
+as Romish King—how will it be with him as Kaisar?  It is but of his
+wonted madness that he is here at all, when his Austrian states must be
+all astray for want of him.  No, no; I would rather make a weathercock
+guardian to my daughter.  You yourself are the only guard to whom I can
+safely intrust her.”
+
+“My sword as knight and kinsman—” began Ebbo.
+
+“No, no; ’tis no matter of errant knight or distressed damsel.  That is
+King Max’s own line!” said Wildschloss, with a little of the irony that
+used to nettle Ebbo.  “There is only one way in which you can save her,
+and that is as her husband.”
+
+Ebbo started, as well he might, but Sir Kasimir laid his hand on him with
+a gesture that bade him listen ere he spoke.  “My first wish for my
+child,” he said, “was to see her brought up by that peerless lady below
+stairs.  The saints—in pity to one so like themselves—spared her the
+distress our union would have brought her.  Now, it would be vain to
+place my little Thekla in her care, for Trautbach would easily feign my
+death, and claim his niece, nor are you of age to be made her guardian as
+head of our house.  But, if this marriage rite were solemnized, then
+would her person and lands alike be yours, and I could leave her with an
+easy heart.”
+
+“But,” said the confused, surprised Ebbo, “what can I do?  They say I
+shall not walk for many weeks to come.  And, even if I could, I am so
+young—I have so blundered in my dealings with my own mountaineers, and
+with this fatal bridge—how should I manage such estates as yours?  Some
+better—”
+
+“Look you, Ebbo,” said Wildschloss; “you have erred—you have been hasty;
+but tell me where to find another youth, whose strongest purpose was as
+wise as your errors, or who cared for others’ good more than for his own
+violence and vainglory?  Brief as your time has been, one knows when one
+is on your bounds by the aspect of your serfs, the soundness of their
+dwellings, the prosperity of their crops and cattle above all, by their
+face and tone if one asks for their lord.”
+
+“Ah! it was Friedel they loved.  They scarce knew me from Friedel.”
+
+“Such as you are, with all the blunders you have made and will make, you
+are the only youth I know to whom I could intrust my child or my lands.
+The old Wildschloss castle is a male fief, and would return to you, but
+there are domains since granted that will cause intolerable trouble and
+strife, unless you and my poor little heiress are united.  As for age,
+you are—?”
+
+“Eighteen next Easter.”
+
+“Then there are scarce eleven years between you.  You will find the
+little one a blooming bride when your first deeds in arms have been
+fought out.”
+
+“And, if my mother trains her up,” said Ebbo, thoughtfully, “she will be
+all the better daughter to her.  But, Sir Cousin, you know I too must be
+going.  So soon as I can brook the saddle, I must seek out and ransom my
+father.”
+
+“That is like to be a far shorter and safer journey than mine.  The
+Genoese and Venetians understand traffic with the infidels for their
+captives, and only by your own fault could you get into danger.  Even at
+the worst, should mishap befall you, you could so order matters as to
+leave your girl-widow in your mother’s charge.”
+
+“Then,” added Ebbo, “she would still have one left to love and cherish
+her.  Sir Kasimir, it is well; though, if you knew me without my Friedel,
+you would repent of your bargain.”
+
+“Thanks from my heart,” said Wildschloss, “but you need not be concerned.
+You have never been over-friendly with me even with Friedel at your side.
+But to business, my son.  You will endure that title from me now?  My
+time is short.”
+
+“What would you have me do?  Shall I send the little one a betrothal
+ring, and ride to Ulm to wed and fetch her home in spring?”
+
+“That may hardly serve.  These kinsmen would have seized on her and the
+castle long ere that time.  The only safety is the making wedlock as fast
+as it can be made with a child of such tender years.  Mine is the only
+power that can make the abbess give her up, and therefore will I ride
+this moonlight night to Ulm, bring the little one back with me by the
+time the reconciliation be concluded, and then shall ye be wed by the
+Abbot of St. Ruprecht’s, with the Kaisar for a witness, and thus will the
+knot be too strong for the Trautbachs to untie.”
+
+Ebbo looked disconcerted, and gasped, as if this were over-quick
+work.—“To-morrow!” he said.  “Knows my mother?”
+
+“I go to speak with her at once.  The Kaisar’s consent I have, as he
+says, ‘If we have one vassal who has common sense and honesty, let us
+make the most of him.’  Ah! my son, I shall return to see you his
+counsellor and friend.”
+
+Those days had no delicacies as to the lady’s side taking the initiative:
+and, in effect, the wealth and power of Wildschloss so much exceeded
+those of the elder branch that it would have been presumptuous on
+Eberhard’s part to have made the proposal.  It was more a treaty than an
+affair of hearts, and Sir Kasimir had not even gone through the form of
+inquiring if Ebbo were fancy-free.  It was true, indeed, that he was
+still a boy, with no passion for any one but his mother; but had he even
+formed a dream of a ladye love, it would scarcely have been deemed a
+rational objection.  The days of romance were no days of romance in
+marriage.
+
+Yet Christina, wedded herself for pure love, felt this obstacle strongly.
+The scheme was propounded to her over the hall fire by no less a person
+than Maximilian himself, and he, whose perceptions were extremely keen
+when he was not too much engrossed to use them, observed her reluctance
+through all her timid deference, and probed her reasons so successfully
+that she owned at last that, though it might sound like folly, she could
+scarce endure to see her son so bind himself that the romance of his life
+could hardly be innocent.
+
+“Nay, lady,” was the answer, in a tone of deep feeling.  “Neither lands
+nor honours can weigh down the up-springing of true love;” and he bowed
+his head between his hands.
+
+Verily, all the Low Countries had not impeded the true-hearted affection
+of Maximilian and Mary; and, though since her death his want of
+self-restraint had marred his personal character and morals, and though
+he was now on the point of concluding a most loveless political marriage,
+yet still Mary was—as he shows her as the Beatrice of both his strange
+autobiographical allegories—the guiding star of his fitful life; and in
+heart his fidelity was so unbroken that, when after a long pause he again
+looked up to Christina, he spoke as well understanding her feelings.
+
+“I know what you would say, lady; your son hardly knows as yet how much
+is asked of him, and the little maid, to whom he vows his heart, is
+over-young to secure it.  But, lady, I have often observed that men,
+whose family affections are as deep and fervent as your son’s are for you
+and his brother, seldom have wandering passions, but that their love
+flows deep and steady in the channels prepared for it.  Let your young
+Freiherr regard this damsel as his own, and you will see he will love her
+as such.”
+
+“I trust so, my liege.”
+
+“Moreover, if she turn out like the spiteful Trautbach folk,” said
+Maximilian, rather wickedly, “plenty of holes can be picked in a
+baby-wedding.  No fear of its over-firmness.  I never saw one come to
+good; only he must keep firm hold on the lands.”
+
+This was not easy to answer, coming from a prince who had no small
+experience in premature bridals coming to nothing, and Christina felt
+that the matter was taken out of her hands, and that she had no more to
+do but to enjoy the warm-hearted Kaisar’s praises of her son.
+
+In fact, the general run of nobles were then so boorish and violent
+compared with the citizens, that a nobleman who possessed intellect,
+loyalty, and conscience was so valuable to the sovereign that Maximilian
+was rejoiced to do all that either could bind him to his service or
+increase his power.  The true history of this expedition on the Emperor’s
+part was this—that he had consulted Kasimir upon the question of the
+Debateable Ford and the feud of Adlerstein and Schlangenwald, asking
+further how his friend had sped in the wooing of the fair widow, to which
+he remembered having given his consent at Ulm.
+
+Wildschloss replied that, though backed up by her kindred at Ulm, he had
+made no progress in consequence of the determined opposition of her two
+sons, and he had therefore resolved to wait a while, and let her and the
+young Baron feel their inability to extricate themselves from the
+difficulties that were sure to beset them, without his authority,
+influence, and experience—fully believing that some predicament might
+arise that would bring the mother to terms, if not the sons.
+
+This disaster did seem to have fallen out, and he had meant at once to
+offer himself to the lady as her supporter and advocate, able to bring
+about all her son could desire; though he owned that his hopes would have
+been higher if the survivor had been the gentle, friendly Friedmund,
+rather than the hot and imperious Eberhard, who he knew must be brought
+very low ere his objections would be withdrawn.
+
+The touch of romance had quite fascinated Maximilian.  He would see the
+lady and her son.  He would make all things easy by the personal
+influence that he so well knew how to exert, backed by his imperial
+authority; and both should see cause to be thankful to purchase consent
+to the bridge-building, and pardon for the fray, by the marriage between
+the widow and Sir Kasimir.
+
+But the Last of the Knights was a gentleman, and the meek dignity of his
+hostess had hindered him from pressing on her any distasteful subject
+until her son’s explanation of the uncertainty of her husband’s death had
+precluded all mention of this intention.  Besides, Maximilian was himself
+greatly charmed by Ebbo’s own qualities—partly perhaps as an intelligent
+auditor, but also by his good sense, high spirit, and, above all, by the
+ready and delicate tact that had both penetrated and respected the
+disguise.  Moreover, Maximilian, though a faulty, was a devout man, and
+could appreciate the youth’s unswerving truth, under circumstances that
+did, in effect, imperil him more really than his guest.  In this mood,
+Maximilian felt disposed to be rid to the very utmost of poor Sir
+Kasimir’s unlucky attachment to a wedded lady; and receiving letters
+suggestive of the Eastern mission, instantly decided that it would only
+be doing as he would be done by instantly to order the disappointed
+suitor off to the utmost parts of the earth, where he would much have
+liked to go himself, save for the unlucky clog of all the realm of
+Germany.  That Sir Kasimir had any tie to home he had for the moment
+entirely forgotten; and, had he remembered it, the knight was so
+eminently fitted to fulfil his purpose, that it could hardly have been
+regarded.  But, when Wildschloss himself devised his little heiress’s
+union with the head of the direct line, it was a most acceptable proposal
+to the Emperor, who set himself to forward it at once, out of policy, and
+as compensation to all parties.
+
+And so Christina’s gentle remonstrance was passed by.  Yet, with all her
+sense of the venture, it was thankworthy to look back on the trembling
+anxiety with which she had watched her boy’s childhood, and all his
+temptations and perils, and compare her fears with his present position:
+his alliance courted, his wisdom honoured, the child of the proud,
+contemned outlaw received as the favourite of the Emperor, and the valued
+ally of her own honoured burgher world.  Yet he was still a mere lad.
+How would it be for the future?
+
+Would he be unspoiled?  Yes, even as she already viewed one of her twins
+as the star on high—nay, when kneeling in the chapel, her dazzling tears
+made stars of the glint of the light reflected in his bright helmet—might
+she not trust that the other would yet run his course to and fro, as the
+spark in the stubble?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+THE ALTAR OF PEACE
+
+
+NO one could bear to waken the young Baron till the sun had risen high
+enough to fall on his face and unclose his eyes.
+
+“Mother” (ever his first word), “you have let me sleep too long.”
+
+“Thou didst wake too long, I fear me.”
+
+“I hoped you knew it not.  Yes, my wound throbbed sore, and the wonders
+of the day whirled round my brain like the wild huntsman’s chase.”
+
+“And, cruel boy, thou didst not call to me.”
+
+“What, with such a yesterday, and such a morrow for you? while, chance
+what may, I can but lie still.  I thought I must call, if I were still so
+wretched, when the last moonbeam faded; but, behold, sleep came, and
+therewith my Friedel sat by me, and has sung songs of peace ever since.”
+
+“And hath lulled thee to content, dear son?”
+
+“Content as the echo of his voice and the fulfilment of his hope can make
+me,” said Ebbo.
+
+And so Christina made her son ready for the day’s solemnities, arraying
+him in a fine holland shirt with exquisite broidery of her own on the
+collar and sleeves, and carefully disposing his long glossy, dark brown
+hair so as to fall on his shoulders as he lay propped up by cushions.
+She would have thrown his crimson mantle round him, but he repelled it
+indignantly.  “Gay braveries for me, while my Friedel is not yet in his
+resting-place?  Here—the black velvet cloak.”
+
+“Alas, Ebbo! it makes thee look more of a corpse than a bridegroom.  Thou
+wilt scare thy poor little spouse.  Ah! it was not thus I had fancied
+myself decking thee for thy wedding.”
+
+“Poor little one!” said Ebbo.  “If, as your uncle says, mourning is the
+seed of joy, this bridal should prove a gladsome one!  But let her prove
+a loving child to you, and honour my Friedel’s memory, then shall I love
+her well.  Do not fear, motherling; with the roots of hatred and jealousy
+taken out of the heart, even sorrow is such peace that it is almost joy.”
+
+It was over early for pain and sorrow to have taught that lesson, thought
+the mother, as with tender tears she gave place to the priest, who was to
+begin the solemnities of the day by shriving the young Baron.  It was
+Father Norbert, who had in this very chamber baptized the brothers, while
+their grandmother was plotting the destruction of their godfather, even
+while he gave Friedmund his name of peace,—Father Norbert, who had from
+the very first encouraged the drooping, heart-stricken, solitary
+Christina not to be overcome of evil, but to overcome evil with good.
+
+A temporary altar was erected between the windows, and hung with the silk
+and embroidery belonging to that in the chapel: a crucifix was placed on
+it, with the shrine of the stone of Nicæa, one or two other relics
+brought on St. Ruprecht’s cloister, and a beautiful mother-of-pearl and
+gold pyx also from the abbey, containing the host.  These were arranged
+by the chaplain, Father Norbert, and three of his brethren from the
+abbey.  And then the Father Abbot, a kindly, dignified old man, who had
+long been on friendly terms with the young Baron, entered; and after a
+few kind though serious words to him, assumed a gorgeous cope stiff with
+gold embroidery, and, standing by the altar, awaited the arrival of the
+other assistants at the ceremony.
+
+The slender, youthful-looking, pensive lady of the castle, in her wonted
+mourning dress, was courteously handed to her son’s bedside by the
+Emperor.  He was in his plain buff leathern hunting garb, unornamented,
+save by the rich clasp of his sword-belt and his gold chain, and his head
+was only covered by the long silken locks of fair hair that hung round
+his shoulders; but, now that his large keen dark blue eyes were gravely
+restrained, and his eager face composed, his countenance was so majestic,
+his bearing so lofty, that not all his crowns could have better marked
+his dignity.
+
+Behind him came a sunburnt, hardy man, wearing the white mantle and black
+fleur-de-lis-pointed cross of the Teutonic Order.  A thrill passed
+through Ebbo’s veins as he beheld the man who to him represented the
+murderer of his brother and both his grandfathers, the cruel oppressor of
+his father, and the perpetrator of many a more remote, but equally
+unforgotten, injury.  And in like manner Sir Dankwart beheld the actual
+slayer of his father, and the heir of a long score of deadly retribution.
+No wonder then that, while the Emperor spoke a few words of salutation
+and inquiry, gracious though not familiar, the two foes scanned one
+another with a shiver of mutual repulsing, and a sense that they would
+fain have fought it out as in the good old times.
+
+However, Ebbo only beheld a somewhat dull, heavy, honest-looking visage
+of about thirty years old, good-nature written in all its flat German
+features, and a sort of puzzled wonder in the wide light eyes that stared
+fixedly at him, no doubt in amazement that the mighty huge-limbed
+Wolfgang could have been actually slain by the delicately-framed youth,
+now more colourless than ever in consequence of the morning’s fast.
+Schleiermacher was also present, and the chief followers on either hand
+had come into the lower part of the room—Hatto, Heinz, and Koppel,
+looking far from contented; some of the Emperor’s suite; and a few
+attendants of Schlangenwald, like himself connected with the Teutonic
+Order.
+
+The Emperor spoke: “We have brought you together, Herr Graff von
+Schlangenwald, and Herr Freiherr von Adlerstein, because ye have given us
+reason to believe you willing to lay aside the remembrance of the foul
+and deadly strifes of your forefathers, and to live as good Christians in
+friendship and brotherhood.”
+
+“Sire, it is true,” said Schlangenwald; and “It is true,” said Ebbo.
+
+“That is well,” replied Maximilian.  “Nor can our reign better begin than
+by the closing of a breach that has cost the land some of its bravest
+sons.  Dankwart von Schlangenwald, art thou willing to pardon the heir of
+Adlerstein for having slain thy father in free and honourable combat, as
+well as, doubtless, for other deeds of his ancestors, more than I know or
+can specify?”
+
+“Yea, truly; I pardon him, my liege, as befits my vow.”
+
+“And thou, Eberhard von Adlerstein, dost thou put from thee vengeance for
+thy twin brother’s death, and all the other wrongs that thine house has
+suffered?”
+
+“I put revenge from me for ever.”
+
+“Ye agree, further, then, instead of striving as to your rights to the
+piece of meadow called the Debateable Strand, and to the wrecks of
+burthens there cast up by the stream, ye will unite with the citizens of
+Ulm in building a bridge over the Braunwasser, where, your mutual
+portions thereof being decided by the Swabian League, toll may be taken
+from all vehicles and beasts passing there over?”
+
+“We agree,” said both knights.
+
+“And I, also, on behalf of the two guilds of Ulm,” added Moritz
+Schleiermacher.
+
+“Likewise,” continued the Emperor, “for avoidance of debate, and to
+consecrate the spot that has caused so much contention, ye will jointly
+erect a church, where may be buried both the relatives who fell in the
+late unhappy skirmish, and where ye will endow a perpetual mass for their
+souls, and those of others of your two races.”
+
+“Thereto I willingly agree,” said the Teutonic knight.  But to Ebbo it
+was a shock that the pure, gentle Friedmund should thus be classed with
+his treacherous assassin; and he had almost declared that it would be
+sacrilege, when he received from the Emperor a look of stern, surprised
+command, which reminded him that concession must not be all on one side,
+and that he could not do Friedel a greater wrong than to make him a cause
+of strife.  So, though they half choked him, he contrived to utter the
+words, “I consent.”
+
+“And in token of amity I here tear up and burn all the feuds of
+Adlerstein,” said Schlangenwald, producing from his pouch a collection of
+hostile literature, beginning from a crumpled strip of yellow parchment
+and ending with a coarse paper missive in the clerkly hand of
+burgher-bred Hugh Sorel, and bearing the crooked signatures of the last
+two Eberhards of Adlerstein—all with great seals of the eagle shield
+appended to them.  A similar collection—which, with one or two other
+family defiances, and the letters of investiture recently obtained at
+Ulm, formed the whole archives of Adlerstein—had been prepared within
+Ebbo’s reach; and each of the two, taking up a dagger, made extensive
+gashes in these documents, and then—with no mercy to the future
+antiquaries, who would have gloated over them—the whole were hurled into
+the flames on the hearth, where the odour they emitted, if not grateful
+to the physical sense, should have been highly agreeable to the moral.
+
+“Then, holy Father Abbot,” said Maximilian, “let us ratify this happy and
+Christian reconciliation by the blessed sacrifice of peace, over which
+these two faithful knights shall unite in swearing good-will and
+brotherhood.”
+
+Such solemn reconciliations were frequent, but, alas were too often a
+mockery.  Here, however, both parties were men who felt the awe of the
+promise made before the Pardon-winner of all mankind.  Ebbo, bred up by
+his mother in the true life of the Church, and comparatively apart from
+practical superstitions, felt the import to the depths of his inmost
+soul, with a force heightened by his bodily state of nervous
+impressibility; and his wan, wasted features and dark shining eyes had a
+strange spiritual beam, “half passion and half awe,” as he followed the
+words of universal forgiveness and lofty praise that he had heard last in
+his anguished trance, when his brother lay dying beside him, and leaving
+him behind.  He knew now that it was for this.
+
+His deep repressed ardour and excitement were no small contrast to the
+sober, matter-of-fact demeanour of the Teutonic knight, who comported
+himself with the mechanical decorum of an ecclesiastic, but quite as one
+who meant to keep his word.  Maximilian served the mass in his royal
+character as sub-deacon.  He was fond of so doing, either from humility,
+or love of incongruity, or both.  No one, however, communicated except
+the clergy and the parties concerned—Dankwart first, as being monk as
+well as knight, then Eberhard and his mother; and then followed,
+interposed into the rite, the oath of pardon, friendship, and brotherhood
+administered by the abbot, and followed by the solemn kiss of peace.
+There was now no recoil; Eberhard raised himself to meet the lips of his
+foe, and his heart went with the embrace.  Nay, his inward ear dwelt on
+Friedmund’s song mingling with the concluding chants of praise.
+
+The service ended, it was part of the pledge of amity that the reconciled
+enemies should break their fast together, and a collation of white bread
+and wine was provided for the purpose.  The Emperor tried to promote free
+and friendly talk between the two adversaries, but not with great
+success; for Dankwart, though honest and sincere, seemed extremely dull.
+He appeared to have few ideas beyond his Prussian commandery and its
+routine discipline, and to be lost in a castle where all was at his sole
+will and disposal, and he caught eagerly at all proposals made to him as
+if they were new lights.  As, for instance, that some impartial
+arbitrator should be demanded from the Swabian League to define the
+boundary; and that next Rogation-tide the two knights should ride or
+climb it in company, while meantime the serfs should be strictly charged
+not to trespass, and any transgressor should be immediately escorted to
+his own lord.
+
+“But,” quoth Sir Dankwart, in a most serious tone, “I am told that a
+she-bear wons in a den on yonder crag, between the pass you call the
+Gemsbock’s and the Schlangenwald valley.  They told me the right in it
+had never been decided, and I have not been up myself.  To say truth, I
+have lived so long in the sand plains as to have lost my mountain legs,
+and I hesitated to see if a hunter could mount thither for fear of fresh
+offence; but, if she bide there till Rogation-tide, it will be ill for
+the lambs.”
+
+“Is that all?” cried Maximilian.  “Then will I, a neutral, kill your bear
+for you, gentlemen, so that neither need transgress this new crag of
+debate.  I’ll go down and look at your bear spears, friend Ebbo, and be
+ready so soon as Kasimir has done with his bridal.”
+
+“That crag!” cried Ebbo.  “Little good will it do either of us.  Sire, it
+is a mere wall of sloping rock, slippery as ice, and with only a stone or
+matting of ivy here and there to serve as foothold.”
+
+“Where bear can go, man can go,” replied the Kaisar.
+
+“Oh, yes!  We have been there, craving your pardon, Herr Graf,” said
+Ebbo, “after a dead chamois that rolled into a cleft, but it is the worst
+crag on all the hill, and the frost will make it slippery.  Sire, if you
+do venture it, I conjure you to take Koppel, and climb by the rocks from
+the left, not the right, which looks easiest.  The yellow rock, with a
+face like a man’s, is the safer; but ach, it is fearful for one who knows
+not the rocks.”
+
+“If I know not the rocks, all true German rocks know me,” smiled
+Maximilian, to whom the danger seemed to be such a stimulus that he began
+to propose the bear-hunt immediately, as an interlude while waiting for
+the bride.
+
+However, at that moment, half-a-dozen horsemen were seen coming up from
+the ford, by the nearer path, and a forerunner arrived with the tidings
+that the Baron of Adlerstein Wildschloss was close behind with the little
+Baroness Thekla.
+
+Half the moonlight night had Sir Kasimir and his escort ridden; and,
+after a brief sleep at the nearest inn outside Ulm, he had entered in
+early morning, demanded admittance at the convent, made short work with
+the Abbess Ludmilla’s arguments, claimed his daughter, and placing her on
+a cushion before him on his saddle, had borne her away, telling her of
+freedom, of the kind lady, and the young knight who had dazzled her
+childish fancy.
+
+Christina went down to receive her.  There was no time to lose, for the
+huntsman Kaisar was bent on the slaughter of his bear before dark, and,
+if he were to be witness of the wedding, it must be immediate.  He was in
+a state of much impatience, which he beguiled by teasing his friend
+Wildschloss by reminding him how often he himself had been betrothed, and
+had managed to slip his neck out of the noose.  “And, if my Margot be not
+soon back on my hands, I shall give the French credit,” he said, tossing
+his bear-spear in the air, and catching it again.  “Why, this bride is as
+long of busking her as if she were a beauty of seventeen!  I must be off
+to my Lady Bearess.”
+
+Thus nothing could be done to prepare the little maiden but to divest her
+of her mufflings, and comb out her flaxen hair, crowning it with a wreath
+which Christina had already woven from the myrtle of her own girlhood,
+scarcely waiting to answer the bewildered queries and entreaties save by
+caresses and admonitions to her to be very good.
+
+Poor little thing!  She was tired, frightened, and confused; and, when
+she had been brought upstairs, she answered the half smiling, half shy
+greeting of her bridegroom with a shudder of alarm, and the exclamation,
+“Where is the beautiful young knight?  That’s a lady going to take the
+veil lying under the pall.”
+
+“You look rather like a little nun yourself,” said Ebbo, for she wore a
+little conventual dress, “but we must take each other for such as we
+are;” and, as she hid her face and clung to his mother, he added in a
+more cheerful, coaxing tone, “You once said you would be my wife.”
+
+“Ah, but then there were two of you, and you were all shining bright.”
+
+Before she could be answered, the impatient Emperor returned, and brought
+with him the abbot, who proceeded to find the place in his book, and to
+ask the bridegroom for the rings.  Ebbo looked at Sir Kasimir, who owned
+that he should have brought them from Ulm, but that he had forgotten.
+
+“Jewels are not plenty with us,” said Ebbo, with a glow of amusement and
+confusion dawning on his cheek, such as reassured the little maid that
+she beheld one of the two beautiful young knights.  “Must we borrow?”
+
+Christina looked at the ring she had first seen lying on her own
+Eberhard’s palm, and felt as if to let it be used would sever the renewed
+hope she scarcely yet durst entertain; and at the same moment Maximilian
+glanced at his own fingers, and muttered, “None but this!  Unlucky!”  For
+it was the very diamond which Mary of Burgundy had sent to assure him of
+her faith, and summon him to her aid after her father’s death.  Sir
+Kasimir had not retained the pledge of his own ill-omened wedlock; but,
+in the midst of the dilemma, the Emperor, producing his dagger, began to
+detach some of the massive gold links of the chain that supported his
+hunting-horn.  “There,” said he, “the little elf of a bride can get her
+finger into this lesser one and you—verily this largest will fit, and the
+goldsmith can beat it out when needed.  So on with you in St. Hubert’s
+name, Father Abbot!”
+
+Slender-boned and thin as was Ebbo’s hand, it was a very tight fit, but
+the purpose was served.  The service commenced; and fortunately, thanks
+to Thekla’s conventual education, she was awed into silence and decorum
+by the sound of Latin and the sight of an abbot.  It was a strange
+marriage, if only in the contrast between the pale, expressive face and
+sad, dark eyes of the prostrate youth, and the frightened, bewildered
+little girl, standing upon a stool to reach up to him, with her blue eyes
+stretched with wonder, and her cheeks flushed and pouting with unshed
+tears, her rosy plump hand enclosed in the long white wasted one that was
+thus for ever united to it by the broken fragments of Kaisar Max’s chain.
+
+The rite over, two attestations of the marriage of Eberhard, Freiherr von
+Adlerstein, and Thekla, Freiherrinn von Adlerstein Wildschloss and
+Felsenbach, were drawn up and signed by the abbot, the Emperor, Count
+Dankwart, and the father and mother of the two contracting parties; one
+to be committed to the care of the abbot, the other to be preserved by
+the house of Adlerstein.
+
+Then the Emperor, as the concluding grace of the ceremonial, bent to kiss
+the bride; but, tired, terrified, and cross, Thekla, as if quite relieved
+to have some object for her resentment, returned his attempt with a
+vehement buffet, struck with all the force of her small arm, crying out,
+“Go away with you!  I know I’ve never married _you_!”
+
+“The better for my eyes!” said the good-natured Emperor, laughing
+heartily.  “My Lady Bearess is like to prove the more courteous bride!
+Fare thee well, Sir Bridegroom,” he added, stooping over Ebbo, and
+kissing his brow; “Heaven give thee joy of this day’s work, and of thy
+faithful little fury.  I’ll send her the bearskin as her meetest
+wedding-gift.”
+
+And the next that was heard from the Kaisar was the arrival of a parcel
+of Italian books for the Freiherr Eberhard, and for the little
+Freiherrinn a large bundle, which proved to contain a softly-dressed
+bearskin, with the head on, the eyes being made of rubies, a gold muzzle
+and chain on the nose, and the claws tipped with gold.  The Emperor had
+made a point that it should be conveyed to the castle, snow or no snow,
+for a yule gift.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+OLD IRON AND NEW STEEL
+
+
+THE clear sunshine of early summer was becoming low on the hillsides.
+Sparkling and dimpling, the clear amber-coloured stream of the
+Braunwasser rippled along its stony bed, winding in and out among the
+rocks so humbly that it seemed to be mocked by the wide span of the arch
+that crossed it in all the might of massive bulwarks, and dignified
+masonry of huge stones.
+
+Some way above, a clearing of the wood below the mountain showed huts,
+and labourers apparently constructing a mill so as to take advantage of
+the leap of the water from the height above; and, on the left bank, an
+enclosure was traced out, within which were rising the walls of a small
+church, while the noise of the mallet and chisel echoed back from the
+mountain side, and masons, white with stone-dust, swarmed around.
+
+Across the bridge came a pilgrim, marked out as such by hat, wallet, and
+long staff, on which he leant heavily, stumbling along as if both halting
+and footsore, and bending as one bowed down by past toil and present
+fatigue.  Pausing in the centre, he gazed round with a strange
+disconcerted air—at the castle on the terraced hillside, looking down
+with bright eyes of glass glittering in the sunshine, and lighting up
+even that grim old pile; at the banner hanging so lazily that the
+tinctures and bearings were hidden in the folds; then at the crags, rosy
+purple in evening glow, rising in broad step above step up to the Red
+Eyrie, bathed in sunset majesty of dark crimson; and above it the sweep
+of the descending eagle, discernible for a moment in the pearly light of
+the sky.  The pilgrim’s eye lighted up as he watched it; but then,
+looking down at bridge, and church, and trodden wheel-tracked path, he
+frowned with perplexity, and each painful step grew heavier and more
+uncertain.
+
+Near the opposite side of the enclosure there waited a tall,
+rugged-looking, elderly man with two horses—one an aged mare, mane, tail,
+and all of the snowiest silvery white; the other a little shaggy dark
+mountain pony, with a pad-saddle.  And close to the bank of the stream
+might be seen its owner, a little girl of some seven years, whose tight
+round lace cap had slipped back, as well as her blue silk hood, and
+exposed a profusion of loose flaxen hair, and a plump, innocent face,
+intent upon some private little bit of building of her own with some
+pebbles from the brook, and some mortar filched from the operations
+above, to the great detriment of her soft pinky fingers.
+
+The pilgrim looked at her unperceived, and for a moment was about to
+address her; but then, with a strange air of repulsion, dragged himself
+on to the porch of the rising church, where, seated on a block of stone,
+he could look into the interior.  All was unfinished, but the portion
+which had made the most progress was a chantry-chapel opposite to the
+porch, and containing what were evidently designed to be two monuments.
+One was merely blocked out, but it showed the outline of a warrior,
+bearing a shield on which a coiled serpent was rudely sketched in red
+chalk.  The other, in a much more forward state, was actually under the
+hands of the sculptor, and represented a slender youth, almost a boy,
+though in the full armour of a knight, his hands clasped on his breast
+over a lute, an eagle on his shield, an eagle-crest on his helmet, and,
+under the arcade supporting the altar-tomb, shields alternately of eagles
+and doves.
+
+But the strangest thing was that this young knight seemed to be sitting
+for his own effigy.  The very same face, under the very same helmet, only
+with the varied, warm hues of life, instead of in cold white marble, was
+to be seen on the shoulders of a young man in a gray cloth dress, with a
+black scarf passing from shoulder to waist, crossed by a sword-belt.  The
+hair was hidden by the helmet, whose raised visor showed keen, finely-cut
+features, and a pair of dark brown eyes, of somewhat grave and sad
+expression.
+
+“Have a care, Lucas,” he presently said; “I fear me you are chiselling
+away too much.  It must be a softer, more rounded face than mine has
+become; and, above all, let it not catch any saddened look.  Keep that
+air of solemn waiting in glad hope, as though he saw the dawn through his
+closed eyelids, and were about to take up his song again!”
+
+“Verily, Herr Freiherr, now the likeness is so far forward, the actual
+sight of you may lead me to mar it rather than mend.”
+
+“So is it well that this should be the last sitting.  I am to set forth
+for Genoa in another week.  If I cannot get letters from the Kaisar, I
+shall go in search of him, that he may see that my lameness is no more an
+impediment.”
+
+The pilgrim passed his hand over his face, as though to dissipate a
+bewildering dream; and just then the little girl, all flushed and
+dabbled, flew rushing up from the stream, but came to a sudden standstill
+at sight of the stranger, who at length addressed her.  “Little lady,” he
+said, “is this the Debateable Ford?”
+
+“No; now it is the Friendly Bridge,” said the child.
+
+The pilgrim started, as with a pang of recollection.  “And what is yonder
+castle?” he further asked.
+
+“Schloss Adlerstein,” she said, proudly.
+
+“And you are the little lady of Adlerstein Wildschloss?”
+
+“Yes,” again she answered; and then, gathering courage—“You are a holy
+pilgrim!  Come up to the castle for supper and rest.”  And then,
+springing past him, she flew up to the knight, crying, “Herr Freiherr,
+here is a holy pilgrim, weary and hungry.  Let us take him home to the
+mother.”
+
+“Did he take thee for a wild elf?” said the young man, with an
+elder-brotherly endeavour to right the little cap that had slidden under
+the chin, and to push back the unmanageable wealth of hair under it, ere
+he rose; and he came forward and spoke with kind courtesy, as he observed
+the wanderer’s worn air and feeble step.  “Dost need a night’s lodging,
+holy palmer?  My mother will make thee welcome, if thou canst climb as
+high as the castle yonder.”
+
+The pilgrim made an obeisance, but, instead of answering, demanded
+hastily, “See I yonder the bearing of Schlangenwald?”
+
+“Even so.  Schloss Schlangenwald is about a league further on, and thou
+wilt find a kind reception there, if thither thou art bent.”
+
+“Is that Graff Wolfgang’s tomb?” still eagerly pursued the pilgrim; and
+receiving a sign in the affirmative, “What was his end?”
+
+“He fell in a skirmish.”
+
+“By whose hand?”
+
+“By mine.”
+
+“Ha!” and the pilgrim surveyed him with undisguised astonishment; then,
+without another word, took up his staff and limped out of the building,
+but not on the road to Schlangenwald.  It was nearly a quarter of an hour
+afterwards that he was overtaken by the young knight and the little lady
+on their horses, just where the new road to the castle parted from the
+old way by the Eagle’s Ladder.  The knight reined up as he saw the poor
+man’s slow, painful steps, and said, “So thou art not bound for
+Schlangenwald?”
+
+“I would to the village, so please you—to the shrine of the Blessed
+Friedmund.”
+
+“Nay, at this rate thou wilt not be there till midnight,” said the young
+knight, springing off his horse; “thou canst never brook our sharp
+stones!  See, Thekla, do thou ride on with Heinz to tell the mother I am
+bringing her a holy pilgrim to tend.  And thou, good man, mount my old
+gray.  Fear not; she is steady and sure-footed, and hath of late been
+used to a lame rider.  Ah! that is well.  Thou hast been in the saddle
+before.”
+
+To go afoot for the sake of giving a lift to a holy wayfarer was one of
+the most esteemed acts of piety of the Middle Age, so that no one durst
+object to it, and the palmer did no more than utter a suppressed murmur
+of acknowledgment as he seated himself on horseback, the young knight
+walking by his rein.  “But what is this?” he exclaimed, almost with
+dismay.  “A road to the castle up here!”
+
+“Yes, we find it a great convenience.  Thou art surely from these parts?”
+added the knight.
+
+“I was a man-at-arms in the service of the Baron,” was the answer, in an
+odd, muffled tone.
+
+“What!—of my grandfather!” was the exclamation.
+
+“No!” gruffly.  “Of old Freiherr Eberhard.  Not of any of the Wildschloss
+crew.”
+
+“But I am not a Wildschloss!  I am grandson to Freiherr Eberhard!  Oh,
+wast thou with him and my father when they were set upon in the hostel?”
+he cried, looking eagerly up to the pilgrim; but the man kept his
+broad-leaved hat slouched over his face, and only muttered, “The son of
+Christina!” the last word so low that Ebbo was not sure that he caught
+it, and the next moment the old warrior exclaimed exultingly, “And you
+have had vengeance on them!  When—how—where?”
+
+“Last harvest-tide—at the Debateable Strand,” said Ebbo, never able to
+speak of the encounter without a weight at his heart, but drawn on by the
+earnestness of the old foe of Schlangenwald.  “It was a meeting in full
+career—lances broken, sword-stroke on either hand.  I was sore wounded,
+but my sword went through his collar-bone.”
+
+“Well struck! good stroke!” cried the pilgrim, in rapture.  “And with
+that sword?”
+
+“With this sword.  Didst know it?” said Ebbo, drawing the weapon, and
+giving it to the old man, who held it for a few moments, weighed it
+affectionately, and with a long low sigh restored it, saying, “It is
+well.  You and that blade have paid off the score.  I should be content.
+Let me dismount.  I know my way to the hermitage.”
+
+“Nay, what is this?” said Ebbo; “thou must have rest and food.  The
+hermitage is empty, scarce habitable.  My mother will not be balked of
+the care of thy bleeding feet.”
+
+“But let me go, ere I bring evil on you all.  I can pray up there, and
+save my soul, but I cannot see it all.”
+
+“See what?” said Ebbo, again trying to see his guest’s face.  “There may
+be changes, but an old faithful follower of my father’s must ever be
+welcome.”
+
+“Not when his wife has taken a new lord,” growled the stranger, bitterly,
+“and he a Wildschloss!  Young man, I could have pardoned aught else!”
+
+“I know not who you may be who talk of pardoning my lady-mother,” said
+Ebbo, “but new lord she has neither taken nor will take.  She has refused
+every offer; and, now that Schlangenwald with his last breath confessed
+that he slew not my father, but sold him to the Turks, I have been only
+awaiting recovery from my wound to go in search of him.”
+
+“Who then is yonder child, who told me she was Wildschloss?”
+
+“That child,” said Ebbo, with half a smile and half a blush, “is my wife,
+the daughter of Wildschloss, who prayed me to espouse her thus early,
+that so my mother might bring her up.”
+
+By this time they had reached the castle court, now a well-kept,
+lordly-looking enclosure, where the pilgrim looked about him as one
+bewildered.  He was so infirm that Ebbo carefully helped him up the stone
+stairs to the hall, where he already saw his mother prepared for the
+hospitable reception of the palmer.  Leaving him at the entrance, Ebbo
+crossed the hall to say to her in a low voice, “This pilgrim is one of
+the old lanzknechts of my grandfather’s time.  I wonder whether you or
+Heinz will know him.  One of the old sort—supremely discontented at
+change.”
+
+“And thou hast walked up, and wearied thyself!” exclaimed Christina,
+grieved to see her son’s halting step.
+
+“A rest will soon cure that,” said Ebbo, seating himself as he spoke on a
+settle near the hall fire; but the next moment a strange wild low shriek
+from his mother made him start up and spring to her side.  She stood with
+hands clasped, and wondering eyes.  The pilgrim—his hat on the ground,
+his white head and rugged face displayed—was gazing as though devouring
+her with his eyes, murmuring, “Unchanged! unchanged!”
+
+“What is this!” thundered the young Baron.  “What are you doing to the
+lady?”
+
+“Hush! hush, Ebbo!” exclaimed Christina.  “It is thy father!  On thy
+knees!  Thy father is come!  It is our son, my own lord.  Oh, embrace
+him!  Kneel to him, Ebbo!” she wildly cried.
+
+“Hold, mother,” said Ebbo, keeping his arm round her, though she
+struggled against him, for he felt some doubts as he looked back at his
+walk with the stranger, and remembered Heinz’s want of recognition.  “Is
+it certain that this is indeed my father?”
+
+“Oh, Ebbo,” was the cry of poor Christina, almost beside herself, “how
+could I not be sure?  I know him!  I feel it!  Oh, my lord, bear with
+him.  It is his wont to be so loving!  Ebbo, cannot you see it is
+himself?”
+
+“The young fellow is right,” said the stranger, slowly.  “I will answer
+all he may demand.”
+
+“Forgive me,” said Ebbo, abashed, “forgive me;” and, as his mother broke
+from him, he fell upon his knee; but he only heard his father’s cry, “Ah!
+Stine, Stine, thou alone art the same,” and, looking up, saw her, with
+her face hidden in the white beard, quivering with a rapture such as he
+had never seen in her before.  It seemed long to him ere she looked up
+again in her husband’s face to sob on: “My son!  Oh! my beautiful twins!
+Our son!  Oh, see him, dear lord!”  And the pilgrim turned to hear Ebbo’s
+“Pardon, honoured father, and your blessing.”
+
+Almost bashfully the pilgrim laid his hand on the dark head, and murmured
+something; then said, “Up, then!  The slayer of Schlangenwald kneeling!
+Ah!  Stine, I knew thy little head was wondrous wise, but I little
+thought thou wouldst breed him up to avenge us on old Wolfgang!  So
+slender a lad too!  Ha!  Schneiderlein, old rogue, I knew thee,” holding
+out his hand.  “So thou didst get home safe?”
+
+“Ay, my lord; though, if I left you alive, never more will I call a man
+dead,” said Heinz.
+
+“Worse luck for me—till now,” said Sir Eberhard, whose tones, rather than
+his looks, carried perfect conviction of his identity.  It was the old
+homely accent, and gruff good-humoured voice, but with something subdued
+and broken in the tone.  His features had grown like his father’s, but he
+looked much older than ever the hale old mountaineer had done, or than
+his real age; so worn and lined was his face, his skin tanned, his
+eyelids and temples puckered by burning sun, his hair and beard white as
+the inane of his old mare, the proud Adlerstein port entirely gone.  He
+stooped even more without his staff than with it; and, when he yielded
+himself with a sigh of repose to his wife’s tendance, she found that he
+had not merely the ordinary hurts of travelling, but that there were old
+festering scars on his ankles.  “The gyves,” he said, as she looked up at
+him, with startled, pitying eyes.  “Little deemed I that they would ever
+come under thy tender hands.”  As he almost timidly smoothed the braid of
+dark hair on her brow—“So they never burnt thee for a witch after all,
+little one?  I thought my mother would never keep her hands off thee, and
+used to fancy I heard the crackling of the flame.”
+
+“She spared me for my children’s sake,” said Christina; “and truly Heaven
+has been very good to us, but never so much as now.  My dear lord, will
+it weary thee too much to come to the castle chapel and give thanks?” she
+said, timidly.
+
+“With all my heart,” he answered, earnestly.  “I would go even on my
+knees.  We were not without masses even in Tunis; but, when Italian and
+Spaniard would be ransomed, and there was no mind of the German, I little
+thought I should ever sing Brother Lambert’s psalm about turning our
+captivity as rivers in the south.”
+
+Ebbo was hovering round, supplying all that was needed for his father’s
+comfort; but his parents were so completely absorbed in one another that
+he was scarcely noticed, and, what perhaps pained him more, there was no
+word about Friedel.  He felt this almost an injustice to the brother who
+had been foremost in embracing the idea of the unknown father, and
+scarcely understood how his parents shrank from any sorrowful thought
+that might break in on their new-found joy, nor that he himself was so
+strange and new a being in his father’s eyes, that to imagine him doubled
+was hardly possible to the tardy, dulled capacity, which as yet seemed
+unable to feel anything but that here was home, and Christina.
+
+When the chapel bell rang, and the pair rose to offer their thanksgiving,
+Ebbo dutifully offered his support, but was absolutely unseen, so fondly
+was Sir Eberhard leaning on his wife; and her bright exulting smile and
+shake of the head gave an absolute pang to the son who had hitherto been
+all in all to her.
+
+He followed, and, as they passed Friedmund’s coffin, he thought his
+mother pointed to it, but even of this he was uncertain.  The pair knelt
+side by side with hands locked together, while notes of praise rose from
+all voices; and meantime Ebbo, close to that coffin, strove to share the
+joy, and to lift up a heart that _would_ sink in the midst of
+self-reproach for undutifulness, and would dislike the thought of the
+rude untaught man, holding aloof from him, likely to view him with
+distrust and jealousy, and to undo all he had achieved, and further
+absorbing the mother, the mother who was to him all the world, and for
+whose sake he had given his best years to the child-wife, as yet nothing
+to him.
+
+It was reversing the natural order of things that, after reigning from
+infancy, he should have to give up at eighteen to one of the last
+generation; and some such thought rankled in his mind when the whole
+household trooped joyfully out of the chapel to prepare a banquet for
+their old new lord, and their young old lord was left alone.
+
+Alone with the coffin where the armour lay upon the white cross, Ebbo
+threw himself on his knees, and laid his head upon it, murmuring, “Ah,
+Friedel!  Friedel!  Would that we had changed places!  Thou wouldst brook
+it better.  At least thou didst never know what it is to be lonely.”
+
+“Herr Baron!” said a little voice.
+
+His first movement was impatient.  Thekla was apt to pursue him wherever
+he did not want her; but here he had least expected her, for she had a
+great fear of that coffin, and could hardly be brought to the chapel at
+prayer times, when she generally occupied herself with fancies that the
+empty helmet glared at her.  But now Ebbo saw her standing as near as she
+durst, with a sweet wistfulness in her eyes, such as he had never seen
+there before.
+
+“What is it, Thekla?” he said.  “Art sent to call me?”
+
+“No; only I saw that you stayed here all alone,” she said, clasping her
+hands.
+
+  [Picture: “‘No; only I saw that you stayed here all alone,’ she said,
+                     clasping her hands.”  Page 269]
+
+“Must I not be alone, child?” he said, bitterly.  “Here lies my brother.
+My mother has her husband again!”
+
+“But you have me!” cried Thekla; and, as he looked up between amusement
+and melancholy, he met such a loving eager little face, that he could not
+help holding out his arms, and letting her cling to him.  “Indeed,” she
+said, “I’ll never be afraid of the helmet again, if only you will not lay
+down your head there, and say you are alone.”
+
+“Never, Thekla! while you are my little wife,” said he; and, child as she
+was, there was strange solace to his heart in the eyes that, once vacant
+and wondering, had now gained a look of love and intelligence.
+
+“What are you going to do?” she said, shuddering a little, as he rose and
+laid his hand on Friedel’s sword.
+
+“To make thee gird on thine own knight’s sword,” said Ebbo, unbuckling
+that which he had so long worn.  “Friedel,” he added, “thou wouldst give
+me thine.  Let me take up thy temper with it, thine open-hearted love and
+humility.”
+
+He guided Thekla’s happy little fingers to the fastening of the belt, and
+then, laying his hand on hers, said gravely, “Thekla, never speak of what
+I said just now—not even to the mother.  Remember, it is thy husband’s
+first secret.”
+
+And feeling no longer solitary when his hand was in the clasp of hers, he
+returned to the hall, where his father was installed in the baronial
+chair, in which Ebbo had been at home from babyhood.  His mother’s
+exclamation showed that her son had been wanting to her; and she looked
+fuller than ever of bliss when Ebbo gravely stood before his father, and
+presented him with the good old sword that he had sent to his unborn son.
+
+“You are like to use it more than I,—nay, you have used it to some
+purpose,” said he.  “Yet must I keep mine old comrade at least a little
+while.  Wife, son, sword, should make one feel the same man again, but it
+is all too wonderful!”
+
+All that evening, and long after, his hand from time to time sought the
+hilt of his sword, as if that touch above all proved to him that he was
+again a free noble in his own castle.
+
+The story he told was thus.  The swoon in which Heinz had left him had
+probably saved his life by checking the gush of blood, and he had known
+no more till he found himself in a rough cart among the corpses.  At
+Schlangenwald’s castle he had been found still breathing, and had been
+flung into a dungeon, where he lay unattended, for how long he never
+knew, since all the early part of the time was lost in the clouds of
+fever.  On coarse fare and scanty drink, in that dark vault, he had
+struggled by sheer obstinacy of vitality into recovery.  In the very
+height of midsummer alone did the sun peep through the grating of his
+cell, and he had newly hailed this cheerful visitor when he was roughly
+summoned, placed on horseback with eyes and hands bound, and only allowed
+sight again to find himself among a herd of his fellow Germans in the
+Turkish camp.  They were the prisoners of the terrible Turkish raid of
+1475, when Georg von Schenk and fourteen other noblemen of Austria and
+Styria were all taken in one unhappy fight, and dragged away into
+captivity, with hundreds of lower rank.
+
+To Sir Eberhard the change had been greatly for the better.  The Turk had
+treated him much better than the Christian; and walking in the open air,
+chained to a German comrade, was far pleasanter than pining in his lonely
+dungeon.  At Adrianople, an offer had been made to each of the captives,
+if they would become Moslems, of entering the Ottoman service as Spahis;
+but with one voice they had refused, and had then been draughted into
+different divisions.  The fifteen nobles, who had been offered for
+ransom, were taken to Constantinople, to await its arrival, and they had
+promised Sir Eberhard to publish his fate on their return to their homes;
+and, though he knew the family resources too well to have many hopes, he
+was rather hurt to find that their promise had been unfulfilled.
+
+“Alas! they had no opportunity,” said Ebbo.  “Gulden were scarce, or were
+all in Kaisar Friedrich’s great chest; the ransoms could not be raised,
+and all died in captivity.  I heard about it when I was at Wurms last
+month.”
+
+“The boy at Wurms?” almost gasped Sir Eberhard in amaze.
+
+“I had to be there about matters concerning the Wildschloss lands and the
+bridge,” said Ebbo; “and both Dankwart von Schlangenwald and I made
+special inquiries about that company in case you should have shared their
+fate.  I hoped to have set forth at that time, but the Kaisar said I was
+still too lame, and refused me license, or letters to the Sultan.”
+
+“You would not have found me,” said his father, narrating how he with a
+large troop of captives had been driven down to the coast; where they
+were transferred to a Moorish slave-dealer, who shipped them off for
+Tunis.  Here, after their first taste of the miseries of a sea life, the
+alternative of Islam or slavery was again put before them.  “And, by the
+holy stone of Nicæa,” said Sir Eberhard, “I thought by that time that the
+infidels had the advantage of us in good-will and friendliness; but, when
+they told me women had no souls at all, no more than a horse or dog, I
+knew it was but an empty dream of a religion; for did I not know that my
+little Ermentrude, and thou, Stine, had finer, clearer, wiser souls than
+ever a man I had known?  ‘Nay, nay,’ quoth I, ‘I’ll cast in my lot where
+I may meet my wife hereafter, should I never see her here.’”  He had then
+been allotted to a corsair, and had thenceforth been chained to the bench
+of rowers, between the two decks, where, in stifling heat and stench, in
+storm or calm, healthy or diseased, the wretched oarsmen were compelled
+to play the part of machinery in propelling the vessel, in order to
+capture Christian ships—making exertions to which only the perpetual lash
+of the galley-master could have urged their exhausted frames; often not
+desisting for twenty or thirty hours, and rowing still while sustenance
+was put into their mouths by their drivers.  Many a man drew has last
+breath with his last stroke, and was at the first leisure moment hurled
+into the waves.  It was the description that had so deeply moved Friedel
+long ago, and Christina wept over it, as she looked at the bowed form
+once so proud and free, and thought of the unhealed scars.  But there,
+her husband added, he had been chained next to a holy friar of German
+blood, like himself a captive of the great Styrian raid; and, while some
+blasphemed in their misery, or wildly chid their patron saints, this good
+man strove to show that all was to work out good; he had a pious saying
+for all that befell, and adored the will of God in thus purifying him;
+“And, if it were thus with a saint like him, I thought, what must it be
+with a rough freebooting godless sinner such as I had been?  See”—and he
+took out a rosary of strung bladders of seaweed; “that is what he left me
+when he died, and what I meant to have been telling for ever up in the
+hermitage.”
+
+“He died, then?”
+
+“Ay—he died on the shore of Corsica, while most of the dogs were off
+harrying a village inland, and we had a sort of respite, or I trow he
+would have rowed till his last gasp.  How he prayed for the poor wretches
+they were gone to attack!—ay, and for all of us—for me also—There’s
+enough of it.  Such talk skills not now.”
+
+It was plain that Sir Eberhard had learnt more Christianity in the hold
+of his Moorish pirate ship than ever in the Holy Roman Empire, and a
+weight was lifted off his son’s mind by finding that he had vowed never
+to return to a life of violence, even though fancying a life of penance
+in a hermitage the only alternative.
+
+Ebbo asked if the Genoese merchant, Ser Gian Battista dei Battiste, had
+indeed been one of his fellow-captives.
+
+“Ha!—what?” and on the repetition, “Truly I knew him, Merchant Gian as we
+used to call him; but you twang off his name as they speak it in his own
+stately city.”
+
+Christina smiled.  “Ebbo learnt the Italian tongue this winter from our
+chaplain, who had studied at Bologna.  He was told it would aid in his
+quest of you.”
+
+“Tell me not!” said the traveller, holding up his hands in deprecation;
+“the Junker is worse than a priest!  And yet he killed old Wolfgang!  But
+what of Gian?  Hold,—did not he, when I was with him at Genoa, tell me a
+story of being put into a dungeon in a mountain fortress in Germany, and
+released by a pair of young lads with eyes beaming in the sunrise, who
+vanished just as they brought him to a cloister?  Nay, he deemed it a
+miracle of the saints, and hung up a votive picture thereof at the shrine
+of the holy Cosmo and Damian.”
+
+“He was not so far wrong in deeming _one_ of the lads near of kin to the
+holy ones,” said Christina, softly.
+
+And Ebbo briefly narrated the adventure, when it evidently appeared that
+his having led at least one foray gave his father for the first time a
+fellow-feeling for him, and a sense that he was one of the true old
+stock; but, when he heard of the release, he growled, “So!  How would a
+lad have fared who so acted in my time?  My poor old mother!  She must
+have been changed indeed not to have scourged him till he had no strength
+to cry out.”
+
+“He was my prisoner!” said Ebbo, in his old defiant tone; “I had the
+right.”
+
+“Ah, well! the Junker has always been master here, and I never!” said the
+elder knight, looking round rather piteously; and Ebbo, with a sudden
+movement, exclaimed, “Nay, sir, you are the only lord and master, and I
+stand ready to be the first to obey you.”
+
+“You!  A fine young book-learned scholar, already knighted, and with all
+these Wildschloss lands too!” said Sir Eberhard, gazing with a strange
+puzzled look at the delicate but spirited features of this strange
+perplexing son.  “Reach hither your hand, boy.”
+
+And as he compared the slender, shapely hand of such finely-textured skin
+with the breadth of his own horny giant’s paw, he tossed it from him,
+shaking his head with a gesture as if he had no commands for such
+feminine-looking fingers to execute, and mortifying Ebbo not a little.
+“Ah!” said Christina, apologetically, “it always grieved your mother that
+the boys would resemble me and mine.  But, when daylight comes, Ebbo will
+show you that he has not lost the old German strength.”
+
+“No doubt—no doubt,” said Sir Eberhard, hastily, “since he has slain
+Schlangenwald; and, if the former state of things be at an end, the less
+he takes after the ancient stock the better.  But I am an old man now,
+Stine, though thou look’st fair and fresh as ever, and I do not know what
+to make of these things.  White napery on the table; glass drinking
+things;—nay, were it not for thee and the Schneiderlein, I should not
+know I was at home.”
+
+He was led back to his narration, and it appeared that, after some years
+spent at the oar, certain bleedings from the lungs, the remains of his
+wound, had become so much more severe as to render him useless for naval
+purposes; and, as he escaped actually dying during a voyage, he was
+allowed to lie by on coming into port till he had in some degree
+recovered, and then had been set to labour at the fortifications, chained
+to another prisoner, and toiling between the burning sand and burning
+sun, but treated with less horrible severity than the necessities of the
+sea had occasioned on board ship, and experiencing the benefit of
+intercourse with the better class of captives, whom their miserable fate
+had thrown into the hands of the Moors.
+
+It was a favourite almsdeed among the Provençals, Spaniards, and Italians
+to send money for the redemption of prisoners to the Moors, and there was
+a regular agency for ransoms through the Jews; but German captives were
+such an exception that no one thought of them, and many a time had the
+summons come for such and such a slave by name, or for five poor
+Sicilians, twenty Genoese, a dozen Marseillais, or the like, but still no
+word for the Swabian; till he had made up his mind that he should either
+leave his bones in the hot mud of the harbour, or be only set free by
+some gallant descent either of the brave King of Portugal, or of the
+Knights of Rhodes, of whom the captives were ever dreaming and
+whispering.
+
+At length his own slave name was shouted; he was called up by the captain
+of his gang, and, while expecting some fresh punishment, or, maybe, to
+find himself sold into some domestic form of slavery, he was set before a
+Jewish agent, who, after examining him on his name, country, and station,
+and comparing his answers with a paper of instructions, informed him that
+he was ransomed, caused his fetters to be struck off, and shipped him off
+at once for Genoa, with orders to the captain to consign him to the
+merchant Signor del Battiste.  By him Sir Eberhard had been received with
+the warmest hospitality, and treated as befitted his original station,
+but Battista disclaimed the merit of having ransomed him.  He had but
+acted, he said, as the agent of an Austrian gentleman, from whom he had
+received orders to inquire after the Swabian baron who had been his
+fellow-captive, and, if he were still living, to pay his ransom, and
+bring him home.
+
+“The name—the name!” eagerly asked Ebbo and his mother at once.
+
+“The name?  Gian was wont to make bad work of our honest German names,
+but I tried to learn this—being so beholden to him.  I even caused it to
+be spelt over to me, but my letters long ago went from me.  It seems to
+me that the man is a knight-errant, like those of thy ballads, Stine—one
+Ritter Theur—Theur—”
+
+“Theurdank!” cried Ebbo.
+
+“Ay, Theurdank.  What, you know him?  There is nothing you and your
+mother don’t know, I believe.”
+
+“Know him!  Father, he is our greatest and noblest!  He has been kind to
+me beyond description.  He is the Kaisar!  Now I see why he had that
+strange arch look which so vexed me when he forbade me on my allegiance
+to set forth till my lameness should be gone!  Long ago had he asked me
+all about Gian Battista.  To him he must have written.”
+
+“The Kaisar!” said Sir Eberhard.  “Nay, the poor fellows I left in Turkey
+ever said he was too close of fist for them to have hope from him.”
+
+“Oh! that was old Kaisar Friedrich.  This is our own gallant Maximilian—a
+knight as true and brave as ever was paladin,” said Christina; “and most
+truly loving and prizing our Ebbo.”
+
+“And yet I wish—I wish,” said Ebbo, “that he had let me win my father’s
+liberty for myself.”
+
+“Yea, well,” said his father, “there spoke the Adlerstein.  We never were
+wont to be beholden to king or kaisar.”
+
+“Nay,” say Ebbo, after a moment’s recollection, colouring as he spoke;
+“it is true that I deserved it not.  Nay, Sir Father, it is well.  You
+owe your freedom in very truth to the son you have not known.  It was he
+who treasured up the thought of the captive German described by the
+merchant, and even dreamt of it, while never doubting of your death; it
+was he who caught up Schlangenwald’s first hint that you lived, while I,
+in my pride, passed it by as merely meant to perplex me; it was he who
+had formed an absolute purpose of obtaining some certainty; and at last,
+when my impetuosity had brought on the fatal battle, it was he who bought
+with his own life the avowal of your captivity.  I had hoped to have
+fulfilled Friedel’s trust, and to have redeemed my own backwardness; but
+it is not to be.  While I was yet lying helpless on my bed, the Emperor
+has taken it out of my power.  Mother, you receive him from Friedel’s
+hands, after all.”
+
+“And well am I thankful that so it should be,” said Christina.  “Ah,
+Ebbo! sorely should I have pined with anxiety when thou wast gone.  And
+thy father knows that thou hadst the full purpose.”
+
+“Yea, I know it,” said the old man; “and, after all, small blame to him
+even if he had not.  He never saw me, and light grieves the heart for
+what the eye hath not seen.”
+
+“But,” added the wife, “since the Romish king freed you, dear lord, cared
+he not better for your journey than to let you come in this forlorn
+plight?”
+
+This, it appeared, was far from being his deliverer’s fault.  Money had
+been supplied, and Sir Eberhard had travelled as far as Aosta with a
+party of Italian merchants; but no sooner had he parted with them than he
+was completely astray.  His whole experience of life had been as a robber
+baron or as a slave, and he knew not how to take care of himself as a
+peaceful traveller; he suffered fresh extortions at every stage, and
+after a few days was plundered by his guides, beaten, and left devoid of
+all means of continuing the journey to which he could hardly hope for a
+cheerful end.  He did not expect to find his mother living,—far less that
+his unowned wife could have survived the perils in which he had involved
+her; and he believed that his ancestral home would, if not a ruin, be
+held by his foes, or at best by the rival branch of the family, whose
+welcome of the outlawed heir would probably be to a dungeon, if not a
+halter.  Yet the only magnet on earth for the lonely wanderer was his
+native mountain, where from some old peasant he might learn how his fair
+young bride had perished, and perhaps the sins of his youth might be
+expiated by continual prayer in the hermitage chapel where his sister lay
+buried, and whence he could see the crags for which his eye and heart had
+craved so long with the home-sickness of a mountaineer.
+
+And now, when his own Christina had welcomed him with all the overflow of
+her loving heart, unchanged save that hers had become a tenderer yet more
+dignified loveliness; when his gallant son, in all the bloom of young
+manhood, received him with dutiful submission; when the castle, in a
+state of defence, prosperity, and comfort of which he had never dreamt,
+was again his own;—still the old man was bewildered, and sometimes
+oppressed almost to distress.  He had, as it were, fallen asleep in one
+age of the world, and wakened in another, and it seemed as if he really
+wished to defer his wakening, or else that repose was an absolute novelty
+to him; for he sat dozing in his chair in the sun the whole of the next
+day, and scarcely spoke.
+
+Ebbo, who felt it a necessity to come to an understanding of the terms on
+which they were to stand, tried to refer matters to him, and to explain
+the past, but he was met sometimes by a shake of the head, sometimes by a
+nod—not of assent, but of sleep; and his mother advised him not to harass
+the wearied traveller, but to leave him to himself at least for that day,
+and let him take his own time for exertion, letting things meantime go on
+as usual.  Ebbo obeyed, but with a load at his heart, as he felt that all
+he was doing was but provisional, and that it would be his duty to resign
+all that he had planned, and partly executed, to this incompetent,
+ignorant rule.  He could certainly, when not serving the Emperor, go and
+act for himself at Thekla’s dower castle of Felsenbach, and his mother
+might save things from going to utter ruin at Adlerstein; but no
+reflection or self-reproach could make it otherwise than a bitter pill to
+any Telemachus to have to resign to one so unlike Ulysses in all but the
+length of his wanderings,—one, also, who seemed only half to like, and
+not at all to comprehend, his Telemachus.
+
+Meantime Ebbo attended to such matters as were sure to come each day
+before the Herr Freiherr.  Now it was a question whether the stone for
+the mill should be quarried where it would undermine a bit of grass land,
+or further on, where the road was rougher; now Berend’s swine had got
+into Barthel’s rye, and Barthel had severely hurt one of them—the Herr
+Freiherr’s interference could alone prevent a hopeless quarrel; now a
+waggon with ironwork for the mill claimed exemption from toll as being
+for the Baron: and he must send down the toll, to obviate injustice
+towards Schlangenwald and Ulm.  Old Ulrich’s grandson, who had run away
+for a lanzknecht, had sent a letter home (written by a comrade), the
+Baron must read and answer it.  Steinmark’s son wanted to be a poor
+student: the Herr Freiherr must write him a letter of recommendation.
+Mother Grethel’s ewe had fallen into a cleft; her son came to borrow a
+rope, and ask aid, and the Baron must superintend the hoisting the poor
+beast up again.  Hans had found the track of a wolf, and knew the hole
+where a litter of cubs abode; the Freiherr, his wolf-hound, and his spear
+were wanted for their destruction.  Dietrich could not tell how to manage
+his new arquebus: the Baron must teach him to take aim.  Then there was a
+letter from Ulm to invite the Baron to consult on the tax demanded by the
+Emperor for his Italian war, and how far it should concern the profits of
+the bridge; and another letter from the Markgraf of Wurtemburg, as chief
+of the Swabian League, requesting the Lord of Adlerstein to be on the
+look-out for a band of robbers, who were reported to be in neighbouring
+hills, after being hunted out of some of their other lurking-places.
+
+That very night, or rather nearly at the dawn of a summer morning, there
+was a yelling below the castle, and a flashing of torches, and tidings
+rang through it that a boor on the outskirts of the mountain had had his
+ricks fired and his cattle driven by the robbers, and his young daughters
+carried off.  Old Sir Eberhard hobbled down to the hall in time to see
+weapons flashing as they were dealt out, to hear a clear decided voice
+giving orders, to listen to the tramp of horse, and watch more reitern
+pass out under the gateway than ever the castle had counted in his
+father’s time.  Then he went back to his bed, and when he came down in
+the morning, found all the womankind of the castle roasting and boiling.
+And, at noon, little Thekla came rushing down from the watch-tower with
+news that all were coming home up the Eagle’s Steps, and she was sure
+_her_ baron had sent her, and waved to her.  Soon after, _her_ baron in
+his glittering steel rode his cream-coloured charger (once Friedel’s)
+into the castle court, followed by his exultant merrymen.  They had
+overtaken the thieves in good time, made them captives, and recovered the
+spoil unhurt; and Heinz and Koppel made the castle ring with the deed of
+their young lord, who had forced the huge leader of the band to the
+earth, and kept him down by main strength till they could come to bind
+him.
+
+“By main strength?” slowly asked Sir Eberhard, who had been stirred into
+excitement.
+
+“He was a loose-limbed, awkward fellow,” said Ebbo, “less strong than he
+looked.”
+
+“Not only that, Sir,” said Heinz, looking from his old master to his
+young one; “but old iron is not a whit stronger than new steel, though
+the one looks full of might, and you would think the other but a toy.”
+
+“And what have you done with the rogues’ heads?” asked the old knight.
+“I looked to see them on your spears.  Or have you hung them?”
+
+“Not so, Sir,” said Ebbo.  “I sent the men off to Stuttgard with an
+escort.  I dislike doing execution ourselves; it makes the men so
+lawless.  Besides, this farmer was Schlangenwalder.”
+
+“And yet he came to you for redress?”
+
+“Yes, for Sir Dankwart is at his commandery, and he and I agreed to look
+after each other’s lands.”
+
+Sir Eberhard retired to his chair as if all had gone past his
+understanding, and thence he looked on while his son and wife hospitably
+regaled, and then dismissed, their auxiliaries in the rescue.
+
+Afterwards Christina told her son that she thought his father was rested,
+and would be better able to attend to him, and Ebbo, with a painful
+swelling in his heart, approached him deferentially, with a request that
+he would say what was his pleasure with regard to the Emperor, to whom
+acknowledgments must in the first place be made for his release, and next
+would arise the whole question of homage and investiture.
+
+“Look you here, fair son,” said Sir Eberhard, rousing himself, “these
+things are all past me.  I’ll have none of them.  You and your Kaisar
+understand one another, and your homage is paid.  It boots not changing
+all for an old fellow that is but come home to die.”
+
+“Nay, father, it is in the order of things that you should be lord here.”
+
+“I never was lord here, and, what is more, I would not, and could not be.
+Son, I marked you yesterday.  You are master as never was my poor father,
+with all the bawling and blows that used to rule the house, while these
+fellows mind you at a word, in a voice as quiet as your mother’s.
+Besides, what should I do with all these mills and bridges of yours, and
+Diets, and Leagues, and councils enough to addle a man’s brain?  No, no;
+I could once slay a bear, or strike a fair stroke at a Schlangenwalder,
+but even they got the better of me, and I am good for nothing now but to
+save my soul.  I had thought to do it as a hermit up there; but my little
+Christina thinks the saints will be just as well pleased if I tell my
+beads here, with her to help me, and I know that way I shall not make so
+many mistakes.  So, young Sir, if you can give the old man a corner of
+the hearth while he lives, he will never interfere with you.  And, maybe,
+if the castle were in jeopardy in your absence, with that new-fangled
+road up to it, he could tell the fellows how to hold it out.”
+
+“Sir—dear father,” cried the ardent Ebbo, “this is not a fit state of
+things.  I will spare you all trouble and care; only make me not
+undutiful; take your own place.  Mother, convince him!”
+
+“No, my son,” said Sir Eberhard; “your mother sees what is best for me.
+I only want to be left to her to rest a little while, and repent of my
+sinful life.  As Heinz says, the rusty old iron must lie by while the new
+steel does the work.  It is quiet that I need.  It is joy enough for me
+to see what she has made you, and all around.  Ah!  Stine, my white dove,
+I knew thine was a wise head; but when I left thee, gentle little
+frightened, fluttering thing, how little could I have thought that all
+alone, unaided, thou wouldst have kept that little head above water, and
+made thy son work out all these changes—thy doing—and so I know they are
+good and seemly.  I see thou hast made him clerkly, quick-witted, and yet
+a good knight.  Ah! thou didst tell me oft that our lonely pride was not
+high nor worthy fame.  Stine, how didst do it?”
+
+“I did it not, dear husband; God did it for me.  He gave the boys the
+loving, true tempers that worked out the rest!  He shielded them and me
+in our days of peril.”
+
+“Yes, father,” added Ebbo, “Providence guarded us; but, above all, our
+chief blessing has been the mother who has made one of us a holy saint,
+and taught the other to seek after him!  Father, I am glad you see how
+great has been the work of the Dove you brought to the Eagle’s Nest.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+THE STAR AND THE SPARK
+
+
+THE year 1531 has begun, and Schloss Adlerstein remains in its strength
+on the mountain side, but with a look of cultivation on its environs such
+as would have amazed Kunigunde.  Vines run up trellises against the
+rocks; pot-herbs and flowers nestle in the nooks; outbuildings cluster
+round it; and even the grim old keep has a range of buildings connected
+with it, as if the household had entirely outgrown the capacities of the
+square tower.
+
+Yet the old hall is still the chief place of assembly, and now that it
+has been wainscoted, with a screen of carved wood to shut off the
+draughty passages, and a stove of bright tiles to increase the warmth, it
+is far more cheerful.  Moreover, a window has been opened showing the
+rich green meadow below, with the bridge over the Braunwasser, and the
+little church, with a spire of pierced lace-work, and white cottages
+peeping out of the retreating forest.
+
+That is the window which the Lady Baroness loves.  See her there, the
+lovely old lady of seventy-five—yes, lovelier than ever, for her sweet
+brown eyes have the same pensive, clear beauty, enhanced by the snowy
+whiteness of her hair, of which a soft braid shows over the pure pale
+brow beneath the white band, and sweeping black veil, that she has worn
+by right for twenty years.  But the slight form is active and brisk, and
+there are ready smiles and looks of interest for the pretty fair-haired
+maidens, three in number, who run in and out from their household
+avocations to appeal to the “dear grandmother,” mischievously to tell of
+the direful yawns proceeding from brothers Ebbo and Gottfried over their
+studies with their tutor, or to gaze from the window and wonder if the
+father, with the two brothers, Friedel Max and Kasimir, will return from
+Ulm in time for the “mid-day eating.”
+
+Ah! there they are.  Quick-eyed Vittoria has seen the cavalcade first,
+and dances off to tell Ermentrude and Stine time enough to prepare their
+last batch of fritters for the new-comers; Ebbo and Götz rush headlong
+down the hillside; and the Lady Baroness lays down her distaff, and gazes
+with eyes of satisfied content at the small party of horsemen climbing up
+the footpath.  Then, when they have wound out of sight round a rock, she
+moves out towards the hall-door, with a light, quick step, for never yet
+has she resigned her great enjoyment, that of greeting her son on the
+steps of the porch—those steps where she once met such fearful news, but
+where that memory has been effaced by many a cheerful welcome.
+
+There, then, she stands, amid the bright throng of grandchildren, while
+the Baron and his sons spring from their horses and come up to her.  The
+Baron doffs his Spanish hat, bends the knee, kisses her hand, and
+receives her kiss on his brow, with the fervour of a life-devotion,
+before he turns to accept the salutation of his daughters, and then takes
+her hand, with pretty affectionate ceremony, to hand her back to her
+seat.  A few words pass between them.  “No, motherling,” he says, “I
+signed it not; I will tell you all by and by.”
+
+And then the mid-day meal is served for the whole household, as of old,
+with the salt-cellar in the middle, but with a far larger company above
+it than when first we saw it.  The seven young folks preserve a decorous
+silence, save when Fraulein Ermentrude’s cookeries are good-naturedly
+complimented by her father, or when Baron Friedmund Maximilianus breaks
+out with some wonderful fact about new armour seen at Ulm.  He is a
+handsome, fair, flaxen-haired young man—like the old Adlersteins, say the
+elder people—and full of honest gaiety and good nature, the special pride
+of his sisters; and no sooner is the meal over, than, with a formal
+entreaty for dismissal, all the seven, and all the dogs, move off
+together, to that favourite gathering-place round the stove, where all
+their merry tongues are let loose together.
+
+To them, the Herr Vater and the Frau Grossmutter seem nearly of the same
+age, and of the same generation; and verily the eighteen years between
+the mother and son have dwindled into a very small difference even in
+appearance, and a lesser one in feeling.  She is a youthful, beautiful
+old lady; he a grave, spare, worn, elderly man, in his full strength, but
+with many a trace of care and thought, and far more of silver than of
+brown in his thin hair and pointed beard, and with a melancholy
+thoughtfulness in his clear brown eyes—all well corresponding with the
+gravity of the dress in which he has been meeting the burghers of Ulm; a
+black velvet suit—only relieved by his small white lace ruff, and the
+ribbon and jewel of the Golden Fleece, the only other approach to
+ornament that he wears being that ring long ago twisted off the Emperor
+Maximilian’s chain.  But now, as he has bowed off the chaplain to his
+study, and excused himself from aiding his two gentlemen-squires in
+consuming their krug of beer, and hands his mother to her favourite nook
+in the sunny window, taking his seat by her side, his features assume an
+expression of repose and relaxation as if here indeed were his true home.
+He has chosen his seat in full view of a picture that hangs on the
+wainscoted wall, near his mother—a picture whose pure ethereal tinting,
+of colour limpid as the rainbow, yet rich as the most glowing
+flower-beds; and its soft lovely _pose_, and rounded outlines, prove it
+to be no produce even of one of the great German artists of the time, but
+to have been wrought, under an Italian sky, by such a hand as left us the
+marvellous smile of Mona Lisa.  It represents two figures, one
+unmistakably himself when in the prime of life, his brow and cheeks
+unfurrowed, and his hair still thick, shining brown, but with the same
+grave earnestness of the dark eye that came with the early sense of
+responsibility, and with the first sorrow of his youth.  The other
+figure, one on which the painter evidently loved to dwell, is of a lady,
+so young that she might almost pass for his daughter, except for the
+peculiar, tender sweetness that could only become the wife and mother.
+Fair she is as snow, with scarce a deepening of the rose on cheek, or
+even lip, fragile and transparent as a spiritual form, and with a light
+in the blue eyes, and a grace in the soft fugitive smile, that scarce
+seems to belong to earth; a beauty not exactly of feature, but rather the
+pathetic loveliness of calm fading away—as if she were already melting
+into the clear blue sky with the horizon of golden light, that the
+wondrous power of art has made to harmonize with, but not efface, her
+blue dress, golden hair, white coif, and fair skin.  It is as if she
+belonged to that sky, and only tarried as unable to detach herself from
+the clasp of the strong hand round and in which both her hands are
+twined; and though the light in her face may be from heaven, yet the
+whole countenance is fixed in one absorbed, almost worshipping gaze of
+her husband, with a wistful simplicity and innocence on devotion, like
+the absorption of a loving animal, to whom its master’s presence is bliss
+and sunshine.  It is a picture to make light in a dark place, and that
+sweet face receives a loving glance, nay, an absolutely reverent bend of
+the knightly head, as the Baron seats himself.
+
+“So it was as we feared, and this Schmalkaldic League did not suit thy
+sense of loyalty, my son?” she asks, reading his features anxiously.
+
+“No, mother.  I ever feared that further pressure would drive our friends
+beyond the line where begin schism and rebellion; and it seems to me that
+the moment is come when I must hold me still, or transgress mine own
+sense of duty.  I must endure the displeasure of many I love and
+respect.”
+
+“Surely, my son, they have known you too long and too well not to respect
+your motives, and know that conscience is first with you.”
+
+“Scarce may such confidence be looked for, mother, from the most part,
+who esteem every man a traitor to the cause if he defend it not precisely
+in the fashion of their own party.  But I hear that the King of France
+has offered himself as an ally, and that Dr. Luther, together with others
+of our best divines, have thereby been startled into doubts of the
+lawfulness of the League.”
+
+“And what think you of doing, my son?”
+
+“I shall endeavour to wait until such time as the much-needed General
+Council may proclaim the ancient truth, and enable us to avouch it
+without disunion.  Into schism I _will_ not be drawn.  I have held truth
+all my life in the Church, nor will I part from her now.  If intrigues
+again should prevail, then, Heaven help us!  Meantime, mother, the best
+we can, as has ever been your war-cry.”
+
+“And much has been won for us.  Here are the little maidens, who, save
+Vittoria, would never have been scholars, reading the Holy Word daily in
+their own tongue.”
+
+“Ach, I had not told you, mother!  I have the Court Secretary’s answer
+this day about that command in the Kaisar’s guards that my dear old
+master had promised to his godson.”
+
+“Another put-off with Flemish courtesy, I see by thy face, Ebbo.”
+
+“Not quite that, mother.  The command is ready for the Baron Friedmund
+Maximilianus von Adlerstein Wildschloss, and all the rest of it, on the
+understanding that he has been bred up free from all taint of the new
+doctrine.”
+
+“New?  Nay, it is the oldest of all doctrine.”
+
+“Even so.  As I ever said, Dr. Luther hath been setting forth in greater
+clearness and fulness what our blessed Friedel and I learnt at your knee,
+and my young ones have learnt from babyhood of the true Catholic
+doctrine.  Yet I may not call my son’s faith such as the Kaisar’s Spanish
+conscience-keepers would have it, and so the boy must e’en tarry at home
+till there be work for his stout arm to do.”
+
+“He seems little disappointed.  His laugh comes ringing the loudest of
+all.”
+
+“The Junker is more of a boy at two-and-twenty than I ever recollect
+myself!  He lacks not sense nor wit, but a fray or a feast, a chase or a
+dance, seem to suffice him at an age when I had long been dwelling on
+matters of moment.”
+
+“Thou wast left to be thine own pilot; he is but one of thy gay crew, and
+thus even these stirring times touch him not so deeply as thou wert
+affected by thine own choice in life between disorderly freedom and
+honourable restraint.”
+
+“I thought of that choice to-day, mother, as I crossed the bridge and
+looked at the church; and more than ever thankful did I feel that our
+blessed Friedel, having aided me over that one decisive pass, was laid to
+rest, his tender spirit unvexed by the shocks and divisions that have
+wrenched me hither and thither.”
+
+“Nay; not hither and thither.  Ever hadst thou a resolute purpose and
+aim.”
+
+“Ever failed in by my own error or that of others—What, thou nestling
+here, my little Vittoria, away from all yonder prattle?”
+
+“Dear father, if I may, I love far best to hear you and the grandmother
+talk.”
+
+“Hear the child!  She alone hath your face, mother, or Friedel’s eyes!
+Is it that thou wouldst be like thy noble Roman godmother, the Marchesa
+di Pescara, that makes thee seek our grave company, little one?”
+
+“I always long to hear you talk of her, and of the Italian days, dear
+father, and how you won this noble jewel of yours.”
+
+“Ah, child, that was before those times!  It was the gift of good Kaisar
+Max at his godson’s christening, when he filled your sweet mother with
+pretty spite by persuading her that it was a little golden bear-skin.”
+
+“Tell her how you had gained it, my son.”
+
+“By vapouring, child; and by the dull pride of my neighbours.  Heard’st
+thou never of the siege of Padua, when we had Bayard, the best knight in
+Europe, and 500 Frenchmen for our allies?  Our artillery had made a
+breach, and the Kaisar requested the French knights to lead the storm,
+whereto they answered, Well and good, but our German nobles must share
+the assault, and not leave them to fight with no better backers than the
+hired lanzknechts.  All in reason, quoth I, and more shame for us not to
+have been foremost in our Kaisar’s own cause; but what said the rest of
+our misproud chivalry?  They would never condescend to climb a wall on
+foot in company with lanzknechts!  On horseback must their worships
+fight, or not at all; and when to shame them I called myself a
+mountaineer, more used to climb than to ride, and vowed that I should
+esteem it an honour to follow such a knight as Bayard, were it on all
+fours, then cast they my burgher blood in my teeth.  Never saw I the
+Kaisar so enraged; he swore that all the common sense in the empire was
+in the burgher blood, and that he would make me a knight of the noblest
+order in Europe to show how he esteemed it.  And next morning he was
+gone!  So ashamed was he of his own army that he rode off in the night,
+and sent orders to break up the siege.  I could have torn my hair, for I
+had just lashed up a few of our nobles to a better sense of honour, and
+we would yet have redeemed our name!  And after all, the Chapter of proud
+Flemings would never have admitted me had not the heralds hunted up that
+the Sorels were gentlemen of blood and coat armour long ago at Liège.  I
+am glad my father lived to see that proved, mother.  He could not honour
+thee more than he did, but he would have been sorely grieved had I been
+rejected.  He often thought me a mechanical burgher, as it was.”
+
+“Not quite so, my son.  He never failed to be proud of thy deeds, even
+when he did not understand them; but this, and the grandson’s birth, were
+the crowning joys of his life.”
+
+“Yes, those were glad triumphant years, take them all in all, ere the
+Emperor sent me to act ambassador in Rome, and we left you the two elder
+little girls and the boy to take care of.  My dear little Thekla!  She
+had a foreboding that she might never see those children more, yet would
+she have pined her heart away more surely had I left her at home!  I
+never was absent a week but I found her wasted with watching for me.”
+
+“It was those weary seven years of Italy that changed thee most, my son.”
+
+“Apart from you, mother, and knowing you now indeed to be widowed, and
+with on the one hand such contradictory commands from the Emperor as made
+me sorely ashamed of myself, of my nation, and of the man whom I loved
+and esteemed personally the most on earth, yet bound there by his express
+command, while I saw my tender wife’s health wasting in the climate day
+by day!  Yet still, while most she gasped for a breath of Swabian hills,
+she ever declared it would kill her outright to send her from me.  And
+thus it went on till I laid her in the stately church of her own
+patroness.  Then how it would have fared with me and the helpless little
+ones I know not, but for thy noble godmother, my Vittoria, the wise and
+ready helper of all in trouble, the only friend thy mother had made at
+Rome, and who had been able, from all her heights of learning and
+accomplishment, to value my Thekla’s golden soul in its simplicity.  Even
+then, when too late, came one of the Kaisar’s kindest letters, recalling
+me,—a letter whose every word I would have paid for with a drop of my own
+blood six weeks before! and which he had only failed to send because his
+head was running on the plan of that gorgeous tomb where he is not
+buried!  Well, at least it brought us home to you again once more,
+mother, and, where you are, comfort never has been utterly absent from
+me.  And then, coming from the wilful gloom of Pope Leo’s court into our
+Germany, streamed over by the rays of Luther’s light, it was as if a new
+world of hope were dawning, as if truth would no longer be muffled, and
+the young would grow up to a world far better and purer than the old had
+ever seen.  What trumpet-calls those were, and how welcome was the voice
+of the true Catholic faith no longer stifled!  And my dear old Kaisar,
+with his clear eyes, his unfettered mind—he felt the power and truth of
+those theses.  He bade the Elector of Saxony well to guard the monk
+Luther as a treasure.  Ah! had he been a younger man, or had he been more
+firm and resolute, able to act as well as think for himself, things might
+have gone otherwise with the Church.  He could think, but could not act;
+and now we have a man who acts, but _will_ not think.  It may have been a
+good day for our German reputation among foreign princes when Charles V.
+put on the crown; but only two days in my life have been as mournful to
+me as that when I stood by Kaisar Max’s death-bed at Wells, and knew that
+generous, loving, fitful spirit was passing away from the earth!  Never
+owned I friend I loved so well as Kaisar Max!  Nor has any Emperor done
+so much for this our dear land.”
+
+“The young Emperor never loved thee.”
+
+“He might have treated me as one who could be useful, but he never
+forgave me for shaking hands with Luther at the Diet of Worms.  I knew it
+was all over with my court favour after I had joined in escorting the
+Doctor out of the city.  And the next thing was that Georg of Freundsberg
+and his friends proclaimed me a bigoted Papist because I did my utmost to
+keep my troop out of the devil’s holiday at the sack of Rome!  It has
+ever been my lot to be in disgrace with one side or the other!  Here is
+my daughter’s marriage hindered on the one hand, my son’s promotion
+checked on the other, because I have a conscience of my own, and not of
+other people’s!  Heaven knows the right is no easy matter to find; but,
+when one thinks one sees it, there is nothing to be done but to guide
+oneself by it, even if the rest of the world will not view it in the same
+light.”
+
+“Nothing else!  I doubt me whether it be ever easy to see the veritably
+right course while still struggling in the midst.  That is for after
+ages, which behold things afar off; but each man must needs follow his
+own principle in an honest and good heart, and assuredly God will guide
+him to work out some good end, or hinder some evil one.”
+
+“Ay, mother.  Each party may guard one side or other of the truth in all
+honesty and faithfulness; he who cannot with his whole heart cast in his
+lot with either,—he is apt to serve no purpose, and to be scorned.”
+
+“Nay, Ebbo, may he not be a witness to the higher and more perfect truth
+than either party have conceived?  Nor is inaction always needful.  That
+which is right towards either side still reveals itself at the due
+moment, whether it be to act or to hold still.  And verily, Ebbo, what
+thou didst say even now has set me on a strange thought of mine own
+dream, that which heralded the birth of thyself and thy brother.  As thou
+knowest, it seemed to me that I was watching two sparkles from the
+extinguished Needfire wheel.  One rose aloft and shone as a star!”
+
+“My guiding-star!”
+
+“The other fulfilled those words of the Wise Man.  It shone and ran to
+and fro in the grass.  And surely, my Ebbo, thy mother may feel that, in
+all these dark days of perplexity and trial, the spark of light hath ever
+shone and drawn its trail of brightness in the gloom, even though the way
+was long, and seemed uncertain.”
+
+“The mother who ever fondled me _will_ think so, it may be!  But, ah! she
+had better pray that the light be clearer, and that I may not fall
+utterly short of the star!”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+Travellers in Wurtemburg may perhaps turn aside from glorious old Ulm,
+and the memories of the battlefields around it, to the romantic country
+round the Swabian mountains, through which descend the tributaries of the
+Danube.  Here they may think themselves fortunate if they come upon a
+green valley, with a bright mountain torrent dashing through it, fresh
+from the lofty mountain, with terraced sides that rise sheer above.  An
+old bridge, a mill, and a neat German village lie clustered in the
+valley; a seignorial mansion peeps out of the forest glades; and a lovely
+church, of rather late Gothic, but beautifully designed, attracts the eye
+so soon as it can be persuaded to quit the romantic outline of the ruined
+baronial castle high up on one of the mountain ledges.  Report declares
+that there are tombs in the church well worth inspection.  You seek out
+an old venerable blue-coated peasant who has charge of the church.
+
+“What is yonder castle?”
+
+“It is the castle of Adlerstein.”
+
+“Are the family still extant?”
+
+“Yea, yea; they built yonder house when the Schloss became ruinous.  They
+have always been here.”
+
+The church is very beautiful in its details, the carved work of the east
+end and pulpit especially so, but nothing is so attractive as the altar
+tomb in the chantry chapel.  It is a double one, holding not, as usual,
+the recumbent effigies of a husband and wife, but of two knights in
+armour.
+
+“Who are these, good friend?”
+
+“They are the good Barons Ebbo and Friedel.”
+
+Father and son they appear to be, killed at the same time in some fatal
+battle, for the white marble face of one is round with youth, no hair on
+lip nor chin, and with a lovely peaceful solemnity, almost cheerfulness,
+in the expression.  The other, a bearded man, has the glory of old age in
+his worn features, beautiful and restful, but it is as if one had gone to
+sleep in the light of dawn, the other in the last glow of sunset.  Their
+armour and their crests are alike, but the young one bears the eagle
+shield alone, while the elder has the same bearing repeated upon an
+escutcheon of pretence; the young man’s hands are clasped over a harp,
+those of the other over a Bible, and the elder wears the insignia of the
+order of the Golden Fleece.  They are surely father and son, a maiden
+knight and tried warrior who fell together?
+
+“No,” the guide shakes his head; “they are twin brothers, the good Barons
+Ebbo and Friedel, who were born when their father had been taken captive
+by the Saracens while on a crusade.  Baron Friedel was slain by the Turks
+at the bridge foot, and his brother built the church in his memory.  He
+first planted vines upon the mountains, and freed the peasants from the
+lord’s dues on their flax.  And it is true that the two brothers may
+still be seen hovering on the mountain-side in the mist at sunset,
+sometimes one, sometimes both.”
+
+You turn with a smile to the inscription, sure that those windows, those
+porches, that armour, never were of crusading date, and ready to refute
+the old peasant.  You spell out the upright Gothic letters around the
+cornice of the tomb, and you read, in mediæval Latin,—
+
+    “Orate pro Anima Friedmundis Equitis Baronis Adlersteini.  A. D.
+    mccccxciii”
+
+Then turn to the other side and read—
+
+    “Hic jacet Eberardus Eques Baro Adlersteini.  A.D. mdxliii.  Demum”
+
+Yes, the guide is right.  They are brothers, with well-nigh a lifetime
+between their deaths.  Is that the meaning of that strange _Demum_?
+
+Few of the other tombs are worth attention, each lapsing further into the
+bad taste of later ages; yet there is one still deserving admiration,
+placed close to the head of that of the two Barons.  It is the effigy of
+a lady, aged and serene, with a delicately-carved face beneath her stiff
+head-gear.  Surely this monument was erected somewhat later, for the
+inscription is in German.  Stiff, contracted, hard to read, but this is
+the rendering of it:—
+
+    “Here lies Christina Sorel, wife of Eberhard, xxth Baron von
+    Adlerstein, and mother of the Barons Eberhard and Friedmund.  She
+    fell asleep two days before her son, on the feast of St. John,
+    mdxliii.
+
+    “Her children shall rise up and call her blessed.
+
+    “Erected with full hearts by her grandson, Baron Friedmund
+    Maximilianus, and his brothers and sisters.  Farewell.”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                 THE END.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+           _Richard Clay & Sons_, _Limited_, _London & Bungay_
+
+
+
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Dove in the Eagle's Nest, by Charlotte M.
+Yonge, Illustrated by W. J. Hennessy
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Dove in the Eagle's Nest
+
+
+Author: Charlotte M. Yonge
+
+
+
+Release Date: April 21, 2013  [eBook #3139]
+[This file was first posted on December 30, 2000]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DOVE IN THE EAGLE'S NEST***
+</pre>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1890 Macmillan and Co. edition by David
+Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p>
+<h2><span class="GutSmall">THE</span><br />
+DOVE IN THE EAGLE&rsquo;S NEST</h2>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span
+class="GutSmall">BY</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">CHARLOTTE M. YONGE</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/tpb.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sitting at the desk"
+title=
+"Sitting at the desk"
+src="images/tps.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span
+class="GutSmall"><i>ILLUSTRATED BY W. J. HENNESSY</i></span></p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center">London<br />
+MACMILLAN AND CO.<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">AND NEW YORK</span><br />
+1890</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall"><i>The Right
+of Translation is Reserved</i></span></p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>First Edition</i> (2 vols.&nbsp;
+Crown 8vo), 1866.&nbsp; <i>New Edition</i> (1 vol.&nbsp; Crown
+8vo), 1869.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Reprinted</i> 1871; January and
+November 1873; 1875; 1876; 1879; 1882; 1883;<br />
+1884; 1888.&nbsp; <i>New Edition</i>, 1889.&nbsp;
+<i>Reprinted</i> 1890.</p>
+<h2>INTRODUCTION</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> sending forth this little book,
+I am inclined to add a few explanatory words as to the use I have
+made of historical personages.&nbsp; The origin of the whole
+story was probably Freytag&rsquo;s first series of pictures of
+German Life: probably, I say, for its first commencement was a
+dream, dreamt some weeks after reading that most interesting
+collection of sketches.&nbsp; The return of the squire with the
+tidings of the death of the two knights was vividly depicted in
+sleep; and, though without local habitation or name, the scene
+was most likely to have been a reflection from the wild scenes so
+lately read of.</p>
+<p>In fact, waking thoughts decided that such a catastrophe could
+hardly have happened anywhere but in Germany, or in Scotland; and
+the contrast between the cultivation in the free cities and the
+savagery of the independent barons made the former the more
+suitable region for the adventures.&nbsp; The time could only be
+before the taming and bringing into order of the empire, when the
+Imperial cities were in their greatest splendour, the last free
+nobles in course of being reduced from their lawless liberty, and
+the House of Austria beginning to acquire its preponderance over
+the other princely families.</p>
+<p>M. Freytag&rsquo;s books, and Hegewisch&rsquo;s History of
+Maximilian, will, I think, be found fully to bear out the picture
+I have tried to give of the state of things in the reign of the
+Emperor Friedrich III., when, for want of any other law, <i>Faust
+recht</i>, or fist right, ruled; <i>i.e.</i> an offended
+nobleman, having once sent a <i>Fehde-brief</i> to his adversary,
+was thenceforth at liberty to revenge himself by a private war,
+in which, for the wrong inflicted, no justice was exacted.</p>
+<p>Hegewisch remarks that the only benefit of this custom was,
+that the honour of subscribing a feud-brief was so highly
+esteemed that it induced the nobles to learn to write!&nbsp; The
+League of St. George and the Swabian League were the means of
+gradually putting down this authorized condition of deadly
+feud.</p>
+<p>This was in the days of Maximilian&rsquo;s youth.&nbsp; He is
+a prince who seems to have been almost as inferior in his foreign
+to what he was in his domestic policy as was Queen
+Elizabeth.&nbsp; He is chiefly familiar to us as failing to keep
+up his authority in Flanders after the death of Mary of Burgundy,
+as lingering to fulfil his engagement with Anne of Brittany till
+he lost her and her duchy, as incurring ridicule by his
+ill-managed schemes in Italy, and the vast projects that he was
+always forming without either means or steadiness to carry them
+out, by his perpetual impecuniosity and slippery dealing; and in
+his old age he has become rather the laughing-stock of
+historians.</p>
+<p>But there is much that is melancholy in the sight of a man
+endowed with genius, unbalanced by the force of character that
+secures success, and with an ardent nature whose intention
+overleapt obstacles that in practice he found insuperable.&nbsp;
+At home Maximilian raised the Imperial power from a mere cipher
+to considerable weight.&nbsp; We judge him as if he had been born
+in the purple and succeeded to a defined power like his
+descendants.&nbsp; We forget that the head of the Holy Roman
+Empire had been, ever since the extinction of the Swabian line, a
+mere mark for ambitious princes to shoot at, with everything
+expected from him, and no means to do anything.&nbsp;
+Maximilian&rsquo;s own father was an avaricious, undignified old
+man, not until near his death Archduke of even all Austria, and
+with anarchy prevailing everywhere under his nominal rule.&nbsp;
+It was in the time of Maximilian that the Empire became as
+compact and united a body as could be hoped of anything so
+unwieldy, that law was at least acknowledged, <i>Faust recht</i>
+for ever abolished, and the Emperor became once more a real
+power.</p>
+<p>The man under whom all this was effected could have been no
+fool; yet, as he said himself, he reigned over a nation of kings,
+who each chose to rule for himself; and the uncertainty of
+supplies of men or money to be gained from them made him so often
+fail necessarily in his engagements, that he acquired a
+shiftiness and callousness to breaches of promise, which became
+the worst flaw in his character.&nbsp; But of the fascination of
+his manner there can be no doubt.&nbsp; Even Henry VIII.&rsquo;s
+English ambassadors, when forced to own how little they could
+depend on him, and how dangerous it was to let subsidies pass
+through his fingers, still show themselves under a sort of
+enchantment of devotion to his person, and this in his old age,
+and when his conduct was most inexcusable and provoking.</p>
+<p>His variety of powers was wonderful.&nbsp; He was learned in
+many languages&mdash;in all those of his empire or hereditary
+states, and in many besides; and he had an ardent love of books,
+both classical and modern.&nbsp; He delighted in music, painting,
+architecture, and many arts of a more mechanical description;
+wrote treatises on all these, and on other subjects, especially
+gardening and gunnery.&nbsp; He was the inventor of an improved
+lock to the arquebus, and first divined how to adapt the
+disposition of his troops to the use of the newly-discovered
+fire-arms.&nbsp; And in all these things his versatile head and
+ready hand were personally employed, not by deputy; while coupled
+with so much artistic taste was a violent passion for hunting,
+which carried him through many hairbreadth &rsquo;scapes.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;It was plain,&rdquo; he used to say, &ldquo;that God
+Almighty ruled the world, or how could things go on with a rogue
+like Alexander VI. at the head of the Church, and a mere huntsman
+like himself at the head of the Empire.&rdquo;&nbsp; His
+<i>bon-mots</i> are numerous, all thoroughly characteristic, and
+showing that brilliancy in conversation must have been one of his
+greatest charms.&nbsp; It seems as if only self-control and
+resolution were wanting to have made him a Charles, or an Alfred,
+the Great.</p>
+<p>The romance of his marriage with the heiress of Burgundy is
+one of the best known parts of his life.&nbsp; He was scarcely
+two-and-twenty when he lost her, who perhaps would have given him
+the stability he wanted; but his tender hove for her endured
+through life.&nbsp; It is not improbable that it was this still
+abiding attachment that made him slack in overcoming difficulties
+in the way of other contracts, and that he may have hoped that
+his engagement to Bianca Sforza would come to nothing, like so
+many others.</p>
+<p>The most curious record of him is, however, in two books, the
+materials for which he furnished, and whose composition and
+illustration he superintended, <i>Der Weise King</i>, and
+<i>Theurdank</i>, of both of which he is well known to be the
+hero.&nbsp; The White, or the Wise King, it is uncertain which,
+is a history of his education and exploits, in prose.&nbsp; Every
+alternate page has its engraving, showing how the Young White
+King obtains instruction in painting, architecture, language, and
+all arts and sciences, the latter including magic&mdash;which he
+learns of an old woman with a long-tailed demon sitting, like
+Mother Hubbard&rsquo;s cat, on her shoulder&mdash;and
+astrology.&nbsp; In the illustration of this study an
+extraordinary figure of a cross within a circle appears in the
+sky, which probably has some connection with his scheme of
+nativity, for it also appears on the breast of Ehrenhold, his
+constant companion in the metrical history of his career, under
+the name of Theurdank.</p>
+<p>The poetry of <i>Theurdank</i> was composed by
+Maximilian&rsquo;s old writing-master, Melchior Pfinznig; but the
+adventures were the Kaisar&rsquo;s own, communicated by himself,
+and he superintended the wood-cuts.&nbsp; The name is explained
+to mean &ldquo;craving
+glory,&rdquo;&mdash;Glori&aelig;memor.&nbsp; The Germans laugh to
+scorn a French translator, who rendered it
+&ldquo;Chermerci.&rdquo;&nbsp; It was annotated very soon after
+its publication, and each exploit explained and accounted
+for.&nbsp; It is remarkable and touching in a man who married at
+eighteen, and was a widower at twenty-two, that, in both books,
+the happy union with his lady love is placed at the end&mdash;not
+at the beginning of the book; and in <i>Theurdank</i>, at least,
+the eternal reunion is clearly meant.</p>
+<p>In this curious book, K&ouml;nig R&ouml;mreich, by whom every
+contemporary understood poor Charles of Burgundy&mdash;thus
+posthumously made King of Rome by Maximilian, as the only honour
+in his power, betroths his daughter Ehrenreich (rich in honour)
+to the Ritter Theurdank.&nbsp; Soon after, by a most mild version
+of Duke Charles&rsquo;s frightful end, K&ouml;nig R&ouml;mreich
+is seen on his back dying in a garden, and Ehrenreich (as Mary
+really did) despatches a ring to summon her betrothed.</p>
+<p>But here Theurdank returns for answer that he means first to
+win honour by his exploits, and sets out with his comrade,
+Ehrenhold, in search thereof.&nbsp; Ehrenhold never appears of
+the smallest use to him in any of the dire adventures into which
+he falls, but only stands complacently by, and in effect may
+represent Fame, or perhaps that literary sage whom Don Quixote
+always supposed to be at hand to record his deeds of prowess.</p>
+<p>Next we are presented with the German impersonation of Satan
+as a wise old magician, only with claws instead of feet,
+commissioning his three captains (<i>hauptleutern</i>),
+F&uuml;rwitz, Umfallo, and Neidelhard, to beset and ruin
+Theurdank.&nbsp; They are interpreted as the dangers of youth,
+middle life, and old age&mdash;Rashness, Disaster, and Distress
+(or Envy).&nbsp; One at a time they encounter him,&mdash;not
+once, but again and again; and he has ranged under each head, in
+entire contempt of real order of time, the perils he thinks owing
+to each foe.&nbsp; F&uuml;rwitz most justly gets the credit of
+Maximilian&rsquo;s perils on the steeple of Ulm, though,
+unfortunately, the artist has represented the daring climber as
+standing not much above the shoulders of F&uuml;rwitz and
+Ehrenhold; and although the annotation tells us that his
+&ldquo;hinder half foot&rdquo; overhung the scaffold, the danger
+in the print is not appalling.&nbsp; F&uuml;rwitz likewise
+inveigles him into putting the point (<i>schn&auml;bel</i>) of
+his shoe into the wheel of a mill for turning stone balls, where
+he certainly hardly deserved to lose nothing but the beak of his
+shoe.&nbsp; This enemy also brings him into numerous unpleasant
+predicaments on precipices, where he hangs by one hand; while the
+chamois stand delighted on every available peak, F&uuml;rwitz
+grins malevolently, and Ehrenhold stands pointing at him over his
+shoulder.&nbsp; Time and place are given in the notes for all
+these escapes.&nbsp; After some twenty adventures F&uuml;rwitz is
+beaten off, and Umfallo tries his powers.&nbsp; Here the
+misadventures do not involve so much folly on the hero&rsquo;s
+part&mdash;though, to be sure, he ventures into a lion&rsquo;s
+den unarmed, and has to beat off the inmates with a shovel.&nbsp;
+But the other adventures are more rational.&nbsp; He catches a
+jester&mdash;of admirably foolish expression&mdash;putting a
+match to a powder-magazine; he is wonderfully preserved in
+mountain avalanches and hurricanes; reins up his horse on the
+verge of an abyss; falls through ice in Holland and shows nothing
+but his head above it; cures himself of a fever by draughts of
+water, to the great disgust of his physicians, and escapes a fire
+bursting out of a tall stove.</p>
+<p>Neidelhard brings his real battles and perils.&nbsp; From this
+last he is in danger of shipwreck, of assassination, of poison,
+in single combat, or in battle; tumults of the people beset him;
+he is imprisoned as at Ghent.&nbsp; But finally Neidelhard is
+beaten back; and the hero is presented to Ehrenreich.&nbsp;
+Ehrenhold recounts his triumphs, and accuses the three
+captains.&nbsp; One is hung, another beheaded, the third thrown
+headlong from a tower, and a guardian angel then summons
+Theurdank to his union with his Queen.&nbsp; No doubt this
+reunion was the life-dream of the harassed, busy, inconsistent
+man, who flashed through the turmoils of the early sixteenth
+century.</p>
+<p>The adventures of Maximilian which have been adverted to in
+the story are all to be found in Theurdank, and in his early life
+he was probably the brilliant eager person we have tried in some
+degree to describe.&nbsp; In his latter years it is well known
+that he was much struck by Luther&rsquo;s arguments; and, indeed,
+he had long been conscious of need of Church reform, though his
+plans took the grotesque form of getting himself made Pope, and
+taking all into his own hands.</p>
+<p>Perhaps it was unwise to have ever so faintly sketched
+Ebbo&rsquo;s career through the ensuing troubles; but the history
+of the star and of the spark in the stubble seemed to need
+completion; and the working out of the character of the survivor
+was unfinished till his course had been thought over from the
+dawn of the Wittenberg teaching, which must have seemed no
+novelty to an heir of the doctrine of Tauler, and of the
+veritably Catholic divines of old times.&nbsp; The idea is of the
+supposed course of a thoughtful, refined, conscientious man
+through the earlier times of the Reformation, glad of the hope of
+cleansing the Church, but hoping to cleanse, not to break away
+from her&mdash;a hope that Luther himself long cherished, and
+which was not entirely frustrated till the re-assembly at Trent
+in the next generation.&nbsp; Justice has never been done to the
+men who feared to loose their hold on the Church Catholic as the
+one body to which the promises were made.&nbsp; Their loyalty has
+been treated as blindness, timidity, or superstition; but that
+there were many such persons, and those among the very highest
+minds of their time, no one can have any doubt after reading such
+lives as those of Friedrich the Wise of Saxony, of Erasmus, of
+Vittoria Colonna, or of Cardinal Giustiniani.</p>
+<p><i>April</i> 9, 1836.</p>
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&ldquo;She was too young and too delicate to reject
+civilization, and she let Christina braid her hair, bathe her,
+and arrange her dress, with sensations of comfort that were
+almost like health&rdquo;&nbsp; <i>Front</i></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><i>Page</i> <span
+class="indexpageno"><a href="#page37">37</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>Henceforth mine own lady-mother is the mistress of this
+castle, and whoever speaks a rude word to her offends the
+Freiherr von Adlerstein</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page126">126</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&ldquo;&lsquo;No; only I saw that you stayed here all
+alone,&rsquo; she said, clasping her hands&rdquo;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page269">269</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<h2>CHAPTER I<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">MASTER GOTTFRIED&rsquo;S
+WORKSHOP</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> upper lattices of a tall,
+narrow window were open, and admitted the view, of first some
+richly-tinted vine leaves and purpling grapes, then, in dazzling
+freshness of new white stone, the lacework fabric of a half-built
+minster spire, with a mason&rsquo;s crane on the summit, bending
+as though craving for a further supply of materials; and beyond,
+peeping through every crevice of the exquisite open fretwork, was
+the intensely blue sky of early autumn.</p>
+<p>The lower longer panes of the window were closed, and the
+glass, divided into circles and quarrels, made the scene less
+distinct; but still the huge stone tower was traceable, and,
+farther off, the slope of a gently-rising hill, clothed with
+vineyards blushing into autumn richness.&nbsp; Below, the view
+was closed by the gray wall of a court-yard, laden with
+fruit-trees in full bearing, and inclosing paved paths that
+radiated from a central fountain, and left spaces between, where
+a few summer flowers still lingered, and the remains of others
+showed what their past glory had been.</p>
+<p>The interior of the room was wainscoted, the floor paved with
+bright red and cream-coloured tiles, and the tall stove in one
+corner decorated with the same.&nbsp; The eastern end of the
+apartment was adorned with an exquisite small group carved in
+oak, representing the carpenter&rsquo;s shop at Nazareth, with
+the Holy Child instructed by Joseph in the use of tools, and the
+Mother sitting with her book, &ldquo;pondering these things in
+her heart.&rdquo;&nbsp; All around were blocks of wood and
+carvings in varying states of progress&mdash;some scarcely shaped
+out, and others in perfect completion.&nbsp; And the subjects
+were equally various.&nbsp; Here was an adoring angel with folded
+wings, clasped hands, and rapt face; here a majestic head of an
+apostle or prophet; here a lovely virgin saint, seeming to play
+smilingly with the instrument of her martyrdom; here a grotesque
+<i>miserere</i> group, illustrating a fairy tale, or caricaturing
+a popular fable here a beauteous festoon of flowers and fruit,
+emulating nature in all save colour; and on the work-table
+itself, growing under the master&rsquo;s hand, was a long wreath,
+entirely composed of leaves and seed-vessels in their quaint and
+beauteous forms&mdash;the heart-shaped shepherd&rsquo;s purse,
+the mask-like skull-cap, and the crowned urn of the
+henbane.&nbsp; The starred cap of the poppy was actually being
+shaped under the tool, copied from a green capsule, surmounted
+with purple velvety rays, which, together with its rough and wavy
+leaf, was held in the hand of a young maiden who knelt by the
+table, watching the work with eager interest.</p>
+<p>She was not a beautiful girl&mdash;not one of those whose
+&ldquo;bright eyes rain influence, and judge the
+prize.&rdquo;&nbsp; She was too small, too slight, too retiring
+for such a position.&nbsp; If there was something lily-like in
+her drooping grace, it was not the queen-lily of the garden that
+she resembled, but the retiring lily of the valley&mdash;so
+purely, transparently white was her skin, scarcely tinted by a
+roseate blush on the cheek, so tender and modest the whole effect
+of her slender figure, and the soft, downcast, pensive brown
+eyes, utterly dissimilar in hue from those of all her friends and
+kindred, except perhaps the bright, quick ones of her uncle, the
+master-carver.&nbsp; Otherwise, his portly form, open visage, and
+good-natured stateliness, as well as his furred cap and gold
+chain, were thoroughly those of the German burgomaster of the
+fifteenth century; but those glittering black eyes had not ceased
+to betray their French, or rather Walloon, origin, though for
+several generations back the family had been settled at
+Ulm.&nbsp; Perhaps, too, it was Walloon quickness and readiness
+of wit that had made them, so soon as they became affiliated, so
+prominent in all the councils of the good free city, and so noted
+for excellence in art and learning.&nbsp; Indeed the present head
+of the family, Master Gottfried Sorel, was so much esteemed for
+his learning that he had once had serious thoughts of terming
+himself Magister Gothofredus Oxalicus, and might have carried it
+out but for the very decided objections of his wife, Dame
+Johanna, and his little niece, Christina, to being dubbed by any
+such surname.</p>
+<p>Master Gottfried had had a scapegrace younger brother named
+Hugh, who had scorned both books and tools, had been the plague
+of the workshop, and, instead of coming back from his wandering
+year of improvement, had joined a band of roving
+Lanzknechts.&nbsp; No more had been heard of him for a dozen or
+fifteen years, when he suddenly arrived at the paternal mansion
+at Ulm, half dead with intermittent fever, and with a young,
+broken-hearted, and nearly expiring wife, his spoil in his
+Italian campaigns.&nbsp; His rude affection had utterly failed to
+console her for her desolated home and slaughtered kindred, and
+it had so soon turned to brutality that, when brought to
+comparative peace and rest in his brother&rsquo;s home, there was
+nothing left for the poor Italian but to lie down and die,
+commending her babe in broken German to Hausfrau Johanna, and
+blessing Master Gottfried for his flowing Latin assurances that
+the child should be to them even as the little maiden who was
+lying in the God&rsquo;s acre upon the hillside.</p>
+<p>And verily the little Christina had been a precious gift to
+the bereaved couple.&nbsp; Her father had no sooner recovered
+than he returned to his roving life, and, except for a report
+that he had been seen among the retainers of one of the robber
+barons of the Swabian Alps, nothing had been heard of him; and
+Master Gottfried only hoped to be spared the actual pain and
+scandal of knowing when his eyes were blinded and his head swept
+off at a blow, or when he was tumbled headlong into a moat,
+suspended from a tree, or broken on the wheel: a choice of fates
+that was sure sooner or later to befall him.&nbsp; Meantime, both
+the burgomeister and burgomeisterinn did their utmost to forget
+that the gentle little girl was not their own; they set all their
+hopes and joys on her, and, making her supply the place at once
+of son and daughter, they bred her up in all the refinements and
+accomplishments in which the free citizens of Germany took the
+lead in the middle and latter part of the fifteenth
+century.&nbsp; To aid her aunt in all house-wifely arts, to
+prepare dainty food and varied liquors, and to spin, weave, and
+broider, was only a part of Christina&rsquo;s training; her uncle
+likewise set great store by her sweet Italian voice, and caused
+her to be carefully taught to sing and play on the lute, and he
+likewise delighted in hearing her read aloud to him from the
+hereditary store of MSS. and from the dark volumes that began to
+proceed from the press.&nbsp; Nay, Master Gottfried had made
+experiments in printing and wood-engraving on his own account,
+and had found no head so intelligent, no hand so desirous to aid
+him, as his little Christina&rsquo;s, who, in all that needed
+taste and skill rather than strength, was worth all his prentices
+and journeymen together.&nbsp; Some fine bold wood-cuts had been
+produced by their joint efforts; but these less important
+occupations had of late been set aside by the engrossing interest
+of the interior fittings of the great &ldquo;Dome Kirk,&rdquo;
+which for nearly a century had been rising by the united
+exertions of the burghers, without any assistance from
+without.&nbsp; The foundation had been laid in 1377; and at
+length, in the year of grace 1472, the crown of the apse had been
+closed in, and matters were so forward that Master
+Gottfried&rsquo;s stall work was already in requisition for the
+choir.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Three cubits more,&rdquo; he reckoned.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Child, hast thou found me fruits enough for the completing
+of this border?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;O yes, mine uncle.&nbsp; I have the wild rosehip, and
+the flat shield of the moonwort, and a pea-pod, and more whose
+names I know not.&nbsp; But should they all be seed and
+fruit?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yea, truly, my Stina, for this wreath shall speak of
+the goodly fruits of a completed life.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Even as that which you carved in spring told of the
+blossom and fair promise of youth,&rdquo; returned the
+maiden.&nbsp; &ldquo;Methinks the one is the most beautiful, as
+it ought to be;&rdquo; then, after a little pause, and some
+reckoning, &ldquo;I have scarce seed-pods enough in store, uncle;
+might we not seek some rarer shapes in the herb-garden of Master
+Gerhard, the physician?&nbsp; He, too, might tell me the names of
+some of these.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;True, child; or we might ride into the country beyond
+the walls, and seek them.&nbsp; What, little one, wouldst thou
+not?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So we go not far,&rdquo; faltered Christina,
+colouring.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ha, thou hast not forgotten the fright thy companions
+had from the Schlangenwald reitern when gathering Maydew?&nbsp;
+Fear not, little coward; if we go beyond the suburbs we will take
+Hans and Peter with their halberts.&nbsp; But I believe thy silly
+little heart can scarce be free for enjoyment if it can fancy a
+Reiter within a dozen leagues of thee.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;At your side I would not fear.&nbsp; That is, I would
+not vex thee by my folly, and I might forget it,&rdquo; replied
+Christina, looking down.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My gentle child!&rdquo; the old man said
+approvingly.&nbsp; &ldquo;Moreover, if our good Raiser has his
+way, we shall soon be free of the reitern of Schlangenwald, and
+Adlerstein, and all the rest of the mouse-trap barons.&nbsp; He
+is hoping to form a league of us free imperial cities with all
+the more reasonable and honest nobles, to preserve the peace of
+the country.&nbsp; Even now a letter from him was read in the
+Town Hall to that effect; and, when all are united against them,
+my lords-mousers must needs become pledged to the league, or go
+down before it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah! that will be well,&rdquo; cried Christina.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Then will our wagons be no longer set upon at the
+Debateable Ford by Schlangenwald or Adlerstein; and our wares
+will come safely, and there will be wealth enough to raise our
+spire!&nbsp; O uncle, what a day of joy will that be when Our
+Lady&rsquo;s great statue will be set on the summit!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A day that I shall scarce see, and it will be well if
+thou dost,&rdquo; returned her uncle, &ldquo;unless the hearts of
+the burghers of Ulm return to the liberality of their fathers,
+who devised that spire!&nbsp; But what trampling do I
+hear?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There was indeed a sudden confusion in the house, and, before
+the uncle and niece could rise, the door was opened by a
+prosperous apple-faced dame, exclaiming in a hasty whisper,
+&ldquo;Housefather, O Housefather, there are a troop of reitern
+at the door, dismounting already;&rdquo; and, as the master came
+forward, brushing from his furred vest the shavings and dust of
+his work, she added in a more furtive, startled accent,
+&ldquo;and, if I mistake not, one is thy brother!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He is welcome,&rdquo; replied Master Gottfried, in his
+cheery fearless voice; &ldquo;he brought us a choice gift last
+time he came; and it may be he is ready to seek peace among us
+after his wanderings.&nbsp; Come hither, Christina, my little
+one; it is well to be abashed, but thou art not a child who need
+fear to meet a father.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Christina&rsquo;s extreme timidity, however, made her pale and
+crimson by turns, perhaps by the infection of anxiety from her
+aunt, who could not conceal a certain dissatisfaction and alarm,
+as the maiden, led on either side by her adopted parents, thus
+advanced from the little studio into a handsomely-carved wooden
+gallery, projecting into a great wainscoated room, with a broad
+carved stair leading down into it.&nbsp; Down this stair the
+three proceeded, and reached the stone hall that lay beyond it,
+just as there entered from the trellised porch, that covered the
+steps into the street, a thin wiry man, in a worn and greasy buff
+suit, guarded on the breast and arms with rusty steel, and a
+battered helmet with the vizor up, disclosing a weather-beaten
+bronzed face, with somewhat wild dark eyes, and a huge grizzled
+moustache forming a straight line over his lips.&nbsp; Altogether
+he was a complete model of the lawless Reiter or Lanzknecht, the
+terror of Swabia, and the bugbear of Christina&rsquo;s
+imagination.&nbsp; The poor child&rsquo;s heart died within her
+as she perceived the mutual recognition between her uncle and the
+new comer; and, while Master Gottfried held out his hands with a
+cordial greeting of &ldquo;Welcome, home, brother Hugh,&rdquo;
+she trembled from head to foot, as she sank on her knees, and
+murmured, &ldquo;Your blessing, honoured father.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ha?&nbsp; What, this is my girl?&nbsp; What says
+she?&nbsp; My blessing, eh?&nbsp; There then, thou hast it,
+child, such as I have to give, though they&rsquo;ll tell thee at
+Adlerstein that I am more wont to give the other sort of
+blessing!&nbsp; Now, give me a kiss, girl, and let me see
+thee!&nbsp; How now!&rdquo; as he folded her in his rough arms;
+&ldquo;thou art a mere feather, as slight as our sick Jungfrau
+herself.&rdquo;&nbsp; And then, regarding her, as she stood
+drooping, &ldquo;Thou art not half the woman thy mother
+was&mdash;she was stately and straight as a column, and tall
+withal.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;True!&rdquo; replied Hausfrau Johanna, in a marked
+tone; &ldquo;but both she and her poor babe had been so harassed
+and wasted with long journeys and hardships, that with all our
+care of our Christina, she has never been strong or
+well-grown.&nbsp; The marvel is that she lived at all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Our Christina is not beautiful, we know,&rdquo; added
+her uncle, reassuringly taking her hand; &ldquo;but she is a good
+and meek maiden.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, well,&rdquo; returned the Lanzknecht, &ldquo;she
+will answer the purpose well enough, or better than if she were
+fair enough to set all our fellows together by the ears for
+her.&nbsp; Camilla, I say&mdash;no, what&rsquo;s her name,
+Christina?&mdash;put up thy gear and be ready to start with me
+to-morrow morning for Adlerstein.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For Adlerstein?&rdquo; re-echoed the housemother, in a
+tone of horrified dismay; and Christina would have dropped on the
+floor but for her uncle&rsquo;s sustaining hand, and the cheering
+glance with which he met her imploring look.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Let us come up to the gallery, and understand what you
+desire, brother,&rdquo; said Master Gottfried, gravely.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Fill the cup of greeting, Hans.&nbsp; Your followers shall
+be entertained in the hall,&rdquo; he added.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ay, ay,&rdquo; quoth Hugh, &ldquo;I will show you
+reason over a goblet of the old Rosenburg.&nbsp; Is it all gone
+yet, brother Goetz?&nbsp; No?&nbsp; I reckon there would not be
+the scouring of a glass left of it in a week if it were at
+Adlerstein.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So saying, the trooper crossed the lower room, which contained
+a huge tiled baking oven, various brilliantly-burnished cooking
+utensils, and a great carved cupboard like a wooden bedstead,
+and, passing the door of the bathroom, clanked up the oaken
+stairs to the gallery, the reception-room of the house.&nbsp; It
+had tapestry hangings to the wall, and cushions both to the
+carved chairs and deep windows, which looked out into the street,
+the whole storey projecting into close proximity with the
+corresponding apartment of the Syndic Moritz, the goldsmith on
+the opposite side.&nbsp; An oaken table stood in the centre, and
+the gallery was adorned with a dresser, displaying not only
+bright pewter, but goblets and drinking cups of
+beautifully-shaped and coloured glass, and saltcellars, tankards,
+&amp;c. of gold and silver.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Just as it was in the old man&rsquo;s time,&rdquo; said
+the soldier, throwing himself into the housefather&rsquo;s
+chair.&nbsp; &ldquo;A handful of Lanzknechts would make short
+work with your pots and pans, good sister Johanna.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Heaven forbid!&rdquo; said poor Johanna under her
+breath.&nbsp; &ldquo;Much good they do you, up in a row there,
+making you a slave to furbishing them.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s more
+sense in a chair like this&mdash;that does rest a man&rsquo;s
+bones.&nbsp; Here, Camilla, girl, unlace my helmet!&nbsp; What,
+know&rsquo;st not how?&nbsp; What is a woman made for but to let
+a soldier free of his trappings?&nbsp; Thou hast done it!&nbsp;
+There!&nbsp; Now my boots,&rdquo; stretching out his legs.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hans shall draw off your boots, fair brother,&rdquo;
+began the dame; but poor Christina, the more anxious to
+propitiate him in little things, because of the horror and dread
+with which his main purpose inspired her, was already on her
+knees, pulling with her small quivering hands at the long
+steel-guarded boot&mdash;a task to which she would have been
+utterly inadequate, but for some lazy assistance from her
+father&rsquo;s other foot.&nbsp; She further brought a pair of
+her uncle&rsquo;s furred slippers, while Reiter Hugh proceeded to
+dangle one of the boots in the air, expatiating on its frail
+condition, and expressing his intention of getting a new pair
+from Master Matthias, the sutor, ere he should leave Ulm on the
+morrow.&nbsp; Then, again, came the dreaded subject; his daughter
+must go with him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What would you with Christina, brother?&rdquo; gravely
+asked Master Gottfried, seating himself on the opposite side of
+the stove, while out of sight the frightened girl herself knelt
+on the floor, her head on her aunt&rsquo;s knees, trying to
+derive comfort from Dame Johanna&rsquo;s clasping hands, and
+vehement murmurs that they would not let their child be taken
+from them.&nbsp; Alas! these assurances were little in accordance
+with Hugh&rsquo;s rough reply, &ldquo;And what is it to you what
+I do with mine own?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Only this, that, having bred her up as my child and
+intended heiress, I might have some voice.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh! in choosing her mate!&nbsp; Some mincing artificer,
+I trow, fiddling away with wood and wire to make gauds for the
+fair-day!&nbsp; Hast got him here?&nbsp; If I like him, and she
+likes him, I&rsquo;ll bring her back when her work is
+done.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There is no such person as yet in the case,&rdquo; said
+Gottfried.&nbsp; &ldquo;Christina is not yet seventeen, and I
+would take my time to find an honest, pious burgher, who will
+value this precious jewel of mine.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And let her polish his flagons to the end of her
+days,&rdquo; laughed Hugh grimly, but manifestly somewhat
+influenced by the notion of his brother&rsquo;s wealth.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;What, hast no child of thine own?&rdquo; he added.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;None, save in Paradise,&rdquo; answered Gottfried,
+crossing himself.&nbsp; &ldquo;And thus, if Christina should
+remain with me, and be such as I would have her, then, brother,
+my wealth, after myself and my good housewife, shall be hers,
+with due provision for thee, if thou shouldst weary of thy wild
+life.&nbsp; Otherwise,&rdquo; he added, looking down, and
+speaking in an under tone, &ldquo;my poor savings should go to
+the completion of the Dome Kirk.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And who told thee, Goetz, that I would do ought with
+the girl that should hinder her from being the very same fat,
+sourkrout-cooking, pewter-scrubbing housewife of thy mind&rsquo;s
+eye?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have heard nothing of thy designs as yet, brother
+Hugh, save that thou wouldst take her to Adlerstein, which men
+greatly belie if it be not a nest of robbers.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Aha! thou hast heard of Adlerstein!&nbsp; We have made
+the backs of your jolly merchants tingle as well as they could
+through their well-lined doublets!&nbsp; Ulm knows of Adlerstein,
+and the Debateable Ford!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It knows little to its credit,&rdquo; said Gottfried,
+gravely; &ldquo;and it knows also that the Emperor is about to
+make a combination against all the Swabian robber-holds, and that
+such as join not in it will fare the worse.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Let Kaiser Fritz catch his bear ere he sells its
+hide!&nbsp; He has never tried to mount the Eagle&rsquo;s
+Ladder!&nbsp; Why, man, Adlerstein might be held against five
+hundred men by sister Johanna with her rock and spindle!&nbsp;
+&rsquo;Tis a free barony, Master Gottfried, I tell thee&mdash;has
+never sworn allegiance to Kaiser or Duke of Swabia either!&nbsp;
+Freiherr Eberhard is as much a king on his own rock as Kaiser
+Fritz ever was of the Romans, and more too, for I never could
+find out that they thought much of our king at Rome; and, as to
+gainsaying our old Freiherr, one might as well leap over the
+abyss at once.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, those old free barons are pitiless tyrants,&rdquo;
+said Gottfried, &ldquo;and I scarce think I can understand thee
+aright when I hear thee say thou wouldst carry thy daughter to
+such an abode.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is the Freiherr&rsquo;s command,&rdquo; returned
+Hugh.&nbsp; &ldquo;Look you, they have had wondrous ill-luck with
+their children; the Freiherrinn Kunigunde has had a dozen at
+least, and only two are alive, my young Freiherr and my young
+Lady Ermentrude; and no wonder, you would say, if you could see
+the gracious Freiherrinn, for surely Dame Holda made a blunder
+when she fished her out of the fountain woman instead of
+man.&nbsp; She is Adlerstein herself by birth, married her
+cousin, and is prouder and more dour than our old Freiherr
+himself&mdash;fitter far to handle shield than swaddled
+babe.&nbsp; And now our Jungfrau has fallen into a pining waste,
+that &rsquo;tis a pity to see how her cheeks have fallen away,
+and how she mopes and fades.&nbsp; Now, the old Freiherr and her
+brother, they both dote on her, and would do anything for
+her.&nbsp; They thought she was bewitched, so we took old Mother
+Ilsebill and tried her with the ordeal of water; but, look you,
+she sank as innocent as a puppy dog, and Ursel was at fault to
+fix on any one else.&nbsp; Then one day, when I looked into the
+chamber, I saw the poor maiden sitting, with her head hanging
+down, as if &rsquo;twas too heavy for her, on a high-backed
+chair, no rest for her feet, and the wind blowing keen all round
+her, and nothing to taste but scorched beef, or black bread and
+sour wine, and her mother rating her for foolish fancies that
+gave trouble.&nbsp; And, when my young Freiherr was bemoaning
+himself that we could not hear of a Jew physician passing our way
+to catch and bring up to cure her, I said to him at last that no
+doctor could do for her what gentle tendance and nursing would,
+for what the poor maiden needed was to be cosseted and laid down
+softly, and fed with broths and possets, and all that women know
+how to do with one another.&nbsp; A proper scowl and hard words I
+got from my gracious Lady, for wanting to put burgher softness
+into an Adlerstein; but my old lord and his son opened on the
+scent at once.&nbsp; &lsquo;Thou hast a daughter?&rsquo; quoth
+the Freiherr.&nbsp; &lsquo;So please your gracious
+lordship,&rsquo; quoth I; &lsquo;that is, if she still lives, for
+I left her a puny infant.&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Well,&rsquo; said
+my lord, &lsquo;if thou wilt bring her here, and her care
+restores my daughter to health and strength, then will I make
+thee my body squire, with a right to a fourth part of all the
+spoil, and feed for two horses in my stable.&rsquo;&nbsp; And
+young Freiherr Eberhard gave his word upon it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Gottfried suggested that a sick nurse was the person required
+rather than a child like Christina; but, as Hugh truly observed,
+no nurse would voluntarily go to Adlerstein, and it was no use to
+wait for the hopes of capturing one by raid or foray.&nbsp; His
+daughter was at his own disposal, and her services would be
+repaid by personal advantages to himself which he was not
+disposed to forego; in effect these were the only means that the
+baron had of requiting any attendance upon his daughter.</p>
+<p>The citizens of old Germany had the strongest and most
+stringent ideas of parental authority, and regarded daughters as
+absolute chattels of their father; and Master Gottfried Sorel,
+though he alone had done the part of a parent to his niece, felt
+entirely unable to withstand the nearer claim, except by
+representations; and these fell utterly disregarded, as in truth
+every counsel had hitherto done, upon the ears of Reiter Hugh,
+ever since he had emerged from his swaddling clothes.&nbsp; The
+plentiful supper, full cup of wine, the confections, the soft
+chair, together perhaps with his brother&rsquo;s grave speech,
+soon, however, had the effect of sending him into a doze, whence
+he started to accept civilly the proposal of being installed in
+the stranger&rsquo;s room, where he was speedily snoring between
+two feather beds.</p>
+<p>Then there could be freedom of speech in the gallery, where
+the uncle and aunt held anxious counsel over the poor little
+dark-tressed head that still lay upon good Johanna&rsquo;s
+knees.&nbsp; The dame was indignant and resolute: &ldquo;Take the
+child back with him into a very nest of robbers!&mdash;her own
+innocent dove whom they had shielded from all evil like a very
+nun in a cloister!&nbsp; She should as soon think of yielding her
+up to be borne off by the great Satan himself with his horns and
+hoofs.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hugh is her father, housewife,&rdquo; said the
+master-carver.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The right of parents is with those that have done the
+duty of parents,&rdquo; returned Johanna.&nbsp; &ldquo;What said
+the kid in the fable to the goat that claimed her from the sheep
+that bred her up?&nbsp; I am ashamed of you, housefather, for not
+better loving your own niece.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Heaven knows how I love her,&rdquo; said Gottfried, as
+the sweet face was raised up to him with a look acquitting him of
+the charge, and he bent to smooth back the silken hair, and kiss
+the ivory brow; &ldquo;but Heaven also knows that I see no means
+of withholding her from one whose claim is closer than my
+own&mdash;none save one; and to that even thou, housemother,
+wouldst not have me resort.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; asked the dame, sharply, yet with
+some fear.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To denounce him to the burgomasters as one of the
+Adlerstein retainers who robbed Philipp der Schmidt, and have him
+fast laid by the heels.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Christina shuddered, and Dame Johanna herself recoiled; but
+presently exclaimed, &ldquo;Nay, you could not do that, good man,
+but wherefore not threaten him therewith?&nbsp; Stand at his
+bedside in early dawn, and tell him that, if he be not off ere
+daylight with both his cut-throats, the halberdiers will be upon
+him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Threaten what I neither could nor would perform,
+mother?&nbsp; That were a shrewish resource.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yet would it save the child,&rdquo; muttered
+Johanna.&nbsp; But, in the meantime, Christina was rising from
+the floor, and stood before them with loose hair, tearful eyes,
+and wet, flushed cheeks.&nbsp; &ldquo;It must be thus,&rdquo; she
+said, in a low, but not unsteady voice.&nbsp; &ldquo;I can bear
+it better since I have heard of the poor young lady, sick and
+with none to care for her.&nbsp; I will go with my father; it is
+my duty.&nbsp; I will do my best; but oh! uncle, so work with him
+that he may bring me back again.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This from thee, Stina!&rdquo; exclaimed her aunt;
+&ldquo;from thee who art sick for fear of a
+lanzknecht!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The saints will be with me, and you will pray for
+me,&rdquo; said Christina, still trembling.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I tell thee, child, thou knowst not what these vile
+dens are.&nbsp; Heaven forfend thou shouldst!&rdquo; exclaimed
+her aunt.&nbsp; &ldquo;Go only to Father Balthazar, housefather,
+and see if he doth not call it a sending of a lamb among
+wolves.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mind&rsquo;st thou the carving I did for Father
+Balthazar&rsquo;s own oratory?&rdquo; replied Master
+Gottfried.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I talk not of carving!&nbsp; I talk of our
+child!&rdquo; said the dame, petulantly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Ut agnus inter lupos</i>,&rdquo; softly said
+Gottfried, looking tenderly, though sadly, at his niece, who not
+only understood the quotation, but well remembered the carving of
+the cross-marked lamb going forth from its fold among the howling
+wolves.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Alas!&nbsp; I am not an apostle,&rdquo; said she.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, but, in the path of duty, &rsquo;tis the same hand
+that sends thee forth,&rdquo; answered her uncle, &ldquo;and the
+same will guard thee.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Duty, indeed!&rdquo; exclaimed Johanna.&nbsp; &ldquo;As
+if any duty could lead that silly helpless child among that herd
+of evil men, and women yet worse, with a good-for-nothing father,
+who would sell her for a good horse to the first dissolute Junker
+who fell in his way.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I will take care that he knows it is worth his while to
+restore her safe to us.&nbsp; Nor do I think so ill of Hugh as
+thou dost, mother.&nbsp; And, for the rest, Heaven and the saints
+and her own discretion must be her guard till she shall return to
+us.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How can Heaven be expected to protect her when you are
+flying in its face by not taking counsel with Father
+Balthazar?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That shalt thou do,&rdquo; replied Gottfried, readily,
+secure that Father Balthazar would see the matter in the same
+light as himself, and tranquillize the good woman.&nbsp; It was
+not yet so late but that a servant could be despatched with a
+request that Father Balthazar, who lived not many houses off in
+the same street, would favour the Burgomeisterinn Sorel by coming
+to speak with her.&nbsp; In a few minutes he appeared,&mdash;an
+aged man, with a sensible face, of the fresh pure bloom preserved
+by a temperate life.&nbsp; He was a secular parish-priest, and,
+as well as his friend Master Gottfried, held greatly by the views
+left by the famous Strasburg preacher, Master John Tauler.&nbsp;
+After the good housemother had, in strong terms, laid the case
+before him, she expected a trenchant decision on her own side,
+but, to her surprise and disappointment, he declared that Master
+Gottfried was right, and that, unless Hugh Sorel demanded
+anything absolutely sinful of his daughter, it was needful that
+she should submit.&nbsp; He repeated, in stronger terms, the
+assurance that she would be protected in the endeavour to do
+right, and the Divine promises which he quoted from the Latin
+Scriptures gave some comfort to the niece, who understood them,
+while they impressed the aunt, who did not.&nbsp; There was
+always the hope that, whether the young lady died or recovered,
+the conclusion of her illness would be the term of
+Christina&rsquo;s stay at Adlerstein, and with this trust Johanna
+must content herself.&nbsp; The priest took leave, after
+appointing with Christina to meet her in the confessional early
+in the morning before mass; and half the night was spent by the
+aunt and niece in preparing Christina&rsquo;s wardrobe for her
+sudden journey.</p>
+<p>Many a tear was shed over the tokens of the little services
+she was wont to render, her half-done works, and pleasant studies
+so suddenly broken off, and all the time Hausfrau Johanna was
+running on with a lecture on the diligent preservation of her
+maiden discretion, with plentiful warnings against swaggering
+men-at-arms, drunken lanzknechts, and, above all, against young
+barons, who most assuredly could mean no good by any burgher
+maiden.&nbsp; The good aunt blessed the saints that her Stina was
+likely only to be lovely in affectionate home eyes; but, for that
+matter, idle men, shut up in a castle, with nothing but mischief
+to think of, would be dangerous to Little Three Eyes herself, and
+Christina had best never stir a yard from her lady&rsquo;s chair,
+when forced to meet them.&nbsp; All this was interspersed with
+motherly advice how to treat the sick lady, and receipts for
+cordials and possets; for Johanna began to regard the case as a
+sort of second-hand one of her own.&nbsp; Nay, she even turned it
+over in her mind whether she should not offer herself as the Lady
+Ermentrude&rsquo;s sick-nurse, as being a less dangerous
+commodity than her little niece: but fears for the well-being of
+the master-carver, and his Wirthschaft, and still more the notion
+of gossip Gertrude Grundt hearing that she had ridden off with a
+wild lanzknecht, made her at once reject the plan, without even
+mentioning it to her husband or his niece.</p>
+<p>By the time Hugh Sorel rolled out from between his feather
+beds, and was about to don his greasy buff, a handsome new suit,
+finished point device, and a pair of huge boots to correspond,
+had been laid by his bedside.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ho, ho!&nbsp; Master Goetz,&rdquo; said he, as he
+stumbled into the Stube, &ldquo;I see thy game.&nbsp; Thou
+wouldst make it worth my while to visit the father-house at
+Ulm?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It shall be worth thy while, indeed, if thou bringest
+me back my white dove,&rdquo; was Gottfried&rsquo;s answer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And how if I bring her back with a strapping reiter
+son-in-law?&rdquo; laughed Hugh.&nbsp; &ldquo;What welcome should
+the fellow receive?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That would depend on what he might be,&rdquo; replied
+Gottfried; and Hugh, his love of tormenting a little allayed by
+satisfaction in his buff suit, and by an eye to a heavy purse
+that lay by his brother&rsquo;s hand on the table, added,
+&ldquo;Little fear of that.&nbsp; Our fellows would look for
+lustier brides than yon little pale face.&nbsp; &rsquo;Tis whiter
+than ever this morning,&mdash;but no tears.&nbsp; That is my
+brave girl.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, father, I am ready to do your bidding,&rdquo;
+replied Christina, meekly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That is well, child.&nbsp; Mark me, no tears.&nbsp; Thy
+mother wept day and night, and, when she had wept out her tears,
+she was sullen, when I would have been friendly towards
+her.&nbsp; It was the worse for her.&nbsp; But, so long as thou
+art good daughter to me, thou shalt find me good father to
+thee;&rdquo; and for a moment there was a kindliness in his eye
+which made it sufficiently like that of his brother to give some
+consolation to the shrinking heart that he was rending from all
+it loved; and she steadied her voice for another gentle
+profession of obedience, for which she felt strengthened by the
+morning&rsquo;s orisons.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well said, child.&nbsp; Now canst sit on old
+Nibelung&rsquo;s croup?&nbsp; His back-bone is somewhat sharper
+than if he had battened in a citizen&rsquo;s stall; but, if thine
+aunt can find thee some sort of pillion, I&rsquo;ll promise thee
+the best ride thou hast had since we came from Innspruck, ere
+thou canst remember.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Christina has her own mule,&rdquo; replied her uncle,
+&ldquo;without troubling Nibelung to carry double.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ho! her own!&nbsp; An overfed burgomaster sort of a
+beast, that will turn restive at the first sight of the
+Eagle&rsquo;s Ladder!&nbsp; However, he may carry her so far,
+and, if we cannot get him up the mountain, I shall know what to
+do with him,&rdquo; he muttered to himself.</p>
+<p>But Hugh, like many a gentleman after him, was recusant at the
+sight of his daughter&rsquo;s luggage; and yet it only loaded one
+sumpter mule, besides forming a few bundles which could be easily
+bestowed upon the saddles of his two knappen, while her lute hung
+by a silken string on her arm.&nbsp; Both she and her aunt
+thought she had been extremely moderate; but his cry was, What
+could she want with so much?&nbsp; Her mother had never been
+allowed more than would go into a pair of saddle-bags; and his
+own Jungfrau&mdash;she had never seen so much gear together in
+her life; he would be laughed to scorn for his presumption in
+bringing such a fine lady into the castle; it would be well if
+Freiherr Eberhard&rsquo;s bride brought half as much.</p>
+<p>Still he had a certain pride in it&mdash;he was, after all, by
+birth and breeding a burgher&mdash;and there had been evidently a
+softening and civilizing influence in the night spent beneath his
+paternal roof, and old habits, and perhaps likewise in the
+submission he had met with from his daughter.&nbsp; The
+attendants, too, who had been pleased with their quarters,
+readily undertook to carry their share of the burthen, and,
+though he growled and muttered a little, he at length was won
+over to consent, chiefly, as it seemed, by Christina&rsquo;s
+obliging readiness to leave behind the bundle that contained her
+holiday kirtle.</p>
+<p>He had been spared all needless irritation.&nbsp; Before his
+waking, Christina had been at the priest&rsquo;s cell, and had
+received his last blessings and counsels, and she had, on the way
+back, exchanged her farewells and tears with her two dearest
+friends, Barbara Schmidt, and Regina Grundt, confiding to the
+former her cage of doves, and to the latter the myrtle, which,
+like every German maiden, she cherished in her window, to supply
+her future bridal wreath.&nbsp; Now pale as death, but so
+resolutely composed as to be almost disappointing to her
+demonstrative aunt, she quietly went through her home partings;
+while Hausfrau Johanna adjured her father by all that was sacred
+to be a true guardian and protector of the child, and he could
+not forbear from a few tormenting auguries about the lanzknecht
+son-in-law.&nbsp; Their effect was to make the good dame more
+passionate in her embraces and admonitions to Christina to take
+care of herself.&nbsp; She would have a mass said every day that
+Heaven might have a care of her!</p>
+<p>Master Gottfried was going to ride as far as the confines of
+the free city&rsquo;s territory, and his round, sleek,
+cream-coloured palfrey, used to ambling in civic processions, was
+as great a contrast to raw-boned, wild-eyed Nibelung, all dappled
+with misty grey, as was the stately, substantial burgher to his
+lean, hungry-looking brother, or Dame Johanna&rsquo;s dignified,
+curled, white poodle, which was forcibly withheld from following
+Christina, to the coarse-bristled, wolfish-looking hound who
+glared at the household pet with angry and contemptuous eyes, and
+made poor Christina&rsquo;s heart throb with terror whenever it
+bounded near her.</p>
+<p>Close to her uncle she kept, as beneath the trellised porches
+that came down from the projecting gables of the burghers&rsquo;
+houses many a well-known face gazed and nodded, as they took
+their way through the crooked streets, many a beggar or poor
+widow waved her a blessing.&nbsp; Out into the market-place, with
+its clear fountain adorned with arches and statues, past the
+rising Dome Kirk, where the swarms of workmen unbonneted to the
+master-carver, and the reiter paused with an irreverent sneer at
+the small progress made since he could first remember the
+building.&nbsp; How poor little Christina&rsquo;s soul clung to
+every cusp of the lacework spire, every arch of the window, each
+of which she had hailed as an achievement!&nbsp; The tears had
+well-nigh blinded her in a gush of feeling that came on her
+unawares, and her mule had his own way as he carried her under
+the arch of the tall and beautifully-sculptured bridge tower, and
+over the noble bridge across the Danube.</p>
+<p>Her uncle spoke much, low and earnestly, to his brother.&nbsp;
+She knew it was in commendation of her to his care, and an
+endeavour to impress him with a sense of the kind of protection
+she would require, and she kept out of earshot.&nbsp; It was
+enough for her to see her uncle still, and feel that his
+tenderness was with her, and around her.&nbsp; But at last he
+drew his rein.&nbsp; &ldquo;And now, my little one, the daughter
+of my heart, I must bid thee farewell,&rdquo; he said.</p>
+<p>Christina could not be restrained from springing from her
+mule, and kneeling on the grass to receive his blessing, her face
+hidden in her hands, that her father might not see her tears.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The good God bless thee, my child,&rdquo; said
+Gottfried, who seldom invoked the saints; &ldquo;bless thee, and
+bring thee back in His own good time.&nbsp; Thou hast been a good
+child to us; be so to thine own father.&nbsp; Do thy work, and
+come back to us again.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The tears rained down his cheeks, as Christina&rsquo;s head
+lay on his bosom, and then with a last kiss he lifted her again
+on her mule, mounted his horse, and turned back to the city, with
+his servant.</p>
+<p>Hugh was merciful enough to let his daughter gaze long after
+the retreating figure ere he summoned her on.&nbsp; All day they
+rode, at first through meadow lands and then through more broken,
+open ground, where at mid-day they halted, and dined upon the
+plentiful fare with which the housemother had provided them, over
+which Hugh smacked his lips, and owned that they did live well in
+the old town!&nbsp; Could Christina make such sausages?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not as well as my aunt.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, do thy best, and thou wilt win favour with the
+baron.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The evening began to advance, and Christina was very weary, as
+the purple mountains that she had long watched with a mixture of
+fear and hope began to look more distinct, and the ground was
+often in abrupt ascents.&nbsp; Her father, without giving space
+for complaints, hurried her on.&nbsp; He must reach the
+Debateable Ford ere dark.&nbsp; It was, however, twilight when
+they came to an open space, where, at the foot of thickly
+forest-clad rising ground, lay an expanse of turf and rich grass,
+through which a stream made its way, standing in a wide tranquil
+pool as if to rest after its rough course from the
+mountains.&nbsp; Above rose, like a dark wall, crag upon crag,
+peak on peak, in purple masses, blending with the sky; and Hugh,
+pointing upwards to a turreted point, apparently close above
+their heads, where a star of light was burning, told her that
+there was Adlerstein, and this was the Debateable Ford.</p>
+<p>In fact, as he explained, while splashing through the shallow
+expanse, the stream had changed its course.&nbsp; It was the
+boundary between the lands of Schlangenwald and Adlerstein, but
+it had within the last sixty years burst forth in a flood, and
+had then declined to return to its own bed, but had flowed in a
+fresh channel to the right of the former one.&nbsp; The
+Freiherren von Adlerstein claimed the ground to the old channel,
+the Graffen von Schlangenwald held that the river was the
+landmark; and the dispute had a greater importance than seemed
+explained from the worth of the rushy space of ground in
+question, for this was the passage of the Italian merchants on
+their way from Constance, and every load that was overthrown in
+the river was regarded as the lawful prey of the noble on whose
+banks the catastrophe befell.</p>
+<p>Any freight of goods was anxiously watched by both nobles, and
+it was not their fault if no disaster befell the
+travellers.&nbsp; Hugh talked of the Schlangenwald marauders with
+the bitterness of a deadly feud, but manifestly did not breathe
+freely till his whole convoy were safe across both the wet and
+the dry channel.</p>
+<p>Christina supposed they should now ascend to the castle; but
+her father laughed, saying that the castle was not such a step
+off as she fancied, and that they must have daylight for the
+Eagle&rsquo;s Stairs.&nbsp; He led the way through the trees, up
+ground that she thought mountain already, and finally arrived at
+a miserable little hut, which served the purpose of an inn.</p>
+<p>He was received there with much obsequiousness, and was
+plainly a great authority there.&nbsp; Christina, weary and
+frightened, descended from her mule, and was put under the
+protection of a wild, rough-looking peasant woman, who stared at
+her like something from another world, but at length showed her a
+nook behind a mud partition, where she could spread her mantle,
+and at least lie down, and tell her beads unseen, if she could
+not sleep in the stifling, smoky atmosphere, amid the sounds of
+carousal among her father and his fellows.</p>
+<p>The great hound came up and smelt to her.&nbsp; His outline
+was so-wolfish, that she had nearly screamed: but, more in terror
+at the men who might have helped her than even at the beast, she
+tried to smooth him with her trembling hand, whispered his name
+of &ldquo;Festhold,&rdquo; and found him licking her hand, and
+wagging his long rough tail.&nbsp; And he finally lay down at her
+feet, as though to protect her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is it a sign that good angels will not let me be
+hurt?&rdquo; she thought, and, wearied out, she slept.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER II<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE EYRIE</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Christina Sorel</span> awoke to a scene
+most unlike that which had been wont to meet her eyes in her own
+little wainscoted chamber high in the gabled front of her
+uncle&rsquo;s house.&nbsp; It was a time when the imperial free
+towns of Germany had advanced nearly as far as those of Italy in
+civilization, and had reached a point whence they retrograded
+grievously during the Thirty Years&rsquo; War, even to an extent
+that they have never entirely recovered.&nbsp; The country
+immediately around them shared the benefits of their
+civilization, and the free peasant-proprietors lived in great
+ease and prosperity, in beautiful and picturesque farmsteads,
+enjoying a careless abundance, and keeping numerous rural or
+religious feasts, where old Teutonic mythological observances had
+received a Christian colouring and adaptation.</p>
+<p>In the mountains, or around the castles, it was usually very
+different.&nbsp; The elective constitution of the empire, the
+frequent change of dynasty, the many disputed successions, had
+combined to render the sovereign authority uncertain and feeble,
+and it was seldom really felt save in the hereditary dominions of
+the Kaiser for the time being.&nbsp; Thus, while the cities
+advanced in the power of self-government, and the education it
+conveyed, the nobles, especially those whose abodes were not
+easily accessible, were often practically under no government at
+all, and felt themselves accountable to no man.&nbsp; The old
+wild freedom of the Suevi, and other Teutonic tribes, still
+technically, and in many cases practically, existed.&nbsp; The
+Heretogen, Heerzogen, or, as we call them, Dukes, had indeed
+accepted employment from the Kaiser as his generals, and had
+received rewards from him; the Gerefen, or Graffen, of all kinds
+were his judges, the titles of both being proofs of their holding
+commissions from, and being thus dependent on, the court.&nbsp;
+But the Freiherren, a word very inadequately represented by our
+French term of baron, were absolutely free, &ldquo;never in
+bondage to any man,&rdquo; holding their own, and owing no duty,
+no office; poorer, because unendowed by the royal authority, but
+holding themselves infinitely higher, than the pensioners of the
+court.&nbsp; Left behind, however, by their neighbours, who did
+their part by society, and advanced with it, the Freiherren had
+been for the most part obliged to give up their independence and
+fall into the system, but so far in the rear, that they ranked,
+like the barons of France and England, as the last order of
+nobility.</p>
+<p>Still, however, in the wilder and more mountainous parts of
+the country, some of the old families of unreduced, truly free
+Freiherren lingered, their hand against every man, every
+man&rsquo;s hand against them, and ever becoming more savage,
+both positively and still more proportionately, as their
+isolation and the general progress around them became
+greater.&nbsp; The House of Austria, by gradually absorbing
+hereditary states into its own possessions, was, however, in the
+fifteenth century, acquiring a preponderance that rendered its
+possession of the imperial throne almost a matter of inheritance,
+and moreover rendered the supreme power far more effective than
+it had ever previously been.&nbsp; Freidrich III. a man still in
+full vigour, and with an able and enterprising son already
+elected to the succession, was making his rule felt, and it was
+fast becoming apparent that the days of the independent baronies
+were numbered, and that the only choice that would soon be left
+them would be between making terms and being forcibly
+reduced.&nbsp; Von Adlerstein was one of the oldest of these free
+families.&nbsp; If the lords of the Eagle&rsquo;s Stone had ever
+followed the great Konrads and Freidrichs of Swabia in their
+imperial days, their descendants had taken care to forget the
+weakness, and believed themselves absolutely free from all
+allegiance.</p>
+<p>And the wildness of their territory was what might be expected
+from their hostility to all outward influences.&nbsp; The hostel,
+if it deserved the name, was little more than a
+charcoal-burner&rsquo;s hut, hidden in the woods at the foot of
+the mountain, serving as a halting-place for the
+Freiherren&rsquo;s retainers ere they attempted the ascent.&nbsp;
+The inhabitants were allowed to ply their trade of charring wood
+in the forest on condition of supplying the castle with charcoal,
+and of affording a lodging to the followers on occasions like the
+present.</p>
+<p>Grimy, half-clad, and brawny, with the whites of his eyes
+gleaming out of his black face, Jobst the Kohler startled
+Christina terribly when she came into the outer room, and met him
+returning from his night&rsquo;s work, with his long stoking-pole
+in his hand.&nbsp; Her father shouted with laughter at her
+alarm.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thou thinkest thyself in the land of the kobolds and
+dwarfs, my girl!&nbsp; Never mind, thou wilt see worse than
+honest Jobst before thou hast done.&nbsp; Now, eat a morsel and
+be ready&mdash;mountain air will make thee hungry ere thou art at
+the castle.&nbsp; And, hark thee, Jobst, thou must give
+stable-room to yon sumpter-mule for the present, and let some of
+my daughter&rsquo;s gear lie in the shed.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;O father!&rdquo; exclaimed Christina, in dismay.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll bring it up, child, by piecemeal,&rdquo; he
+said in a low voice, &ldquo;as we can; but if such a freight came
+to the castle at once, my lady would have her claws on it, and
+little more wouldst thou ever see thereof.&nbsp; Moreover, I
+shall have enough to do to look after thee up the ascent, without
+another of these city-bred beasts.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I hope the poor mule will be well cared for.&nbsp; I
+can pay for&mdash;&rdquo; began Christina; but her father
+squeezed her arm, and drowned her soft voice in his loud
+tones.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Jobst will take care of the beast, as belonging to
+me.&nbsp; Woe betide him, if I find it the
+worse!&rdquo;&mdash;and his added imprecations seemed
+unnecessary, so earnest were the asseverations of both the man
+and his wife that the animal should be well cared for.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Look you, Christina,&rdquo; said Hugh Sorel, as soon as
+he had placed her on her mule, and led her out of hearing,
+&ldquo;if thou hast any gold about thee, let it be the last thing
+thou ownest to any living creature up there.&rdquo;&nbsp; Then,
+as she was about to speak&mdash;&ldquo;Do not even tell me.&nbsp;
+I <i>will</i> not know.&rdquo;&nbsp; The caution did not add much
+to Christina&rsquo;s comfort; but she presently asked,
+&ldquo;Where is thy steed, father?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I sent him up to the castle with the Schneiderlein and
+Yellow Lorentz,&rdquo; answered the father.&nbsp; &ldquo;I shall
+have ado enough on foot with thee before we are up the
+Ladder.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The father and daughter were meantime proceeding along a dark
+path through oak and birch woods, constantly ascending, until the
+oak grew stunted and disappeared, and the opening glades showed
+steep, stony, torrent-furrowed ramparts of hillside above them,
+looking to Christina&rsquo;s eyes as if she were set to climb up
+the cathedral side like a snail or a fly.&nbsp; She quite gasped
+for breath at the very sight, and was told in return to wait and
+see what she would yet say to the Adlerstreppe, or Eagle&rsquo;s
+Ladder.&nbsp; Poor child! she had no raptures for romantic
+scenery; she knew that jagged peaks made very pretty backgrounds
+in illuminations, but she had much rather have been in the smooth
+meadows of the environs of Ulm.&nbsp; The Danube looked much more
+agreeable to her, silver-winding between its green banks, than
+did the same waters leaping down with noisy voices in their
+stony, worn beds to feed the river that she only knew in his
+grave breadth and majesty.&nbsp; Yet, alarmed as she was, there
+was something in the exhilaration and elasticity of the mountain
+air that gave her an entirely new sensation of enjoyment and
+life, and seemed to brace her limbs and spirits for whatever
+might be before her; and, willing to show herself ready to be
+gratified, she observed on the freshness and sweetness of the
+air.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thou find&rsquo;st it out, child?&nbsp; Ay, &rsquo;tis
+worth all the feather-beds and pouncet-boxes in Ulm; is it
+not?&nbsp; That accursed Italian fever never left me till I came
+up here.&nbsp; A man can scarce draw breath in your foggy meadows
+below there.&nbsp; Now then, here is the view open.&nbsp; What
+think you of the Eagle&rsquo;s Nest?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For, having passed beyond the region of wood they had come
+forth upon the mountain-side.&nbsp; A not immoderately steep
+slope of boggy, mossy-looking ground covered with bilberries,
+cranberries, &amp;c. and with bare rocks here and there rising,
+went away above out of her ken; but the path she was upon turned
+round the shoulder of the mountain, and to the left, on a ledge
+of rock cut off apparently on their side by a deep ravine, and
+with a sheer precipice above and below it, stood a red stone
+pile, with one turret far above the rest.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And this is Schloss Adlerstein?&rdquo; she
+exclaimed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That is Schloss Adlerstein; and there shalt thou be in
+two hours&rsquo; time, unless the devil be more than usually
+busy, or thou mak&rsquo;st a fool of thyself.&nbsp; If so, not
+Satan himself could save thee.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was well that Christina had resolution to prevent her
+making a fool of herself on the spot, for the thought of the
+pathway turned her so dizzy that she could only shut her eyes,
+trusting that her father did not see her terror.&nbsp; Soon the
+turn round to the side of the mountain was made, and the road
+became a mere track worn out on the turf on the hillside, with an
+abyss beneath, close to the edge of which the mule, of course,
+walked.</p>
+<p>When she ventured to look again, she perceived that the ravine
+was like an enormous crack open on the mountain-side, and that
+the stream that formed the Debateable Ford flowed down the bottom
+of it.&nbsp; The ravine itself went probably all the way up the
+mountain, growing shallower as it ascended higher; but here,
+where Christina beheld it, it was extremely deep, and savagely
+desolate and bare.&nbsp; She now saw that the Eagle&rsquo;s
+Ladder was a succession of bare gigantic terraces of rock, of
+which the opposite side of the ravine was composed, and on one of
+which stood the castle.&nbsp; It was no small mystery to her how
+it had ever been built, or how she was ever to get there.&nbsp;
+She saw in the opening of the ravine the green meadows and woods
+far below; and, when her father pointed out to her the Debateable
+Ford, apparently much nearer to the castle than they themselves
+were at present, she asked why they had so far overpassed the
+castle, and come by this circuitous course.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Because,&rdquo; said Hugh, &ldquo;we are not eagles
+outright.&nbsp; Seest thou not, just beyond the castle court,
+this whole crag of ours breaks off short, falls like the town
+wall straight down into the plain?&nbsp; Even this cleft that we
+are crossing by, the only road a horse can pass, breaks off short
+and sudden too, so that the river is obliged to take leaps which
+nought else but a chamois could compass.&nbsp; A footpath there
+is, and Freiherr Eberhard takes it at all times, being born to
+it; but even I am too stiff for the like.&nbsp; Ha! ha!&nbsp; Thy
+uncle may talk of the Kaiser and his League, but he would change
+his note if we had him here.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yet castles have been taken by hunger,&rdquo; said
+Christina.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What, knowest thou so much?&mdash;True!&nbsp; But look
+you,&rdquo; pointing to a white foamy thread that descended the
+opposite steeps, &ldquo;yonder beck dashes through the castle
+court, and it never dries; and see you the ledge the castle
+stands on?&nbsp; It winds on out of your sight, and forms a path
+which leads to the village of Adlerstein, out on the other slope
+of the mountains; and ill were it for the serfs if they
+victualled not the castle well.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The fearful steepness of the ground absorbed all
+Christina&rsquo;s attention.&nbsp; The road, or rather stairs,
+came down to the stream at the bottom of the fissure, and then
+went again on the other side up still more tremendous steeps,
+which Hugh climbed with a staff, sometimes with his hand on the
+bridle, but more often only keeping a watchful eye on the
+sure-footed mule, and an arm to steady his daughter in the saddle
+when she grew absolutely faint with giddiness at the abyss around
+her.&nbsp; She was too much in awe of him to utter cry or
+complaint, and, when he saw her effort to subdue her mortal
+terror, he was far from unkind, and let her feel his protecting
+strength.</p>
+<p>Presently a voice was heard above&mdash;&ldquo;What, Sorel,
+hast brought her!&nbsp; Trudchen is wearying for her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The words were in the most boorish dialect and pronunciation,
+the stranger to Christina&rsquo;s ears, because intercourse with
+foreign merchants, and a growing affectation of Latinism, had
+much refined the city language to which she was accustomed; and
+she was surprised to perceive by her father&rsquo;s gesture and
+address that the speaker must be one of the lords of the
+castle.&nbsp; She looked up, and saw on the pathway above her a
+tall, large-framed young man, his skin dyed red with sun and
+wind, in odd contrast with his pale shaggy hair, moustache, and
+beard, as though the weather had tanned the one and bleached the
+other.&nbsp; His dress was a still shabbier buff suit than her
+father had worn, but with a richly-embroidered belt sustaining a
+hunting-horn with finely-chased ornaments of tarnished silver,
+and an eagle&rsquo;s plume was fastened into his cap with a large
+gold Italian coin.&nbsp; He stared hard at the maiden, but
+vouchsafed her no token of greeting&mdash;only distressed her
+considerably by distracting her father&rsquo;s attention from her
+mule by his questions about the journey, all in the same rude,
+coarse tone and phraseology.&nbsp; Some amount of illusion was
+dispelled.&nbsp; Christina was quite prepared to find the
+mountain lords dangerous ruffians, but she had expected the
+graces of courtesy and high birth; but, though there was
+certainly an air of command and freedom of bearing about the
+present specimen, his manners and speech were more uncouth than
+those of any newly-caught apprentice of her uncle, and she could
+not help thinking that her good aunt Johanna need not have
+troubled herself about the danger of her taking a liking to any
+such young Freiherr as she here beheld.</p>
+<p>By this time a last effort of the mule had climbed to the
+level of the castle.&nbsp; As her father had shown her, there was
+precipice on two sides of the building; on the third, a sheer
+wall of rock going up to a huge height before it reached another
+of the Eagle&rsquo;s Steps; and on the fourth, where the gateway
+was, the little beck had been made to flow in a deep channel that
+had been hollowed out to serve as a moat, before it bounded down
+to swell the larger water-course in the ravine.&nbsp; A temporary
+bridge had been laid across; the drawbridge was out of order, and
+part of Hugh&rsquo;s business had been to procure materials for
+mending its apparatus.&nbsp; Christina was told to dismount and
+cross on foot.&nbsp; The unrailed board, so close to the abyss,
+and with the wild water foaming above and below, was dreadful to
+her; and, though she durst not speak, she hung back with an
+involuntary shudder, as her father, occupied with the mule, did
+not think of giving her a hand.&nbsp; The young baron burst out
+into an unrestrained laugh&mdash;a still greater shock to her
+feelings; but at the same time he roughly took her hand, and
+almost dragged her across, saying, &ldquo;City bred&mdash;ho,
+ho!&rdquo;&nbsp; &ldquo;Thanks, sir,&rdquo; she strove to say,
+but she was very near weeping with the terror and strangeness of
+all around.</p>
+<p>The low-browed gateway, barely high enough to admit a man on
+horseback, opened before her, almost to her feelings like the
+gate of the grave, and she could not help crossing herself, with
+a silent prayer for protection, as she stepped under it, and came
+into the castle court&mdash;not such a court as gave its name to
+fair courtesy, but, if truth must be told, far more resembling an
+ill-kept, ill-savoured stable-yard, with the piggeries opening
+into it.&nbsp; In unpleasantly close quarters, the Schneiderlein,
+or little tailor, <i>i.e.</i> the biggest and fiercest of all the
+knappen, was grooming Nibelung; three long-backed, long-legged,
+frightful swine were grubbing in a heap of refuse; four or five
+gaunt ferocious-looking dogs came bounding up to greet their
+comrade Festhold; and a great old long-bearded goat stood on the
+top of the mixen, looking much disposed to butt at any
+newcomer.&nbsp; The Sorel family had brought cleanliness from
+Flanders, and Hausfrau Johanna was scrupulously dainty in all her
+appointments.&nbsp; Christina scarcely knew how she conveyed
+herself and her blue kirtle across the bemired stones to the next
+and still darker portal, under which a wide but rough ill-hewn
+stair ascended.&nbsp; The stables, in fact, occupied the lower
+floor of the main building, and not till these stairs had
+ascended above them did they lead out into the castle hall.&nbsp;
+Here were voices&mdash;voices rude and harsh, like those
+Christina had shrunk from in passing drinking booths.&nbsp; There
+was a long table, with rough men-at-arms lounging about, and
+staring rudely at her; and at the upper end, by a great open
+chimney, sat, half-dozing, an elderly man, more rugged in feature
+than his son; and yet, when he roused himself and spoke to Hugh,
+there was a shade more of breeding, and less of clownishness in
+his voice and deportment, as if he had been less entirely devoid
+of training.&nbsp; A tall darkly-robed woman stood beside
+him&mdash;it was her harsh tone of reproof and command that had
+so startled Christina as she entered&mdash;and her huge towering
+cap made her look gigantic in the dim light of the smoky
+hall.&nbsp; Her features had been handsome, but had become
+hardened into a grim wooden aspect; and with sinking spirits
+Christina paused at the step of the da&iuml;s, and made her
+reverence, wishing she could sink beneath the stones of the
+pavement out of sight of these terrible personages.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So that&rsquo;s the wench you have taken all this
+trouble for,&rdquo; was Freiherrinn Kunigunde&rsquo;s
+greeting.&nbsp; &ldquo;She looks like another sick baby to nurse;
+but I&rsquo;ll have no trouble about her;&mdash;that is
+all.&nbsp; Take her up to Ermentrude; and thou, girl, have a care
+thou dost her will, and puttest none of thy city fancies into her
+head.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And hark thee, girl,&rdquo; added the old Freiherr,
+sitting up.&nbsp; &ldquo;So thou canst nurse her well, thou shalt
+have a new gown and a stout husband.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That way,&rdquo; pointed the lady towards one of the
+four corner towers; and Christina moved doubtfully towards it,
+reluctant to quit her father, her only protector, and afraid to
+introduce herself.&nbsp; The younger Freiherr, however, stepped
+before her, went striding two or three steps at a time up the
+turret stair, and, before Christina had wound her way up, she
+heard a thin, impatient voice say, &ldquo;Thou saidst she was
+come, Ebbo.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, even so,&rdquo; she heard Freiherr Eberhard
+return; &ldquo;but she is slow and town-bred.&nbsp; She was
+afraid of crossing the moat.&rdquo;&nbsp; And then both laughed,
+so that Christina&rsquo;s cheeks tingled as she emerged from the
+turret into another vaulted room.&nbsp; &ldquo;Here she
+is,&rdquo; quoth the brother; &ldquo;now will she make thee quite
+well.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was a very bare and desolate room, with no hangings to the
+rough stone walls, and scarcely any furniture, except a great
+carved bedstead, one wooden chair, a table, and some
+stools.&nbsp; On the bare floor, in front of the fire, her arm
+under her head, and a profusion of long hair falling round her
+like flax from a distaff, lay wearily a little figure, beside
+whom Sir Eberhard was kneeling on one knee.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Here is my sisterling,&rdquo; said he, looking up to
+the newcomer.&nbsp; &ldquo;They say you burgher women have ways
+of healing the sick.&nbsp; Look at her.&nbsp; Think you you can
+heal her?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In an excess of dumb shyness Ermentrude half rose, and
+effectually hindered any observations on her looks by hiding her
+face away upon her brother&rsquo;s knee.&nbsp; It was the gesture
+of a child of five years old, but Ermentrude&rsquo;s length of
+limb forbade Christina to suppose her less than fourteen or
+fifteen.&nbsp; &ldquo;What, wilt not look at her?&rdquo; he said,
+trying to raise her head; and then, holding out one of her
+wasted, feverish hands to Christina, he again asked, with a
+wistfulness that had a strange effect from the large, tall man,
+almost ten years her elder, &ldquo;Canst thou cure her,
+maiden?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am no doctor, sir,&rdquo; replied Christina;
+&ldquo;but I could, at least, make her more comfortable.&nbsp;
+The stone is too hard for her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I will not go away; I want the fire,&rdquo; murmured
+the sick girl, holding out her hands towards it, and
+shivering.</p>
+<p>Christina quickly took off her own thick cloth mantle, well
+lined with dressed lambskins, laid it on the floor, rolled the
+collar of it over a small log of wood&mdash;the only substitute
+she could see for a pillow&mdash;and showed an inviting couch in
+an instant.&nbsp; Ermentrude let her brother lay her down, and
+then was covered with the ample fold.&nbsp; She smiled as she
+turned up her thin, wasted face, faded into the same whitey-brown
+tint as her hair.&nbsp; &ldquo;That is good,&rdquo; she said, but
+without thanks; and, feeling the soft lambswool: &ldquo;Is that
+what you burgher-women wear?&nbsp; Father is to give me a furred
+mantle, if only some court dame would pass the Debateable
+Ford.&nbsp; But the Schlangenwaldern got the last before ever we
+could get down.&nbsp; Jobst was so stupid.&nbsp; He did not give
+us warning in time; but he is to be hanged next time if he does
+not.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Christina&rsquo;s blood curdled as she heard this speech in a
+weak little complaining tone, that otherwise put her sadly in
+mind of Barbara Schmidt&rsquo;s little sister, who had pined and
+wasted to death.&nbsp; &ldquo;Never mind, Trudchen,&rdquo;
+answered the brother kindly; &ldquo;meantime I have kept all the
+wild catskins for thee, and may be
+this&mdash;this&mdash;<i>she</i> could sew them up into a mantle
+for thee.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;O let me see,&rdquo; cried the young lady eagerly; and
+Sir Eberhard, walking off, presently returned with an armful of
+the beautiful brindled furs of the mountain cat, reminding
+Christina of her aunt&rsquo;s gentle domestic favourite.&nbsp;
+Ermentrude sat up, and regarded the placing out of them with
+great interest; and thus her brother left her employed, and so
+much delighted that she had not flagged, when a great bell
+proclaimed that it was the time for the noontide meal, for which
+Christina, in spite of all her fears of the company below stairs,
+had been constrained by mountain air to look forward with
+satisfaction.</p>
+<p>Ermentrude, she found, meant to go down, but with no notion of
+the personal arrangements that Christina had been wont to think a
+needful preliminary.&nbsp; With all her hair streaming, down she
+went, and was so gladly welcomed by her father that it was plain
+that her presence was regarded as an unusual advance towards
+recovery, and Christina feared lest he might already be looking
+out for the stout husband.&nbsp; She had much to tell him about
+the catskin cloak, and then she was seized with eager curiosity
+at the sight of Christina&rsquo;s bundles, and especially at her
+lute, which she must hear at once.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not now,&rdquo; said her mother, &ldquo;there will be
+jangling and jingling enough by and by&mdash;meat now.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The whole establishment were taking their places&mdash;or
+rather tumbling into them.&nbsp; A battered, shapeless metal
+vessel seemed to represent the salt-cellar, and next to it Hugh
+Sorel seated himself, and kept a place for her beside him.&nbsp;
+Otherwise she would hardly have had seat or food.&rsquo; She was
+now able to survey the inmates of the castle.&nbsp; Besides the
+family themselves, there were about a dozen men, all
+ruffianly-looking, and of much lower grade than her father, and
+three women.&nbsp; One, old Ursel, the wife of Hatto the
+forester, was a bent, worn, but not ill-looking woman, with a
+motherly face; the younger ones were hard, bold creatures, from
+whom Christina felt a shrinking recoil.&nbsp; The meal was
+dressed by Ursel and her kitchen boy.&nbsp; From a great
+cauldron, goat&rsquo;s flesh and broth together were ladled out
+into wooden bowls.&nbsp; That every one provided their own spoon
+and knife&mdash;no fork&mdash;was only what Christina was used to
+in the most refined society, and she had the implements in a
+pouch hanging to her girdle; but she was not prepared for the
+unwashed condition of the bowls, nor for being obliged to share
+that of her father&mdash;far less for the absence of all blessing
+on the meal, and the coarse boisterousness of manners prevailing
+thereat.&nbsp; Hungry as she was, she did not find it easy to
+take food under these circumstances, and she was relieved when
+Ermentrude, overcome by the turmoil, grew giddy, and was carried
+upstairs by her father, who laid her down upon her great bed, and
+left her to the attendance of Christina.&nbsp; Ursel had
+followed, but was petulantly repulsed by her young lady in favour
+of the newcomer, and went away grumbling.</p>
+<p>Nestled on her bed, Ermentrude insisted on hearing the lute,
+and Christina had to creep down to fetch it, with some other of
+her goods, in trembling haste, and redoubled disgust at the
+aspect of the meal, which looked even more repulsive in this
+later stage, and to one who was no longer partaking of it.</p>
+<p>Low and softly, with a voice whence she could scarcely banish
+tears, and in dread of attracting attention, Christina sung to
+the sick girl, who listened with a sort of rude wonder, and
+finally was lulled to sleep.&nbsp; Christina ventured to lay down
+her instrument and move towards the window, heavily mullioned
+with stone, barred with iron, and glazed with thick glass; being
+in fact the only glazed window in the castle.&nbsp; To her great
+satisfaction it did not look out over the loathsome court, but
+over the opening of the ravine.&nbsp; The apartment occupied the
+whole floor of the keep; it was stone-paved, but the roof was
+boarded, and there was a round turret at each angle.&nbsp; One
+contained the staircase, and was that which ran up above the
+keep, served as a watch-tower, and supported the Eagle
+banner.&nbsp; The other three were empty, and one of these, which
+had a strong door, and a long loophole window looking out over
+the open country, Christina hoped that she might
+appropriate.&nbsp; The turret was immediately over the
+perpendicular cliff that descended into the plain.&nbsp; A stone
+thrown from the window would have gone straight down, she knew
+not where.&nbsp; Close to her ears rushed the descending
+waterfall in its leap over the rock side, and her eyes could rest
+themselves on the green meadow land below, and the smooth water
+of the Debateable Ford; nay&mdash;far, far away beyond retreating
+ridges of wood and field&mdash;she thought she could track a
+silver line and, guided by it, a something that might be a
+city.&nbsp; Her heart leapt towards it, but she was recalled by
+Ermentrude&rsquo;s fretfully imperious voice.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was only looking forth from the window, lady,&rdquo;
+she said, returning.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah! thou saw&rsquo;st no travellers at the Ford?&rdquo;
+cried Ermentrude, starting up with lively interest.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, lady; I was gazing at the far distance.&nbsp; Know
+you if it be indeed Ulm that we see from these
+windows?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ulm?&nbsp; That is where thou comest from?&rdquo; said
+Ermentrude languidly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My happy home, with my dear uncle and aunt!&nbsp; O, if
+I can but see it hence, it will be joy!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I do not know.&nbsp; Let me see,&rdquo; said
+Ermentrude, rising; but at the window her pale blue eyes gazed
+vacantly as if she did not know what she was looking at or
+for.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah! if the steeple of the Dome Kirk were but finished,
+I could not mistake it,&rdquo; said Christina.&nbsp; &ldquo;How
+beauteous the white spire will look from hence!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Dome Kirk?&rdquo; repeated Ermentrude; &ldquo;what is
+that?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Such an entire blank as the poor child&rsquo;s mind seemed to
+be was inconceivable to the maiden, who had been bred up in the
+busy hum of men, where the constant resort of strange merchants,
+the daily interests of a self-governing municipality, and the
+numerous festivals, both secular and religious, were an
+unconscious education, even without that which had been bestowed
+upon her by teachers, as well as by her companionship with her
+uncle, and participation in his studies, taste and arts.</p>
+<p>Ermentrude von Adlerstein had, on the contrary, not only never
+gone beyond the Kohler&rsquo;s hut on the one side, and the
+mountain village on the other, but she never seen more of life
+than the festival at the wake the hermitage chapel there on
+Midsummer-day.&nbsp; The only strangers who ever came to the
+castle were disbanded lanzknechts who took service with her
+father, or now and then a captive whom he put to ransom.&nbsp;
+She knew absolutely nothing of the world, except for a general
+belief that Freiherren lived there to do what they chose with
+other people, and that the House of Adlerstein was the freest and
+noblest in existence.&nbsp; Also there was a very positive hatred
+to the house of Schlangenwald, and no less to that of Adlerstein
+Wildschloss, for no reason that Christina could discover save
+that, being a younger branch of the family, they had submitted to
+the Emperor.&nbsp; To destroy either the Graf von Schlangenwald,
+or her Wildschloss cousin, was evidently the highest
+gratification Ermentrude could conceive; and, for the rest, that
+her father and brother should make successful captures at the
+Debateable Ford was the more abiding, because more practicable
+hope.&nbsp; She had no further ideas, except perhaps to elude her
+mother&rsquo;s severity, and to desire her brother&rsquo;s
+success in chamois-hunting.&nbsp; The only mental culture she had
+ever received was that old Ursel had taught her the Credo, Pater
+Noster, and Ave, as correctly as might be expected from a long
+course of traditionary repetitions of an incomprehensible
+language.&nbsp; And she knew besides a few German rhymes and
+jingles, half Christian, half heathen, with a legend or two
+which, if the names were Christian, ran grossly wild from all
+Christian meaning or morality.&nbsp; As to the amenities, nay,
+almost the proprieties, of life, they were less known in that
+baronial castle than in any artisan&rsquo;s house at Ulm.&nbsp;
+So little had the sick girl figured them to herself, that she did
+not even desire any greater means of ease than she
+possessed.&nbsp; She moaned and fretted indeed, with aching limbs
+and blank weariness, but without the slightest formed desire for
+anything to remove her discomfort, except the few ameliorations
+she knew, such as sitting on her brother&rsquo;s knee, with her
+head on his shoulder, or tasting the mountain berries that he
+gathered for her.&nbsp; Any other desire she exerted herself to
+frame was for finery to be gained from the spoils of
+travellers.</p>
+<p>And this was Christina&rsquo;s charge, whom she must look upon
+as the least alien spirit in this dreadful castle of
+banishment!&nbsp; The young and old lords seemed to her savage
+bandits, who frightened her only less than did the proud sinister
+expression of the old lady, for she had not even the merit of
+showing any tenderness towards the sickly girl, of whom she was
+ashamed, and evidently regarded the town-bred attendant as a
+contemptible interloper.</p>
+<p>Long, long did the maiden weep and pray that night after
+Ermentrude had sunk to sleep.&nbsp; She strained her eyes with
+home-sick longings to detect lights where she thought Ulm might
+be; and, as she thought of her uncle and aunt, the poodle and the
+cat round the stove, the maids spinning and the prentices
+knitting as her uncle read aloud some grave good book, most
+probably the legend of the saint of the day, and contrasted it
+with the rude gruff sounds of revelry that found their way up the
+turret stairs, she could hardly restrain her sobs from awakening
+the young lady whose bed she was to share.&nbsp; She thought
+almost with envy of her own patroness, who was cast into the lake
+of Bolsena with a millstone about her neck&mdash;a better fate,
+thought she, than to live on in such an abode of loathsomeness
+and peril.</p>
+<p>But then had not St. Christina floated up alive, bearing up
+her millstone with her?&nbsp; And had not she been put into a
+dungeon full of venomous reptiles who, when they approached her,
+had all been changed to harmless doves?&nbsp; Christina had once
+asked Father Balthazar how this could be; and had he not replied
+that the Church did not teach these miracles as matters of faith,
+but that she might there discern in figure how meek Christian
+holiness rose above all crushing burthens, and transformed the
+rudest natures.&nbsp; This poor maiden-dying, perhaps; and oh!
+how unfit to live or die!&mdash;might it be her part to do some
+good work by her, and infuse some Christian hope, some godly
+fear?&nbsp; Could it be for this that the saints had led her
+hither?</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER III<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE FLOTSAM AND JETSAM OF THE DEBATEABLE
+FORD</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Life</span> in Schloss Adlerstein was
+little less intolerable than Christina&rsquo;s imagination had
+depicted it.&nbsp; It was entirely devoid of all the graces of
+chivalry, and its squalor and coarseness, magnified into
+absurdity by haughtiness and violence, were almost
+inconceivable.&nbsp; Fortunately for her, the inmates of the
+castle resided almost wholly below stairs in the hall and
+kitchen, and in some dismal dens in the thickness of their
+walls.&nbsp; The height of the keep was intended for dignity and
+defence, rather than for habitation; and the upper chamber, with
+its great state-bed, where everybody of the house of Adlerstein
+was born and died, was not otherwise used, except when
+Ermentrude, unable to bear the oppressive confusion below stairs,
+had escaped thither for quietness&rsquo; sake.&nbsp; No one else
+wished to inhabit it.&nbsp; The chamber above was filled with the
+various appliances for the defence of the castle; and no one
+would have ever gone up the turret stairs had not a warder been
+usually kept on the roof to watch the roads leading to the
+Ford.&nbsp; Otherwise the Adlersteiners had all the savage
+instinct of herding together in as small a space as possible.</p>
+<p>Freiherrin Kunigunde hardly ever mounted to her
+daughter&rsquo;s chamber.&nbsp; All her affection was centred on
+the strong and manly son, of whom she was proud, while the sickly
+pining girl, who would hardly find a mate of her own rank, and
+who had not even dowry enough for a convent, was such a shame and
+burthen to her as to be almost a distasteful object.&nbsp; But
+perversely, as it seemed to her, the only daughter was the
+darling of both father and brother, who were ready to do anything
+to gratify the girl&rsquo;s sick fancies, and hailed with delight
+her pleasure in her new attendant.&nbsp; Old Ursel was at first
+rather envious and contemptuous of the childish, fragile
+stranger, but her gentleness disarmed the old <a
+name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 37</span>woman; and,
+when it was plain that the young lady&rsquo;s sufferings were
+greatly lessened by tender care, dislike gave way to attachment,
+and there was little more murmuring at the menial services that
+were needed by the two maidens, even when Ermentrude&rsquo;s
+feeble fancies, or Christina&rsquo;s views of dainty propriety,
+rendered them more onerous than before.&nbsp; She was even heard
+to rejoice that some Christian care and tenderness had at last
+reached her poor neglected child.</p>
+<p>It was well for Christina that she had such an ally.&nbsp; The
+poor child never crept down stairs to the dinner or supper, to
+fetch food for Ermentrude, or water for herself, without a
+trembling and shrinking of heart and nerves.&nbsp; Her
+father&rsquo;s authority guarded her from rude actions, but from
+rough tongues he neither could nor would guard her, nor
+understand that what to some would have been a compliment seemed
+to her an alarming insult; and her chief safeguard lay in her own
+insignificance and want of attraction, and still more in the
+modesty that concealed her terror at rude jests sufficiently to
+prevent frightening her from becoming an entertainment.</p>
+<p>Her father, whom she looked on as a cultivated person in
+comparison with the rest of the world, did his best for her after
+his own views, and gradually brought her all the properties she
+had left at the Kohler&rsquo;s hut.&nbsp; Therewith she made a
+great difference in the aspect of the chamber, under the full
+sanction of the lords of the castle.&nbsp; Wolf, deer, and sheep
+skins abounded; and with these, assisted by her father and old
+Hatto, she tapestried the lower part of the bare grim walls, a
+great bear&rsquo;s hide covered the neighbourhood of the hearth,
+and cushions were made of these skins, and stuffed from
+Ursel&rsquo;s stores of feathers.&nbsp; All these embellishments
+were watched with great delight by Ermentrude, who had never been
+made of so much importance, and was as much surprised as relieved
+by such attentions.&nbsp; She was too young and too delicate to
+reject civilization, and she let Christina braid her hair, bathe
+her, and arrange her dress, with sensations of comfort that were
+almost like health.&nbsp; To train her into occupying herself was
+however, as Christina soon found, in her present state,
+impossible.&nbsp; She could spin and sew a little, but hated
+both; and her clumsy, listless fingers only soiled and wasted
+Christina&rsquo;s needles, silk, and lute strings, and such
+damage was not so easily remedied as in the streets of Ulm.&nbsp;
+She was best provided for when looking on at her
+attendant&rsquo;s busy hands, and asking to be sung to, or to
+hear tales of the active, busy scenes of the city life&mdash;the
+dresses, fairs, festivals, and guild processions.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/fpb.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"&ldquo;She was too young and too delicate to reject
+civilization, and she let Christina braid her hair, bathe her,
+and arrange her dress, with sensations of comfort that were
+almost like health.&rdquo;&mdash;Page 37"
+title=
+"&ldquo;She was too young and too delicate to reject
+civilization, and she let Christina braid her hair, bathe her,
+and arrange her dress, with sensations of comfort that were
+almost like health.&rdquo;&mdash;Page 37"
+src="images/fps.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>The gentle nursing and the new interests made her improve in
+health, so that her father was delighted, and Christina began to
+hope for a return home.&nbsp; Sometimes the two girls would take
+the air, either, on still days, upon the battlements, where
+Ermentrude watched the Debateable Ford, and Christina gazed at
+the Danube and at Ulm; or they would find their way to a grassy
+nook on the mountain-side, where Christina gathered gentians and
+saxifrage, trying to teach her young lady that they were worth
+looking at, and sighing at the thought of Master
+Gottfried&rsquo;s wreath when she met with the asphodel
+seed-vessels.&nbsp; Once the quiet mule was brought into
+requisition; and, with her brother walking by her, and Sorel and
+his daughter in attendance, Ermentrude rode towards the village
+of Adlerstein.&nbsp; It was a collection of miserable huts, on a
+sheltered slope towards the south, where there was earth enough
+to grow some wretched rye and buckwheat, subject to severe toll
+from the lord of the soil.&nbsp; Perched on a hollow rock above
+the slope was a rude little church, over a cave where a hermit
+had once lived and died in such odour of sanctity that, his day
+happening to coincide with that of St. John the Baptist, the
+Blessed Freidmund had acquired the credit of the lion&rsquo;s
+share both of the saint&rsquo;s honours and of the old solstitial
+feast of Midsummer.&nbsp; This wake was the one gaiety of the
+year, and attracted a fair which was the sole occasion of coming
+honestly by anything from the outer world; nor had his cell ever
+lacked a professional anchorite.</p>
+<p>The Freiherr of his day had been a devout man, who had gone a
+pilgrimage with Kaiser Friedrich of the Red Beard, and had
+brought home a bit of stone from the council chamber of
+Nic&aelig;a, which he had presented to the little church that he
+had built over the cavern.&nbsp; He had named his son Friedmund;
+and there were dim memories of his days as of a golden age,
+before the Wildschlossen had carried off the best of the
+property, and when all went well.</p>
+<p>This was Christina&rsquo;s first sight of a church since her
+arrival, except that in the chapel, which was a dismal neglected
+vault, where a ruinous altar and mouldering crucifix testified to
+its sacred purpose.&nbsp; The old baron had been excommunicated
+for twenty years, ever since he had harried the wains of the
+Bishop of Augsburg on his way to the Diet; and, though his
+household and family were not under the same sentence,
+&ldquo;Sunday didna come abune the pass.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Christina&rsquo;s entreaty obtained permission to enter the
+little building, but she had knelt there only a few moments
+before her father came to hurry her away, and her supplications
+that he would some day take her to mass there were whistled down
+the wind; and indeed the hermit was a layman, and the church was
+only served on great festivals by a monk from the convent of St.
+Ruprecht, on the distant side of the mountain, which was further
+supposed to be in the Schlangenwald interest.&nbsp; Her best
+chance lay in infusing the desire into Ermentrude, who by
+watching her prayers and asking a few questions had begun to
+acquire a few clearer ideas.&nbsp; And what Ermentrude wished had
+always hitherto been acquiesced in by the two lords.</p>
+<p>The elder baron came little into Christina&rsquo;s way.&nbsp;
+He meant to be kind to her, but she was dreadfully afraid of him,
+and, when he came to visit his daughter, shrank out of his notice
+as much as possible, shuddering most of all at his attempts at
+civilities.&nbsp; His son she viewed as one of the thickwitted
+giants meant to be food for the heroism of good knights of
+romance.&nbsp; Except that he was fairly conversant with the use
+of weapons, and had occasionally ridden beyond the shadow of his
+own mountain, his range was quite as limited as his
+sister&rsquo;s; and he had an equal scorn for all beyond
+it.&nbsp; His unfailing kindness to his sister was however in his
+favour, and he always eagerly followed up any suggestion
+Christina made for her pleasure.</p>
+<p>Much of his time was spent on the child, whose chief nurse and
+playmate he had been throughout her malady; and when she showed
+him the stranger&rsquo;s arrangements, or repeated to him, in a
+wondering, blundering way, with constant appeals to her
+attendant, the new tales she had heard, he used to listen with a
+pleased awkward amazement at his little Ermentrude&rsquo;s
+astonishing cleverness, joined sometimes with real interest,
+which was evinced by his inquiries of Christina.&nbsp; He
+certainly did not admire the little, slight, pale bower-maiden,
+but he seemed to look upon her like some strange, almost uncanny,
+wise spirit out of some other sphere, and his manner towards her
+had none of the offensive freedom apparent in even the old
+man&rsquo;s patronage.&nbsp; It was, as Ermentrude once said,
+laughing, almost as if he feared that she might do something to
+him.</p>
+<p>Christina had expected to see a ruffian, and had found a boor;
+but she was to be convinced that the ruffian existed in
+him.&nbsp; Notice came up to the castle of a convoy of waggons,
+and all was excitement.&nbsp; Men-at-arms were mustered, horses
+led down the Eagle&rsquo;s Ladder, and an ambush prepared in the
+woods.&nbsp; The autumn rains were already swelling the floods,
+and the passage of the ford would be difficult enough to afford
+the assailants an easy prey.</p>
+<p>The Freiherrinn Kunigunde herself, and all the women of the
+castle, hurried into Ermentrude&rsquo;s room to enjoy the view
+from her window.&nbsp; The young lady herself was full of eager
+expectation, but she knew enough of her maiden to expect no
+sympathy from her, and loved her well enough not to bring down on
+her her mother&rsquo;s attention; so Christina crept into her
+turret, unable to withdraw her eyes from the sight, trembling,
+weeping, praying, longing for power to give a warning
+signal.&nbsp; Could they be her own townsmen stopped on the way
+to dear Ulm?</p>
+<p>She could see the waggons in mid-stream, the warriors on the
+bank; she heard the triumphant outcries of the mother and
+daughter in the outer room.&nbsp; She saw the overthrow, the
+struggle, the flight of a few scattered dark figures on the
+farther side, the drawing out of the goods on the nearer.&nbsp;
+Oh! were those leaping waves bearing down any good men&rsquo;s
+corpses to the Danube, slain, foully slain by her own father and
+this gang of robbers?</p>
+<p>She was glad that Ermentrude went down with her mother to
+watch the return of the victors.&nbsp; She crouched on the floor,
+sobbing, shuddering with grief and indignation, and telling her
+beads alike for murdered and murderers, till, after the sounds of
+welcome and exultation, she heard Sir Eberhard&rsquo;s heavy
+tread, as he carried his sister up stairs.&nbsp; Ermentrude went
+up at once to Christina.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;After all there was little for us!&rdquo; she
+said.&nbsp; &ldquo;It was only a wain of wine barrels; and now
+will the drunkards down stairs make good cheer.&nbsp; But Ebbo
+could only win for me this gold chain and medal which was round
+the old merchant&rsquo;s neck.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Was he slain?&rdquo; Christina asked with pale
+lips.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I only know I did not kill him,&rdquo; returned the
+baron; &ldquo;I had him down and got the prize, and that was
+enough for me.&nbsp; What the rest of the fellows may have done,
+I cannot say.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But he has brought thee something, Stina,&rdquo;
+continued Ermentrude.&nbsp; &ldquo;Show it to her,
+brother.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My father sends you this for your care of my
+sister,&rdquo; said Eberhard, holding out a brooch that had
+doubtless fastened the band of the unfortunate
+wine-merchant&rsquo;s bonnet.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thanks, sir; but, indeed, I may not take it,&rdquo;
+said Christina, turning crimson, and drawing back.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So!&rdquo; he exclaimed, in amaze; then bethinking
+himself,&mdash;&ldquo;They are no townsfolk of yours, but
+Constance cowards.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Take it, take it, Stina, or you will anger my
+father,&rdquo; added Ermentrude.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, lady, I thank the barons both, but it were sin in
+me,&rdquo; said Christina, with trembling voice.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Look you,&rdquo; said Eberhard; &ldquo;we have the full
+right&mdash;&rsquo;tis a seignorial right&mdash;to all the goods
+of every wayfarer that may be overthrown in our river&mdash;as I
+am a true knight!&rdquo; he added earnestly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A true knight!&rdquo; repeated Christina, pushed hard,
+and very indignant in all her terror.&nbsp; &ldquo;The true
+knight&rsquo;s part is to aid, not rob, the weak.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+And the dark eyes flashed a vivid light.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Christina!&rdquo; exclaimed Ermentrude in the extremity
+of her amazement, &ldquo;know you what you have said?&mdash;that
+Eberhard is no true knight!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He meanwhile stood silent, utterly taken by surprise, and
+letting his little sister fight his battles.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I cannot help it, Lady Ermentrude,&rdquo; said
+Christina, with trembling lips, and eyes filling with
+tears.&nbsp; &ldquo;You may drive me from the castle&mdash;I only
+long to be away from it; but I cannot stain my soul by saying
+that spoil and rapine are the deeds of a true knight.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My mother will beat you,&rdquo; cried Ermentrude,
+passionately, ready to fly to the head of the stairs; but her
+brother laid his hand upon her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Tush, Trudchen; keep thy tongue still, child!&nbsp;
+What does it hurt me?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And he turned on his heels and went down stairs.&nbsp;
+Christina crept into her turret, weeping bitterly and with many a
+wild thought.&nbsp; Would they visit her offence on her
+father?&nbsp; Would they turn them both out together?&nbsp; If
+so, would not her father hurl her down the rocks rather than
+return her to Ulm?&nbsp; Could she escape?&nbsp; Climb down the
+dizzy rocks, it might be, succour the merchant lying half dead on
+the meadows, protect and be protected, be once more among
+God-fearing Christians?&nbsp; And as she felt her helplessness,
+the selfish thoughts passed into a gush of tears for the murdered
+man, lying suffering there, and for his possible wife and
+children watching for him.&nbsp; Presently Ermentrude peeped
+in.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Stina, Stina, don&rsquo;t cry; I will not tell my
+mother!&nbsp; Come out, and finish my kerchief!&nbsp; Come
+out!&nbsp; No one shall beat you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That is not what I wept for, lady,&rdquo; said
+Christina.&nbsp; &ldquo;I do not think you would bring harm on
+me.&nbsp; But oh!&nbsp; I would I were at home!&nbsp; I grieve
+for the bloodshed that I must see and may not hinder, and for
+that poor merchant.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Ermentrude, &ldquo;you need not fear
+for him!&nbsp; I saw his own folk return and lift him up.&nbsp;
+But what is he to thee or to us?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am a burgher maid, lady,&rdquo; said Christina,
+recovering herself, and aware that it was of little use to bear
+testimony to such an auditor as poor little Ermentrude against
+the deeds of her own father and brother, which had in reality the
+sort of sanction Sir Eberhard had mentioned, much akin to those
+coast rights that were the temptation of wreckers.</p>
+<p>Still she could not but tremble at the thought of her speech,
+and went down to supper in greater trepidation than usual,
+dreading that she should be expected to thank the Freiherr for
+his gift.&nbsp; But, fortunately, manners were too rare at
+Adlerstein for any such omission to be remarkable, and the whole
+establishment was in a state of noisy triumph and merriment over
+the excellence of the French wine they had captured, so that she
+slipped into her seat unobserved.</p>
+<p>Every available drinking-horn and cup was full.&nbsp;
+Ermentrude was eagerly presented with draughts by both father and
+brother, and presently Sir Eberhard exclaimed, turning towards
+the shrinking Christina with a rough laugh, &ldquo;Maiden, I trow
+thou wilt not taste?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Christina shook her head, and framed a negative with her
+lips.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s this?&rdquo; asked her father, close to
+whom she sat.&nbsp; &ldquo;Is&rsquo;t a fast-day?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There was a pause.&nbsp; Many were present who regarded a
+fast-day much more than the lives or goods of their
+neighbours.&nbsp; Christina again shook her head.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No matter,&rdquo; said good-natured Sir Eberhard,
+evidently wishing to avert any ill consequence from her.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Tis only her loss.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The mirth went on rough and loud, and Christina felt this the
+worst of all the miserable meals she had partaken of in fear and
+trembling at this place of her captivity.&nbsp; Ermentrude, too,
+was soon in such a state of excitement, that not only was
+Christina&rsquo;s womanhood bitterly ashamed and grieved for her,
+but there was serious danger that she might at any moment break
+out with some allusion to her maiden&rsquo;s recusancy in her
+reply to Sir Eberhard.</p>
+<p>Presently however Ermentrude laid down her head and began to
+cry&mdash;violent headache had come on&mdash;and her brother took
+her in his arms to carry her up the stairs; but his potations had
+begun before hers, and his step was far from steady; he stumbled
+more than once on the steps, shook and frightened his sister, and
+set her down weeping petulantly.&nbsp; And then came a more
+terrible moment; his awe of Christina had passed away; he swore
+that she was a lovely maiden, with only too free a tongue, and
+that a kiss must be the seal of her pardon.</p>
+<p>A house full of intoxicated men, no living creature who would
+care to protect her, scarce even her father!&nbsp; But extremity
+of terror gave her strength.&nbsp; She spoke
+resolutely&mdash;&ldquo;Sir Eberhard, your sister is
+ill&mdash;you are in no state to be here.&nbsp; Go down at once,
+nor insult a free maiden.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Probably the low-toned softness of the voice, so utterly
+different from the shrill wrangling notes of all the other women
+he had known, took him by surprise.&nbsp; He was still sober
+enough to be subdued, almost cowed, by resistance of a
+description unlike all he had ever seen; his alarm at
+Christina&rsquo;s superior power returned in full force, he
+staggered to the stairs, Christina rushed after him, closed the
+heavy door with all her force, fastened it inside, and would have
+sunk down to weep but for Ermentrude&rsquo;s peevish wail of
+distress.</p>
+<p>Happily Ermentrude was still a child, and, neglected as she
+had been, she still had had no one to make her precocious in
+matters of this kind.&nbsp; She was quite willing to take
+Christina&rsquo;s view of the case, and not resent the exclusion
+of her brother; indeed, she was unwell enough to dread the
+loudness of his voice and rudeness of his revelry.</p>
+<p>So the door remained shut, and Christina&rsquo;s resolve was
+taken that she would so keep it while the wine lasted.&nbsp; And,
+indeed, Ermentrude had so much fever all that night and the next
+day that no going down could be thought of.&nbsp; Nobody came
+near the maidens but Ursel, and she described one continued orgie
+that made Christina shudder again with fear and disgust.&nbsp;
+Those below revelled without interval, except for sleep; and they
+took their sleep just where they happened to sink down, then
+returned again to the liquor.&nbsp; The old baroness repaired to
+the kitchen when the revelry went beyond even her bearing; but
+all the time the wine held out, the swine in the court were, as
+Ursel averred, better company than the men in the hall.&nbsp; Yet
+there might have been worse even than this; for old Ursel
+whispered that at the bottom of the stairs there was a
+trap-door.&nbsp; Did the maiden know what it covered?&nbsp; It
+was an oubliette.&nbsp; There was once a Strasburg armourer who
+had refused ransom, and talked of appealing to the Kaiser.&nbsp;
+He trod on that door and&mdash;Ursel pointed downwards.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;But since that time,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;my young lord
+has never brought home a prisoner.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>No wonder that all this time Christina cowered at the
+discordant sounds below, trembled, and prayed while she waited on
+her poor young charge, who tossed and moaned in fever and
+suffering.&nbsp; She was still far from recovered when the
+materials of the debauch failed, and the household began to
+return to its usual state.&nbsp; She was soon restlessly pining
+for her brother; and when her father came up to see her, received
+him with scant welcome, and entreaties for Ebbo.&nbsp; She knew
+she should be better if she might only sit on his knee, and lay
+her head on his shoulder.&nbsp; The old Freiherr offered to
+accommodate her; but she rejected him petulantly, and still
+called for Ebbo, till he went down, promising that her brother
+should come.</p>
+<p>With a fluttering heart Christina awaited the noble whom she
+had perhaps insulted, and whose advances had more certainly
+insulted her.&nbsp; Would he visit her with his anger, or return
+to that more offensive familiarity?&nbsp; She longed to flee out
+of sight, when, after a long interval, his heavy tread was heard;
+but she could not even take refuge in her turret, for Ermentrude
+was leaning against her.&nbsp; Somehow, the step was less assured
+than usual; he absolutely knocked at the door; and, when he came
+in, he acknowledged her by a slight inclination of the
+head.&nbsp; If she only had known it, this was the first time
+that head had ever been bent to any being, human or Divine; but
+all she did perceive was that Sir Eberhard was in neither of the
+moods she dreaded, only desperately shy and sheepish, and
+extremely ashamed, not indeed of his excess, which would have
+been, even to a much tamer German baron, only a happy accident,
+but of what had passed between himself and her.</p>
+<p>He was much grieved to perceive how much ground Ermentrude had
+lost, and gave himself up to fondling and comforting her; and in
+a few days more, in their common cares for the sister, Christina
+lost her newly-acquired horror of the brother, and could not but
+be grateful for his forbearance; while she was almost entertained
+by the increased awe of herself shown by this huge robber
+baron.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">SNOW-WREATHS WHEN &rsquo;TIS
+THAW</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Ermentrude</span> had by no means
+recovered the ground she had lost, before the winter set in; and
+blinding snow came drifting down day and night, rendering the
+whole view, above and below, one expanse of white, only broken by
+the peaks of rock which were too steep to sustain the snow.&nbsp;
+The waterfall lengthened its icicles daily, and the whole court
+was heaped with snow, up even to the top of the high steps to the
+hall; and thus, Christina was told, would it continue all the
+winter.&nbsp; What had previously seemed to her a strangely
+door-like window above the porch now became the only mode of
+egress, when the barons went out bear or wolf-hunting, or the
+younger took his crossbow and hound to provide the wild-fowl,
+which, under Christina&rsquo;s skilful hands, would tempt the
+feeble appetite of Ermentrude when she was utterly unable to
+touch the salted meats and sausages of the household.</p>
+<p>In spite of all endeavours to guard the windows and keep up
+the fire, the cold withered the poor child like a fading leaf,
+and she needed more and more of tenderness and amusement to
+distract her attention from her ailments.&nbsp; Christina&rsquo;s
+resources were unfailing.&nbsp; Out of the softer pine and birch
+woods provided for the fire, she carved a set of draughtsmen, and
+made a board by ruling squares on the end of a settle, and
+painting the alternate ones with a compound of oil and
+charcoal.&nbsp; Even the old Baron was delighted with this
+contrivance, and the pleasure it gave his daughter.&nbsp; He
+remembered playing at draughts in that portion of his youth which
+had been a shade more polished, and he felt as if the game were
+making Ermentrude more hike a lady.&nbsp; Christina was
+encouraged to proceed with a set of chessmen, and the shaping of
+their characteristic heads under her dexterous fingers was
+watched by Ermentrude like something magical.&nbsp; Indeed, the
+young lady entertained the belief that there was no limit to her
+attendant&rsquo;s knowledge or capacity.</p>
+<p>Truly there was a greater brightness and clearness beginning
+to dawn even upon poor little Ermentrude&rsquo;s own dull
+mind.&nbsp; She took more interest in everything: songs were not
+solely lullabies, but she cared to talk them over; tales to which
+she would once have been incapable of paying attention were
+eagerly sought after; and, above all, the spiritual vacancy that
+her mind had hitherto presented was beginning to be filled
+up.&nbsp; Christina had brought her own books&mdash;a library of
+extraordinary extent for a maiden of the fifteenth century, but
+which she owed to her uncle&rsquo;s connexion with the arts of
+wood-cutting and printing.&nbsp; A Vulgate from Dr.
+Faustus&rsquo;s own press, a mass book and breviary, Thomas
+&agrave; Kempis&rsquo;s <i>Imitation</i> and the <i>Nuremburg
+Chronicle</i> all in Latin, and the poetry of the gentle
+Minnesinger and bird lover, Walther von Vogelweide, in the
+vernacular: these were her stock, which Hausfrau Johanna had
+viewed as a foolish encumbrance, and Hugh Sorel would never have
+transported to the castle unless they had been so well concealed
+in Christina&rsquo;s kirtles that he had taken them for parts of
+her wardrobe.</p>
+<p>Most precious were they now, when, out of the reach of all
+teaching save her own, she had to infuse into the sinking
+girl&rsquo;s mind the great mysteries of life and death, that so
+she might not leave the world without more hope or faith than her
+heathen forefathers.&nbsp; For that Ermentrude would live
+Christina had never hoped, since that fleeting improvement had
+been cut short by the fever of the wine-cup; the look, voice, and
+tone had become so completely the same as those of Regina
+Grundt&rsquo;s little sister who had pined and died.&nbsp; She
+knew she could not cure, but she could, she felt she could,
+comfort, cheer, and soften, and she no longer repined at her
+enforced sojourn at Adlerstein.&nbsp; She heartily loved her
+charge, and could not bear to think how desolate Ermentrude would
+be without her.&nbsp; And now the poor girl had become responsive
+to her care.&nbsp; She was infinitely softened in manner, and
+treated her parents with forms of respect new to them; she had
+learnt even to thank old Ursel, dropped her imperious tone, and
+struggled with her petulance; and, towards her brother, the
+domineering, uncouth adherence was becoming real, tender
+affection; while the dependent, reverent love she bestowed upon
+Christina was touching and endearing in the extreme.</p>
+<p>Freiherr von Adlerstein saw the change, and congratulated
+himself on the effect of having a town-bred bower woman; nay,
+spoke of the advantage it would be to his daughter, if he could
+persuade himself to make the submission to the Kaiser which the
+late improvements decided on at the Diet were rendering more and
+more inevitable.&nbsp; <i>Now</i> how happy would be the winner
+of his gentle Ermentrude!</p>
+<p>Freiherrinn von Adlerstein thought the alteration the mere
+change from child to woman, and felt insulted by the supposition
+that any one might not have been proud to match with a daughter
+of Adlerstein, be she what she might.&nbsp; As to submission to
+the Kaiser, that was mere folly and weakness&mdash;kaisers,
+kings, dukes, and counts had broken their teeth against the rock
+of Adlerstein before now!&nbsp; What had come over her husband
+and her son to make them cravens?</p>
+<p>For Freiherr Eberhard was more strongly convinced than was his
+father of the untenableness of their present position.&nbsp; Hugh
+Sorel&rsquo;s reports of what he heard at Ulm had shown that the
+league that had been discussed at Regensburg was far more
+formidable than anything that had ever previously threatened
+Schloss Adlerstein, and that if the Graf von Schlangenwald joined
+in the coalition, there would be private malice to direct its
+efforts against the Adlerstein family.&nbsp; Feud-letters or
+challenges had been made unlawful for ten years, and was not
+Adlerstein at feud with the world?</p>
+<p>Nor did Eberhard look on the submission with the sullen rage
+and grief that his father felt in bringing himself to such a
+declension from the pride of his ancestors.&nbsp; What the young
+Baron heard up stairs was awakening in him a sense of the
+poorness and narrowness of his present life.&nbsp; Ermentrude
+never spared him what interested her; and, partly from her lips,
+partly through her appeals to her attendant, he had learnt that
+life had better things to offer than independence on these bare
+rocks, and that homage might open the way to higher and worthier
+exploits than preying upon overturned waggons.</p>
+<p>Dietrich of Berne and his two ancestors, whose lengthy legend
+Christina could sing in a low, soft recitative, were revelations
+to him of what she meant by a true knight&mdash;the lion in war,
+the lamb in peace; the quaint oft-repeated portraits, and still
+quainter cities, of the Chronicle, with her explanations and
+translations, opened his mind to aspirations for intercourse with
+his fellows, for an honourable name, and for esteem in its degree
+such as was paid to Sir Parzival, to Karl the Great, or to Rodolf
+of Hapsburgh, once a mountain lord like himself.&nbsp; Nay, as
+Ermentrude said, stroking his cheek, and smoothing the flaxen
+beard, that somehow had become much less rough and tangled than
+it used to be, &ldquo;Some day wilt thou be another Good Freiherr
+Eberhard, whom all the country-side loved, and who gave bread at
+the castle-gate to all that hungered.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Her brother believed nothing of her slow declension in
+strength, ascribing all the change he saw to the bitter cold, and
+seeing but little even of that alteration, though he spent many
+hours in her room, holding her in his arms, amusing her, or
+talking to her and to Christina.&nbsp; All Christina&rsquo;s fear
+of him was gone.&nbsp; As long as there was no liquor in the
+house, and he was his true self, she felt him to be a kind
+friend, bound to her by strong sympathy in the love and care for
+his sister.&nbsp; She could talk almost as freely before him as
+when alone with her young lady; and as Ermentrude&rsquo;s
+religious feelings grew stronger, and were freely expressed to
+him, surely his attention was not merely kindness and patience
+with the sufferer.</p>
+<p>The girl&rsquo;s soul ripened rapidly under the new influences
+during her bodily decay; and, as the days lengthened, and the
+stern hold of winter relaxed upon the mountains, Christina looked
+with strange admiration upon the expression that had dawned upon
+the features once so vacant and dull, and listened with the more
+depth of reverence to the sweet words of faith, hope and love,
+because she felt that a higher, deeper teaching than she could
+give must have come to mould the spirit for the new world to
+which it was hastening.</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Like an army defeated,<br />
+The snow had retreated,&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>out of the valley, whose rich green shone smiling round the
+pool into which the Debateable Ford spread.&nbsp; The waterfall
+had burst its icy bonds, and dashed down with redoubled voice,
+roaring rather than babbling.&nbsp; Blue and pink
+hepaticas&mdash;or, as Christina called them,
+liver-krauts&mdash;had pushed up their starry heads, and had even
+been gathered by Sir Eberhard, and laid on his sister&rsquo;s
+pillow.&nbsp; The dark peaks of rock came out all glistening with
+moisture, and the snow only retained possession of the deep
+hollows and crevices, into which however its retreat was far more
+graceful than when, in the city, it was trodden by horse and man,
+and soiled with smoke.</p>
+<p>Christina dreaded indeed that the roads should be open, but
+she could not love the snow; it spoke to her of dreariness,
+savagery, and captivity, and she watched the dwindling stripes
+with satisfaction, and hailed the fall of the petty avalanches
+from one Eagle&rsquo;s Step to another as her forefathers might
+have rejoiced in the defeat of the Frost giants.</p>
+<p>But Ermentrude had a love for the white sheet that lay
+covering a gorge running up from the ravine.&nbsp; She watched
+its diminution day by day with a fancy that she was melting away
+with it; and indeed it was on the very day that a succession of
+drifting showers had left the sheet alone, and separated it from
+the masses of white above, that it first fully dawned upon the
+rest of the family that, for the little daughter of the house,
+spring was only bringing languor and sinking instead of
+recovery.</p>
+<p>Then it was that Sir Eberhard first really listened to her
+entreaty that she might not die without a priest, and comforted
+her by passing his word to her that, if&mdash;he would not say
+when&mdash;the time drew near, he would bring her one of the
+priests who had only come from St. Ruprecht&rsquo;s cloister on
+great days, by a sort of sufferance, to say mass at the Blessed
+Friedmund&rsquo;s hermitage chapel.</p>
+<p>The time was slow in coming.&nbsp; Easter had passed with
+Ermentrude far too ill for Christina to make the effort she had
+intended of going to the church, even if she could get no escort
+but old Ursel&mdash;the sheet of snow had dwindled to a mere
+wreath&mdash;the ford looked blue in the sunshine&mdash;the
+cascade tinkled merrily down its rock&mdash;mountain primroses
+peeped out, when, as Father Norbert came forth from saying his
+ill-attended Pentecostal mass, and was parting with the infirm
+peasant hermit, a tall figure strode up the pass, and, as the
+villagers fell back to make way, stood before the startled
+priest, and said, in a voice choked with grief, &ldquo;Come with
+me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who needs me?&rdquo; began the astonished monk.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Follow him not, father!&rdquo; whispered the
+hermit.&nbsp; &ldquo;It is the young Freiherr.&mdash;Oh have
+mercy on him, gracious sir; he has done your noble lordships no
+wrong.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I mean him no ill,&rdquo; replied Eberhard, clearing
+his voice with difficulty; &ldquo;I would but have him do his
+office.&nbsp; Art thou afraid, priest?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who needs my office?&rdquo; demanded Father
+Norbert.&nbsp; &ldquo;Show me fit cause, and what should I
+dread?&nbsp; Wherefore dost thou seek me?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For my sister,&rdquo; replied Eberhard, his voice
+thickening again.&nbsp; &ldquo;My little sister lies at the point
+of death, and I have sworn to her that a priest she shall
+have.&nbsp; Wilt thou come, or shall I drag thee down the
+pass?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I come, I come with all my heart, sir knight,&rdquo;
+was the ready response.&nbsp; &ldquo;A few moments and I am at
+your bidding.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He stepped back into the hermit&rsquo;s cave, whence a stair
+led up to the chapel.&nbsp; The anchorite followed him,
+whispering&mdash;&ldquo;Good father, escape!&nbsp; There will be
+full time ere he misses you.&nbsp; The north door leads to the
+Gemsbock&rsquo;s Pass; it is open now.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why should I baulk him?&nbsp; Why should I deny my
+office to the dying?&rdquo; said Norbert.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Alas! holy father, thou art new to this country, and
+know&rsquo;st not these men of blood!&nbsp; It is a snare to make
+the convent ransom thee, if not worse.&nbsp; The Freiherrinn is a
+fiend for malice, and the Freiherr is excommunicate.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know it, my son,&rdquo; said Norbert; &ldquo;but
+wherefore should their child perish unassoilzied?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Art coming, priest?&rdquo; shouted Eberhard, from his
+stand at the mouth of the cave.</p>
+<p>And, as Norbert at once appeared with the pyx and other
+appliances that he had gone to fetch, the Freiherr held out his
+hand with an offer to &ldquo;carry his gear for him;&rdquo; and,
+when the monk refused, with an inward shudder at entrusting a
+sacred charge to such unhallowed hands, replied, &ldquo;You will
+have work enow for both hands ere the castle is
+reached.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But Father Norbert was by birth a sturdy Switzer, and thought
+little of these Swabian Alps; and he climbed after his guide
+through the most rugged passages of Eberhard&rsquo;s shortest and
+most perpendicular cut without a moment&rsquo;s hesitation, and
+with agility worthy of a chamois.&nbsp; The young baron turned
+for a moment, when the level of the castle had been gained,
+perhaps to see whether he were following, but at the same time
+came to a sudden, speechless pause.</p>
+<p>On the white masses of vapour that floated on the opposite
+side of the mountain was traced a gigantic shadowy outline of a
+hermit, with head bent eagerly forward, and arm outstretched.</p>
+<p>The monk crossed himself.&nbsp; Eberhard stood still for a
+moment, and then said, hoarsely,&mdash;&ldquo;The Blessed
+Friedmund!&nbsp; He is come for her;&rdquo; then strode on
+towards the postern gate, followed by Brother Norbert, a good
+deal reassured both as to the genuineness of the young
+Baron&rsquo;s message and the probable condition of the object of
+his journey, since the patron saint of her race was evidently on
+the watch to speed her departing spirit.</p>
+<p>Sir Eberhard led the way up the turret stairs to the open
+door, and the monk entered the death-chamber.&nbsp; The elder
+Baron sat near the fire in the large wooden chair, half turned
+towards his daughter, as one who must needs be present, but with
+his face buried in his hands, unable to endure the
+spectacle.&nbsp; Nearer was the tall form of his wife, standing
+near the foot of the bed, her stern, harsh features somewhat
+softened by the feelings of the moment.&nbsp; Ursel waited at
+hand, with tears running down her furrowed cheeks.</p>
+<p>For such as these Father Norbert was prepared; but he little
+expected to meet so pure and sweet a gaze of reverential welcome
+as beamed on him from the soft, dark eyes of the little
+white-checked maiden who sat on the bed, holding the sufferer in
+her arms.&nbsp; Still less had he anticipated the serene
+blessedness that sat on the wasted features of the dying girl,
+and all the anguish of labouring breath.</p>
+<p>She smiled a smile of joy, held up her hand, and thanked her
+brother.&nbsp; Her father scarcely lifted his head, her mother
+made a rigid curtsey, and with a grim look of sorrow coming over
+her features, laid her hand over the old Baron&rsquo;s
+shoulder.&nbsp; &ldquo;Come away, Herr Vater,&rdquo; she said;
+&ldquo;he is going to hear her confession, and make her too holy
+for the like of us to touch.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The old man rose up, and stepped towards his child.&nbsp;
+Ermentrude held out her arms to him, and murmured&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Father, father, pardon me; I would have been a better
+daughter if I had only known&mdash;&rdquo;&nbsp; He gathered her
+in his arms; he was quite past speaking; and they only heard his
+heavy breathing, and one more whisper from
+Ermentrude&mdash;&ldquo;And oh! father, one day wilt thou seek to
+be absolved?&rdquo;&nbsp; Whether he answered or not they knew
+not; he only gave her repeated kisses, and laid her down on her
+pillows, then rushed to the door, and the passionate sobs of the
+strong man&rsquo;s uncontrolled nature might be heard upon the
+stair.&nbsp; The parting with the others was not necessarily so
+complete, as they were not, like him, under censure of the
+Church; but Kunigunde leant down to kiss her; and, in return to
+her repetition of her entreaty for pardon, replied, &ldquo;Thou
+hast it, child, if it will ease thy mind; but it is all along of
+these new fancies that ever an Adlerstein thought of
+pardon.&nbsp; There, there, I blame thee not, poor maid; it thou
+wert to die, it may be even best as it is.&nbsp; Now must I to
+thy father; he is troubled enough about this gear.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But when Eberhard moved towards his sister, she turned to the
+priest, and said, imploringly, &ldquo;Not far, not far!&nbsp; Oh!
+let them,&rdquo; pointing to Eberhard and Christina, &ldquo;let
+them not be quite out of sight!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Out of hearing is all that is needed, daughter,&rdquo;
+replied the priest; and Ermentrude looked content as Christina
+moved towards the empty north turret, where, with the door open,
+she was in full view, and Eberhard followed her thither.&nbsp; It
+was indeed fully out of earshot of the child&rsquo;s faint,
+gasping confession.&nbsp; Gravely and sadly both stood
+there.&nbsp; Christina looked up the hillside for the
+snow-wreath.&nbsp; The May sunshine had dissolved it; the green
+pass lay sparkling without a vestige of its white coating.&nbsp;
+Her eyes full of tears, she pointed the spot out to
+Eberhard.&nbsp; He understood; but, leaning towards her, told,
+under his breath, of the phantom he had seen.&nbsp; Her eyes
+expanded with awe of the supernatural.&nbsp; &ldquo;It was the
+Blessed Friedmund,&rdquo; said Eberhard.&nbsp; &ldquo;Never hath
+he so greeted one of our race since the pious Freiherrinn
+Hildegarde.&nbsp; Maiden, hast thou brought us back a
+blessing?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah! well may she be blessed&mdash;well may the saints
+stoop to greet her,&rdquo; murmured Christina, with strangled
+voice, scarcely able to control her sobs.</p>
+<p>Father Norbert came towards them.&nbsp; The simple confession
+had been heard, and he sought the aid of Christina in performing
+the last rites of the Church.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Maiden,&rdquo; he said to her, &ldquo;thou hast done a
+great and blessed work, such as many a priest might envy
+thee.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Eberhard was not excluded during the final services by which
+the soul was to be dismissed from its earthly
+dwelling-place.&nbsp; True, he comprehended little of their
+import, and nothing of the words, but he gazed meekly, with
+uncovered head, and a bewildered look of sadness, while Christina
+made her responses and took her part with full intelligence and
+deep fervour, sorrowing indeed for the companion who had become
+so dear to her, but deeply thankful for the spiritual consolation
+that had come at last.&nbsp; Ermentrude lay calm, and, as it
+were, already rapt into a higher world, lighting up at the German
+portions of the service, and not wholly devoid of comprehension
+of the spirit even of the Latin, as indeed she had come to the
+border of the region where human tongues and languages are no
+more.</p>
+<p>She was all but gone when the rite of extreme unction was
+completed, and they could only stand round her, Eberhard,
+Christina, Ursel, and the old Baroness, who had returned again,
+watching the last flutterings of the breath, the window thrown
+wide open that nothing might impede the passage of the soul to
+the blue vault above.</p>
+<p>The priest spoke the beautiful commendation, &ldquo;Depart, O
+Christian soul.&rdquo;&nbsp; There was a faint gesture in the
+midst for Christina to lift her in her arms&mdash;a sign to bend
+down and kiss her brow&mdash;but her last look was for her
+brother, her last murmur, &ldquo;Come after me; be the Good Baron
+Ebbo.&rdquo;</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER V<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE YOUNG FREIHERR</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Ermentrude von Adlerstein</span> slept
+with her forefathers in the vaults of the hermitage chapel, and
+Christina Sorel&rsquo;s work was done.</p>
+<p>Surely it was time for her to return home, though she should
+be more sorry to leave the mountain castle than she could ever
+have believed possible.&nbsp; She entreated her father to take
+her home, but she received a sharp answer that she did not know
+what she was talking of: the Schlangenwald Reitern were besetting
+all the roads; and moreover the Ulm burghers had taken the
+capture of the Constance wine in such dudgeon that for a retainer
+of Adlerstein to show himself in the streets would be an absolute
+asking for the wheel.</p>
+<p>But was there any hope for her?&nbsp; Could he not take her to
+some nunnery midway, and let her write to her uncle to fetch her
+from thence?</p>
+<p>He swore at woman&rsquo;s pertinacity, but allowed at last
+that if the plan, talked of by the Barons, of going to make their
+submission to the Emperor at Linz, with a view to which all
+violence at the ford had ceased, should hold good, it might be
+possible thus to drop her on their way.</p>
+<p>With this Christina must needs content herself.&nbsp; Poor
+child, not only had Ermentrude&rsquo;s death deprived her of the
+sole object of her residence at Schloss Adlerstein, but it had
+infinitely increased the difficulties of her position.&nbsp; No
+one interfered with her possession of the upper room and its
+turrets; and it was only at meal times that she was obliged to
+mingle with the other inhabitants, who, for the most part,
+absolutely overlooked the little shrinking pale maiden but with
+one exception, and that the most perplexing of all.&nbsp; She had
+been on terms with Freiherr Eberhard that were not so easily
+broken off as if she had been an old woman of Ursel&rsquo;s
+age.&nbsp; All through his sister&rsquo;s decline she had been
+his comforter, assistant, director, living in intercourse and
+sympathy that ought surely to cease when she was no longer his
+sister&rsquo;s attendant, yet which must be more than ever missed
+in the full freshness of the stroke.</p>
+<p>Even on the earliest day of bereavement, a sudden thought of
+Hausfrau Johanna flashed upon Christina, and reminded her of the
+guard she must keep over herself if she would return to Ulm the
+same modest girl whom her aunt could acquit of all
+indiscretion.&nbsp; Her cheeks flamed, as she sat alone, with the
+very thought, and the next time she heard the well-known tread on
+the stair, she fled hastily into her own turret chamber, and shut
+the door.&nbsp; Her heart beat fast.&nbsp; She could hear Sir
+Eberhard moving about the room, and listened to his heavy sigh as
+he threw himself into the large chair.&nbsp; Presently he called
+her by name, and she felt it needful to open her door and answer,
+respectfully,</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What would you, my lord?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What would I?&nbsp; A little peace, and heed to her who
+is gone.&nbsp; To see my father and mother one would think that a
+partridge had but flown away.&nbsp; I have seen my father more
+sorrowful when his dog had fallen over the abyss.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mayhap there is more sorrow for a brute that cannot
+live again,&rdquo; said Christina.&nbsp; &ldquo;Our bird has her
+nest by an Altar that is lovelier and brighter than even our Dome
+Kirk will ever be.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sit down, Christina,&rdquo; he said, dragging a chair
+nearer the hearth.&nbsp; &ldquo;My heart is sore, and I cannot
+bear the din below.&nbsp; Tell me where my bird is
+flown.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah! sir; pardon me.&nbsp; I must to the kitchen,&rdquo;
+said Christina, crossing her hands over her breast, to still her
+trembling heart, for she was very sorry for his grief, but moving
+resolutely.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Must?&nbsp; And wherefore?&nbsp; Thou hast nought to do
+there; speak truth!&nbsp; Why not stay with me?&rdquo; and his
+great light eyes opened wide.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A burgher maid may not sit down with a noble
+baron.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The devil!&nbsp; Has my mother been plaguing thee,
+child?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, my lord,&rdquo; said Christina, &ldquo;she reeks
+not of me; but&rdquo;&mdash;steadying her voice with great
+difficulty&mdash;&ldquo;it behoves me the more to be
+discreet.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And you would not have me come here!&rdquo; he said,
+with a wistful tone of reproach.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have no power to forbid you; but if you do, I must
+betake me to Ursel in the kitchen,&rdquo; said Christina, very
+low, trembling and half choked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Among the rude wenches there!&rdquo; he cried, starting
+up.&nbsp; &ldquo;Nay, nay, that shall not be!&nbsp; Rather will I
+go.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But this is very cruel of thee, maiden,&rdquo; he
+added, lingering, &ldquo;when I give thee my knightly word that
+all should be as when she whom we both loved was here,&rdquo; and
+his voice shook.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It could not so be, my lord,&rdquo; returned Christina
+with drooping, blushing face; &ldquo;it would not be maidenly in
+me.&nbsp; Oh, my lord, you are kind and generous, make it not
+hard for me to do what other maidens less lonely have friends to
+do for them!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Kind and generous?&rdquo; said Eberhard, leaning over
+the back of the chair as if trying to begin a fresh score.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;This from you, who told me once I was no true
+knight!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I shall call you a true knight with all my
+heart,&rdquo; cried Christina, the tears rushing into her eyes,
+&ldquo;if you will respect my weakness and loneliness.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He stood up again, as if to move away; then paused, and,
+twisting his gold chain, said, &ldquo;And how am I ever to be
+what the happy one bade me, if you will not show me
+how?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My error would never show you the right,&rdquo; said
+Christina, with a strong effort at firmness, and retreating at
+once through the door of the staircase, whence she made her way
+to the kitchen, and with great difficulty found an excuse for her
+presence there.</p>
+<p>It had been a hard struggle with her compassion and gratitude,
+and, poor little Christina felt with dismay, with something more
+than these.&nbsp; Else why was it that, even while principle and
+better sense summoned her back to Ulm, she experienced a deadly
+weariness of the city-pent air, of the grave, heavy roll of the
+river, nay, even of the quiet, well-regulated household?&nbsp;
+Why did such a marriage as she had thought her natural destiny,
+with some worthy, kind-hearted brother of the guild, become so
+hateful to her that she could only aspire to a convent
+life?&nbsp; This same burgomaster would be an estimable man, no
+doubt, and those around her were ruffians, but she felt utterly
+contemptuous and impatient of him.&nbsp; And why was the
+interchange of greetings, the few words at meals, worth all the
+rest of the day besides to her?&nbsp; Her own heart was the
+traitor, and to her own sensations the poor little thing had, in
+spirit at least, transgressed all Aunt Johanna&rsquo;s precepts
+against young Barons.&nbsp; She wept apart, and resolved, and
+prayed, cruelly ashamed of every start of joy or pain that the
+sight of Eberhard cost her.&nbsp; From almost the first he had
+sat next her at the single table that accommodated the whole
+household at meals, and the custom continued, though on some days
+he treated her with sullen silence, which she blamed herself for
+not rejoicing in, sometimes he spoke a few friendly words; but he
+observed, better than she could have dared to expect, her test of
+his true knighthood, and never again forced himself into her
+apartment, though now and then he came to the door with flowers,
+with mountain strawberries, and once with two young doves.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Take them, Christina,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;they are very
+like yourself;&rdquo; and he always delayed so long that she was
+forced to be resolute, and shut the door on him at last.</p>
+<p>Once, when there was to be a mass at the chapel, Hugh Sorel,
+between a smile and a growl, informed his daughter that he would
+take her thereto.&nbsp; She gladly prepared, and, bent on making
+herself agreeable to her father, did not once press on him the
+necessity of her return to Ulm.&nbsp; To her amazement and
+pleasure, the young Baron was at church, and when on the way
+home, he walked beside her mule, she could see no need of sending
+him away.</p>
+<p>He had been in no school of the conventionalities of life,
+and, when he saw that Hugh Sorel&rsquo;s presence had obtained
+him this favour, he wistfully asked, &ldquo;Christina, if I bring
+your father with me, will you not let me in?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Entreat me not, my lord,&rdquo; she answered, with
+fluttering breath.</p>
+<p>She felt the more that she was right in this decision, when
+she encountered her father&rsquo;s broad grin of surprise and
+diversion, at seeing the young Baron help her to dismount.&nbsp;
+It was a look of receiving an idea both new, comical, and
+flattering, but by no means the look of a father who would resent
+the indignity of attentions to his daughter from a man whose rank
+formed an insuperable barrier to marriage.</p>
+<p>The effect was a new, urgent, and most piteous entreaty, that
+he would find means of sending her home.&nbsp; It brought upon
+her the hearing put into words what her own feelings had long
+shrunk from confessing to herself.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah!&nbsp; Why, what now?&nbsp; What, is the young Baron
+after thee?&nbsp; Ha! ha! petticoats are few enough up here, but
+he must have been ill off ere he took to a little ghost like
+thee!&nbsp; I saw he was moping and doleful, but I thought it was
+all for his sister.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And so it is, father.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Tell me that, when he watches every turn of that dark
+eye of thine&mdash;the only good thing thou took&rsquo;st of
+mine!&nbsp; Thou art a witch, Stina.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hush, oh hush, for pity&rsquo;s sake, father, and let
+me go home!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What, thou likest him not?&nbsp; Thy mind is all for
+the mincing goldsmith opposite, as I ever told thee.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My mind is&mdash;is to return to my uncle and aunt the
+true-hearted maiden they parted with,&rdquo; said Christina, with
+clasped hands.&nbsp; &ldquo;And oh, father, as you were the son
+of a true and faithful mother, be a father to me now!&nbsp; Jeer
+not your motherless child, but protect her and help
+her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Hugh Sorel was touched by this appeal, and he likewise
+recollected how much it was for his own interest that his brother
+should be satisfied with the care he took of his daughter.&nbsp;
+He became convinced that the sooner she was out of the castle the
+better, and at length bethought him that, among the merchants who
+frequented the Midsummer Fair at the Blessed Friedmund&rsquo;s
+Wake, a safe escort might be found to convey her back to Ulm.</p>
+<p>If the truth were known, Hugh Sorel was not devoid of a
+certain feeling akin to contempt, both for his young
+master&rsquo;s taste, and for his forbearance in not having
+pushed matters further with a being so helpless, meek, and timid
+as Christina, more especially as such slackness had not been his
+wont in other cases where his fancy had been caught.</p>
+<p>But Sorel did not understand that it was not physical beauty
+that here had been the attraction, though to some persons, the
+sweet, pensive eyes, the delicate, pure skin, the slight, tender
+form, might seem to exceed in loveliness the fully developed
+animal comeliness chiefly esteemed at Adlerstein.&nbsp; It was
+rather the strangeness of the power and purity of this timid,
+fragile creature, that had struck the young noble.&nbsp; With all
+their brutal manners reverence for a lofty female nature had been
+in the German character ever since their Velleda prophesied to
+them, and this reverence in Eberhard bowed at the feet of the
+pure gentle maiden, so strong yet so weak, so wistful and
+entreating even in her resolution, refined as a white flower on a
+heap of refuse, wise and dexterous beyond his slow and dull
+conception, and the first being in whom he had ever seen piety or
+goodness; and likewise with a tender, loving spirit of
+consolation such as he had both beheld and tasted by his
+sister&rsquo;s deathbed.</p>
+<p>There was almost a fear mingled with his reverence.&nbsp; If
+he had been more familiar with the saints, he would thus have
+regarded the holy virgin martyrs, nay, even Our Lady herself; and
+he durst not push her so hard as to offend her, and excite the
+anger or the grief that he alike dreaded.&nbsp; He was wretched
+and forlorn without the resources he had found in his
+sister&rsquo;s room; the new and better cravings of his higher
+nature had been excited only to remain unsupplied and
+disappointed; and the affectionate heart in the freshness of its
+sorrow yearned for the comfort that such conversation had
+supplied: but the impression that had been made on him was still
+such, that he knew that to use rough means of pressing his wishes
+would no more lead to his real gratification than it would to
+appropriate a snow-bell by crushing it in his gauntlet.</p>
+<p>And it was on feeble little Christina, yielding in heart,
+though not in will, that it depended to preserve this reverence,
+and return unscathed from this castle, more perilous now than
+ever.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE BLESSED FRIEDMUND&rsquo;S
+WAKE</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Midsummer-Day</span> arrived, and the
+village of Adlerstein presented a most unusual spectacle.&nbsp;
+The wake was the occasion of a grand fair for all the
+mountain-side, and it was an understood thing that the Barons,
+instead of molesting the pedlars, merchants, and others who
+attended it, contented themselves with demanding a toll from
+every one who passed the Kohler&rsquo;s hut on the one side, or
+the Gemsbock&rsquo;s Pass on the other; and this toll, being the
+only coin by which they came honestly in the course of the year,
+was regarded as a certainty and highly valued.&nbsp; Moreover, it
+was the only time that any purchases could be made, and the
+flotsam of the ford did not always include all even of the few
+requirements of the inmates of the castle; it was the only
+holiday, sacred or secular, that ever gladdened the Eagle&rsquo;s
+Rock.</p>
+<p>So all the inmates of the castle prepared to enjoy themselves,
+except the heads of the house.&nbsp; The Freiherr had never been
+at one of these wakes since the first after he was
+excommunicated, when he had stalked round to show his
+indifference to the sentence; and the Freiherrinn snarled out
+such sentences of disdain towards the concourse, that it might be
+supposed that she hated the sight of her kind; but Ursel had all
+the household purchases to make, and the kitchen underlings were
+to take turns to go and come, as indeed were the men-at-arms, who
+were set to watch the toll-bars.</p>
+<p>Christina had packed up a small bundle, for the chance of
+being unable to return to the castle without missing her escort,
+though she hoped that the fair might last two days, and that she
+should thus be enabled to return and bring away the rest of her
+property.&nbsp; She was more and more resolved on going, but her
+heart was less and less inclined to departure.&nbsp; And bitter
+had been her weeping through all the early light hours of the
+long morning&mdash;weeping that she tried to think was all for
+Ermentrude; and all, amid prayers she could scarce trust herself
+to offer, that the generous, kindly nature might yet work free of
+these evil surroundings, and fulfil the sister&rsquo;s dying
+wish, she should never see it; but, when she should hear that the
+Debateable Ford was the Friendly Ford, then would she know that
+it was the doing of the Good Baron Ebbo.&nbsp; Could she venture
+on telling him so?&nbsp; Or were it not better that there were no
+farewell?&nbsp; And she wept again that he should think her
+ungrateful.&nbsp; She could not persuade herself to release the
+doves, but committed the charge to Ursel to let them go in case
+she should not return.</p>
+<p>So tear-stained was her face, that, ashamed that it should be
+seen, she wrapped it closely in her hood and veil when she came
+down and joined her father.&nbsp; The whole scene swam in tears
+before her eyes when she saw the whole green slope from the
+chapel covered with tents and booths, and swarming with pedlars
+and mountaineers in their picturesque dresses.&nbsp; Women and
+girls were exchanging the yarn of their winter&rsquo;s spinning
+for bright handkerchiefs; men drove sheep, goats, or pigs to
+barter for knives, spades, or weapons; others were gazing at
+simple shows&mdash;a dancing bear or ape&mdash;or clustering
+round a Minnesinger; many even then congregating in booths for
+the sale of beer.&nbsp; Further up, on the flat space of sward
+above the chapel, were some lay brothers, arranging for the
+representation of a mystery&mdash;a kind of entertainment which
+Germany owed to the English who came to the Council of Constance,
+and which the monks of St. Ruprecht&rsquo;s hoped might infuse
+some religious notions into the wild, ignorant mountaineers.</p>
+<p>First however Christina gladly entered the church.&nbsp;
+Crowded though it were, it was calmer than the busy scene
+without.&nbsp; Faded old tapestry was decking its walls,
+representing apparently some subject entirely alien to St. John
+or the blessed hermit; Christina rather thought it was Mars and
+Venus, but that was all the same to every one else.&nbsp; And
+there was a terrible figure of St. John, painted life-like, with
+a real hair-cloth round his loins, just opposite to her, on the
+step of the Altar; also poor Friedmund&rsquo;s bones, dressed up
+in a new serge amice and hood; the stone from Nic&aelig;a was in
+a gilded box, ready in due time to be kissed; and a preaching
+friar (not one of the monks of St. Ruprecht&rsquo;s) was in the
+midst of a sermon, telling how St. John presided at the Council
+of Nic&aelig;a till the Emperor Maximius cut off his head at the
+instance of Herodius&mdash;full justice being done to the
+dancing&mdash;and that the blood was sprinkled on this very
+stone, whereupon our Holy Father the Pope decreed that whoever
+would kiss the said stone, and repeat the Credo five times
+afterwards, should be capable of receiving an indulgence for 500
+years: which indulgence must however be purchased at the rate of
+six groschen, to be bestowed in alms at Rome.&nbsp; And this
+inestimable benefit he, poor Friar Peter, had come from his
+brotherhood of St. Francis at Offingen solely to dispense to the
+poor mountaineers.</p>
+<p>It was disappointing to find this profane mummery going on
+instead of the holy services to which Christina had looked
+forward for strength and comfort; she was far too well instructed
+not to be scandalized at the profane deception which was ripening
+fast for Luther, only thirty years later; and, when the stone was
+held up by the friar in one hand, the printed briefs of
+indulgence in the other, she shrunk back.&nbsp; Her father
+however said, &ldquo;Wilt have one, child?&nbsp; Five hundred
+years is no bad bargain.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My uncle has small trust in indulgences,&rdquo; she
+whispered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;All lies, of course,&rdquo; quoth Hugh; &ldquo;yet
+they&rsquo;ve the Pope&rsquo;s seal, and I have more than half a
+mind to get one.&nbsp; Five hundred years is no joke, and I am
+sure of purgatory, since I bought this medal at the Holy House of
+Loretto.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And he went forward, and invested six groschen in one of the
+papers, the most religious action poor Christina had ever seen
+him perform.&nbsp; Other purchasers came forward&mdash;several,
+of the castle <i>knappen</i>, and a few peasant women who offered
+yarn or cheeses as equivalents for money, but were told with some
+insolence to go and sell their goods, and bring the coin.</p>
+<p>After a time, the friar, finding his traffic slack, thought
+fit to remove, with his two lay assistants, outside the chapel,
+and try the effects of an out-of-door sermon.&nbsp; Hugh Sorel,
+who had been hitherto rather diverted by the man&rsquo;s gestures
+and persuasions, now decided on going out into the fair in quest
+of an escort for his daughter, but as she saw Father Norbert and
+another monk ascending from the stairs leading to the
+hermit&rsquo;s cell, she begged to be allowed to remain in the
+church, where she was sure to be safe, instead of wandering about
+with him in the fair.</p>
+<p>He was glad to be unencumbered, though he thought her taste
+unnatural; and, promising to return for her when he had found an
+escort, he left her.</p>
+<p>Father Norbert had come for the very purpose of hearing
+confessions, and Christina&rsquo;s next hour was the most
+comfortable she had spent since Ermentrude&rsquo;s death.</p>
+<p>After this however the priests were called away, and long,
+long did Christina first kneel and then sit in the little lonely
+church, hearing the various sounds without, and imagining that
+her father had forgotten her, and that he and all the rest were
+drinking, and then what would become of her?&nbsp; Why had she
+quitted old Ursel&rsquo;s protection?</p>
+<p>Hours of waiting and nameless alarm must have passed, for the
+sun was waxing low, when at length she heard steps coming up the
+hermit&rsquo;s cell, and a head rose above the pavement which she
+recognized with a wild throb of joy, but, repressing her sense of
+gladness, she only exclaimed, &ldquo;Oh, where is my
+father!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have sent him to the toll at the Gemsbock&rsquo;s
+Pass,&rdquo; replied Sir Eberhard, who had by this time come up
+the stairs, followed by Brother Peter and the two lay
+assistants.&nbsp; Then, as Christina turned on him her startled,
+terrified eyes in dismay and reproach for such thoughtlessness,
+he came towards her, and, bending his head and opening his hand,
+he showed on his palm two gold rings.&nbsp; &ldquo;There, little
+one,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;now shalt thou never again shut me
+out.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Her senses grew dizzy.&nbsp; &ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; she faintly
+said, &ldquo;this is no place to delude a poor maiden.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I delude thee not.&nbsp; The brother here waits to wed
+us.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Impossible!&nbsp; A burgher maid is not for such as
+you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;None but a burgher maid will I wed,&rdquo; returned Sir
+Eberhard, with all the settled resolution of habits of
+command.&nbsp; &ldquo;See, Christina, thou art sweeter and better
+than any lady in the land; thou canst make me what she&mdash;the
+blessed one who lies there&mdash;would have me.&nbsp; I love thee
+as never knight loved lady.&nbsp; I love thee so that I have not
+spoken a word to offend thee when my heart was bursting;
+and&rdquo;&mdash;as he saw her irrepressible tears&mdash;&ldquo;I
+think thou lovest me a little.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; she gasped with a sob, &ldquo;let me
+go.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thou canst not go home; there is none here fit to take
+charge of thee.&nbsp; Or if there were, I would slay him rather
+than let thee go.&nbsp; No, not so,&rdquo; he said, as he saw how
+little those words served his cause; &ldquo;but without thee I
+were a mad and desperate man.&nbsp; Christina, I will not answer
+for myself if thou dost not leave this place my wedded
+wife.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; implored Christina, &ldquo;if you would only
+betroth me, and woo me like an honourable maiden from my home at
+Ulm!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Betroth thee, ay, and wed thee at once,&rdquo; replied
+Eberhard, who, all along, even while his words were most
+pleading, had worn a look and manner of determined authority and
+strength, good-natured indeed, but resolved.&nbsp; &ldquo;I am
+not going to miss my opportunity, or baulk the friar.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The friar, who had meantime been making a few needful
+arrangements for the ceremony, advanced towards them.&nbsp; He
+was a good-humoured, easy-going man, who came prepared to do any
+office that came in his way on such festival days at the villages
+round; and peasant marriages at such times were not
+uncommon.&nbsp; But something now staggered him, and he said
+anxiously&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This maiden looks convent-bred!&nbsp; Herr Reiter,
+pardon me; but if this be the breaking of a cloister, I can have
+none of it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No such thing,&rdquo; said Eberhard; &ldquo;she is
+town-bred, that is all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You would swear to it, on the holy mass yonder, both of
+you?&rdquo; said the friar, still suspiciously.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yea,&rdquo; replied Eberhard, &ldquo;and so dost thou,
+Christina.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This was the time if ever to struggle against her
+destiny.&nbsp; The friar would probably have listened to her if
+she had made any vehement opposition to a forced marriage, and if
+not, a few shrieks would have brought perhaps Father Norbert, and
+certainly the whole population; but the horror and shame of being
+found in such a situation, even more than the probability that
+she might meet with vengeance rather than protection, withheld
+her.&nbsp; Even the friar could hardly have removed her, and this
+was her only chance of safety from the Baroness&rsquo;s
+fury.&nbsp; Had she hated and loathed Sir Eberhard, perhaps she
+had striven harder, but his whole demeanour constrained and
+quelled her, and the chief effort she made against yielding was
+the reply, &ldquo;I am no cloister maid, holy father,
+but&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The &ldquo;but&rdquo; was lost in the friar&rsquo;s jovial
+speech.&nbsp; &ldquo;Oh, then, all is well!&nbsp; Take thy place,
+pretty one, there, by the door, thou know&rsquo;st it should be
+in the porch, but&mdash;ach, I understand!&rdquo; as Eberhard
+quietly drew the bolt within.&nbsp; &ldquo;No, no, little one, I
+have no time for bride scruples and coyness; I have to train
+three dull-headed louts to be Shem, Ham, and Japhet before
+dark.&nbsp; Hast confessed of late?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This morning, but&mdash;&rdquo; said Christina, and
+&ldquo;This morning,&rdquo; to her great joy, said Eberhard, and,
+in her satisfaction thereat, her second &ldquo;but&rdquo; was not
+followed up.</p>
+<p>The friar asked their names, and both gave the Christian name
+alone; then the brief and simple rite was solemnized in its
+shortest form.&nbsp; Christina had, by very force of surprise and
+dismay, gone through all without signs of agitation, except the
+quivering of her whole frame, and the icy coldness of the hand,
+where Eberhard had to place the ring on each finger in turn.</p>
+<p>But each mutual vow was a strange relief to her long-tossed
+and divided mind, and it was rest indeed to let her affection
+have its will, and own him indeed as a protector to be loved
+instead of shunned.&nbsp; When all was over, and he gathered the
+two little cold hands into his large one, his arm supporting her
+trembling form, she felt for the moment, poor little thing, as if
+she could never be frightened again.</p>
+<p>Parish registers were not, even had this been a parish church,
+but Brother Peter asked, when he had concluded, &ldquo;Well, my
+son, which of his flock am I to report to your Pfarrer as linked
+together?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The less your tongue wags on that matter till I call on
+you, the better,&rdquo; was the stern reply.&nbsp; &ldquo;Look
+you, no ill shall befall you if you are wise, but remember,
+against the day I call you to bear witness, that you have this
+day wedded Baron Eberhard von Adlerstein the younger, to
+Christina, the daughter of Hugh Sorel, the Esquire of
+Ulm.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thou hast played me a trick, Sir Baron!&rdquo; said the
+friar, somewhat dismayed, but more amused, looking up at
+Eberhard, who, as Christina now saw, had divested himself of his
+gilt spurs, gold chain, silvered belt and horn, and eagle&rsquo;s
+plume, so as to have passed for a simple lanzknecht.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I would have had no such gear as this!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So I supposed,&rdquo; said Eberhard coolly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Young folks! young folks!&rdquo; laughed the friar,
+changing his tone, and holding up his finger slyly; &ldquo;the
+little bird so cunningly nestled in the church to fly out my Lady
+Baroness!&nbsp; Well, so thou hast a pretty, timid lambkin there,
+Sir Baron.&nbsp; Take care you use her mildly.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Eberhard looked into Christina&rsquo;s face with a smile, that
+to her, at least, was answer enough; and he held out half a dozen
+links of his gold chain to the friar, and tossed a coin to each
+of the lay brethren.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not for the poor friar himself,&rdquo; explained
+Brother Peter, on receiving this marriage fee; &ldquo;it all goes
+to the weal of the brotherhood.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;As you please,&rdquo; said Eberhard.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Silence, that is all!&nbsp; And thy
+friary&mdash;?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The poor house of St. Francis at Offingen for the
+present, noble sir,&rdquo; said the priest.&nbsp; &ldquo;There
+will you hear of me, if you find me not.&nbsp; And now, fare thee
+well, my gracious lady.&nbsp; I hope one day thou wilt have more
+words to thank the poor brother who has made thee a noble
+Baroness.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, good father, pardon my fright and confusion,&rdquo;
+Christina tried to murmur, but at that moment a sudden glow and
+glare of light broke out on the eastern rock, illuminating the
+fast darkening little church with a flickering glare, that made
+her start in terror as if the fires of heaven were threatening
+this stolen marriage; but the friar and Eberhard both exclaimed,
+&ldquo;The Needfire alight already!&rdquo;&nbsp; And she
+recollected how often she had seen these bonfires on Midsummer
+night shining red on every hill around Ulm.&nbsp; Loud shouts
+were greeting the uprising flame, and the people gathering
+thicker and thicker on the slope.&nbsp; The friar undid the door
+to hasten out into the throng, and Eberhard said he had left his
+spurs and belt in the hermit&rsquo;s cell, and must return
+thither, after which he would walk home with his bride, moving at
+the same time towards the stair, and thereby causing a sudden
+scuffle and fall.&nbsp; &ldquo;So, master hermit,&rdquo; quoth
+Eberhard, as the old man picked himself up, looking horribly
+frightened; &ldquo;that&rsquo;s your hermit&rsquo;s abstraction,
+is it?&nbsp; No whining, old man, I am not going to hurt thee, so
+thou canst hold thy tongue.&nbsp; Otherwise I will smoke thee out
+of thy hole like a wild cat!&nbsp; What, thou aiding me with my
+belt, my lovely one?&nbsp; Thanks; the snap goes too hard for thy
+little hands.&nbsp; Now, then, the fire will light us gaily down
+the mountain side.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But it soon appeared that to depart was impossible, unless by
+forcing a way through the busy throng in the full red glare of
+the firelight, and they were forced to pause at the opening of
+the hermit&rsquo;s cave, Christina leaning on her husband&rsquo;s
+arm, and a fold of his mantle drawn round her to guard her from
+the night-breeze of the mountain, as they waited for a quiet
+space in which to depart unnoticed.&nbsp; It was a strange, wild
+scene!&nbsp; The fire was on a bare, flat rock, which probably
+had been yearly so employed ever since the Kelts had brought from
+the East the rite that they had handed on to the
+Swabians&mdash;the Beltane fire, whose like was blazing
+everywhere in the Alps, in the Hartz, nay, even in England,
+Scotland, and on the granite points of Ireland.&nbsp; Heaped up
+for many previous days with faggots from the forest, then
+apparently inexhaustible, the fire roared and crackled, and rose
+high, red and smoky, into the air, paling the moon, and obscuring
+the stars.&nbsp; Round it, completely hiding the bonfire itself,
+were hosts of dark figures swarming to approach it&mdash;all with
+a purpose.&nbsp; All held old shoes or superannuated garments in
+their hands to feed the flame; for it was esteemed needful that
+every villager should contribute something from his
+house&mdash;once, no doubt, as an offering to Bel, but now as a
+mere unmeaning observance.&nbsp; And shrieks of merriment
+followed the contribution of each too well-known article of
+rubbish that had been in reserve for the Needfire!&nbsp; Girls
+and boys had nuts to throw in, in pairs, to judge by their
+bounces of future chances of matrimony.&nbsp; Then came a
+shouting, tittering, and falling back, as an old boor came
+forward like a priest with something heavy and ghastly in his
+arms, which was thrown on with a tremendous shout, darkened the
+glow for a moment, then hissed, cracked, and emitted a horrible
+odour.</p>
+<p>It was a horse&rsquo;s head, the right owner of which had been
+carefully kept for the occasion, though long past work.&nbsp;
+Christina shuddered, and felt as if she had fallen upon a Pagan
+ceremony; as indeed was true enough, only that the Adlersteiners
+attached no meaning to the performance, except a vague notion of
+securing good luck.</p>
+<p>With the same idea the faggots were pulled down, and arranged
+so as to form a sort of lane of fire.&nbsp; Young men rushed
+along it, and then bounded over the diminished pile, amid loud
+shouts of laughter and either admiration or derision; and, in the
+meantime, a variety of odd, recusant noises, grunts, squeaks, and
+lowings proceeding from the darkness were explained to the
+startled little bride by her husband to come from all the cattle
+of the mountain farms around, who were to have their weal secured
+by being driven through the Needfire.</p>
+<p>It may well be imagined that the animals were less convinced
+of the necessity of this performance than their masters.&nbsp;
+Wonderful was the clatter and confusion, horrible the uproar
+raised behind to make the poor things proceed at all, desperate
+the shout when some half-frantic creature kicked or attempted a
+charge wild the glee when a persecuted goat or sheep took heart
+of grace, and flashed for one moment between the crackling,
+flaring, smoking walls.&nbsp; When one cow or sheep off a farm
+went, all the others were pretty sure to follow it, and the owner
+had then only to be on the watch at the other end to turn them
+back, with their flame-dazzled eyes, from going unawares down the
+precipice, a fate from which the passing through the fire was
+evidently not supposed to ensure them.&nbsp; The swine, those
+special German delights, were of course the most refractory of
+all.&nbsp; Some, by dint of being pulled away from the lane of
+fire, were induced to rush through it; but about half-way they
+generally made a bolt, either sidelong through the flaming fence
+or backwards among the legs of their persecutors, who were upset
+amid loud imprecations.&nbsp; One huge, old, lean, high-backed
+sow, with a large family, truly feminine in her want of presence
+of mind, actually charged into the midst of the bonfire itself,
+scattering it to the right and left with her snout, and emitting
+so horrible a smell of singed bacon, that it might almost be
+feared that some of her progeny were anticipating the invention
+of Chinese roasting-pigs.&nbsp; However, their proprietor, Jobst,
+counted them out all safe on the other side, and there only
+resulted some sighs and lamentations among the seniors, such as
+Hatto and Ursel, that it boded ill to have the Needfire trodden
+out by an old sow.</p>
+<p>All the castle live-stock were undergoing the same
+ceremony.&nbsp; Eberhard concerned himself little about the
+vagaries of the sheep and pigs, and only laughed a little as the
+great black goat, who had seen several Midsummer nights, and
+stood on his guard, made a sudden short run and butted down old
+Hatto, then skipped off like a chamois into the darkness,
+unheeding, the old rogue, the whispers that connected his unlucky
+hue with the doings of the Walpurgisnacht.&nbsp; But when it came
+to the horses, Eberhard could not well endure the sight of the
+endeavours to force them, snorting, rearing, and struggling,
+through anything so abhorrent to them as the hedge of fire.</p>
+<p>The Schneiderlein, with all the force of his powerful arm, had
+hold of Eberhard&rsquo;s own young white mare, who, with ears
+turned back, nostrils dilated, and wild eyes, her fore-feet
+firmly planted wide apart, was using her whole strength for
+resistance; and, when a heavy blow fell on her, only plunged
+backwards, and kicked without advancing.&nbsp; It was more than
+Eberhard could endure, and Christina&rsquo;s impulse was to
+murmur, &ldquo;O do not let him do it;&rdquo; but this he
+scarcely heard, as he exclaimed, &ldquo;Wait for me here!&rdquo;
+and, as he stepped forward, sent his voice before him, forbidding
+all blows to the mare.</p>
+<p>The creature&rsquo;s extreme terror ceased at once upon
+hearing his voice, and there was an instant relaxation of all
+violence of resistance as he came up to her, took her halter from
+the Schneiderlein, patted her glossy neck, and spoke to
+her.&nbsp; But the tumult of warning voices around him assured
+him that it would be a fatal thing to spare the steed the passage
+through the fire, and he strove by encouragements and caresses
+with voice and hand to get her forward, leading her himself; but
+the poor beast trembled so violently, and, though making a few
+steps forward, stopped again in such exceeding horror of the
+flame, that Eberhard had not the heart to compel her, turned her
+head away, and assured her that she should not be further
+tormented.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The gracious lordship is wrong,&rdquo; said public
+opinion, by the voice of old Bauer Ulrich, the sacrificer of the
+horse&rsquo;s head.&nbsp; &ldquo;Heaven forfend that evil befall
+him and that mare in the course of the year.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And the buzz of voices concurred in telling of the recusant
+pigs who had never developed into sausages, the sheep who had
+only escaped to be eaten by wolves, the mule whose bones had been
+found at the bottom of an abyss.</p>
+<p>Old Ursel was seriously concerned, and would have laid hold on
+her young master to remonstrate, but a fresh notion had
+arisen&mdash;Would the gracious Freiherr set a-rolling the wheel,
+which was already being lighted in the fire, and was to conclude
+the festivities by being propelled down the hill&mdash;figuring,
+only that no one present knew it, the sun&rsquo;s declension from
+his solstitial height?&nbsp; Eberhard made no objection; and
+Christina, in her shelter by the cave, felt no little dismay at
+being left alone there, and moreover had a strange, weird feeling
+at the wild, uncanny ceremony he was engaged in, not knowing
+indeed that it was sun-worship, but afraid that it could be no
+other than unholy sorcery.</p>
+<p>The wheel, flaring or reddening in all its spokes, was raised
+from the bonfire, and was driven down the smoothest piece of
+green sward, which formed an inclined plane towards the
+stream.&nbsp; If its course was smooth, and it only became
+extinguished by leaping into the water, the village would
+flourish; and prosperity above all was expected if it should
+spring over the narrow channel, and attempt to run up the other
+side.&nbsp; Such things had happened in the days of the good
+Freiherren Ebbo and Friedel, though the wheel had never gone
+right since the present baron had been excommunicated; but his
+heir having been twice seen at mass in this last month great
+hopes were founded upon him.</p>
+<p>There was a shout to clear the slope.&nbsp; Eberhard, in great
+earnest and some anxiety, accepted the gauntlet that he was
+offered to protect his hand, steadied the wheel therewith, and,
+with a vigorous impulse from hand and foot, sent it bounding down
+the slope, among loud cries and a general scattering of the
+idlers who had crowded full into the very path of the fiery
+circle, which flamed up brilliantly for the moment as it met the
+current of air.&nbsp; But either there was an obstacle in the
+way, or the young Baron&rsquo;s push had not been quite straight:
+the wheel suddenly swerved aside, its course swerved to the
+right, maugre all the objurgations addressed to it as if it had
+been a living thing, and the next moment it had disappeared, all
+but a smoky, smouldering spot of red, that told where it lay,
+charring and smoking on its side, without having fulfilled a
+quarter of its course.</p>
+<p>People drew off gravely and silently, and Eberhard himself was
+strangely discomfited when he came back to the hermitage, and,
+wrapping Christina in his cloak, prepared to return, so soon as
+the glare of the fire should have faded from his eyesight enough
+to make it safe to tread so precipitous a path.&nbsp; He had
+indeed this day made a dangerous venture, and both he and
+Christina could not but feel disheartened by the issue of all the
+omens of the year, the more because she had a vague sense of
+wrong in consulting or trusting them.&nbsp; It seemed to her all
+one frightened, uncomprehended dream ever since her father had
+left her in the chapel; and, though conscious of her inability to
+have prevented her marriage, yet she blamed herself, felt
+despairing as she thought of the future, and, above all, dreaded
+the Baron and the Baroness and their anger.&nbsp; Eberhard, after
+his first few words, was silent, and seemed solely absorbed in
+leading her safely along the rocky path, sometimes lifting her
+when he thought her in danger of stumbling.&nbsp; It was one of
+the lightest, shortest nights of the year, and a young moon added
+to the brightness in open places, while in others it made the
+rocks and stones cast strange elvish shadows.&nbsp; The distance
+was not entirely lost; other Beltane fires could be seen, like
+beacons, on every hill, and the few lights in the castle shone
+out like red fiery eyes in its heavy dark pile of building.</p>
+<p>Before entering, Eberhard paused, pulled off his own
+wedding-ring, and put it into his bosom, and taking his
+bride&rsquo;s hand in his, did the same for her, and bade her
+keep the ring till they could wear them openly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Alas! then,&rdquo; said Christina, &ldquo;you would
+have this secret?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Unless I would have to seek thee down the oubliette, my
+little one,&rdquo; said Eberhard &ldquo;or, what might even be
+worse, see thee burnt on the hillside for bewitching me with
+thine arts!&nbsp; No, indeed, my darling.&nbsp; Were it only my
+father, I could make him love thee; but my mother&mdash;I could
+not trust her where she thought the honour of our house
+concerned.&nbsp; It shall not be for long.&nbsp; Thou
+know&rsquo;st we are to make peace with the Kaiser, and then will
+I get me employment among K&uuml;rfurst Albrecht&rsquo;s
+companies of troops, and then shalt thou prank it as my Lady
+Freiherrinn, and teach me the ways of cities.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Alas!&nbsp; I fear me it has been a great sin!&rdquo;
+sighed the poor little wife.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For thee&mdash;thou couldst not help it,&rdquo; said
+Eberhard; &ldquo;for me&mdash;who knows how many deadly ones it
+may hinder?&nbsp; Cheer up, little one; no one can harm thee
+while the secret is kept.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Poor Christina had no choice but submission; but it was a
+sorry bridal evening, to enter her husband&rsquo;s home in
+shrinking terror; with the threat of the oubliette before her,
+and with a sense of shame and deception hanging upon her, making
+the wonted scowl of the old baroness cut her both with remorse
+and dread.</p>
+<p>She did indeed sit beside her bridegroom at the supper, but
+how little like a bride! even though he pushed the salt-cellar,
+as if by accident, below her place.&nbsp; She thought of her
+myrtle, tended in vain at home by Barbara Schmidt; she thought of
+Ulm courtships, and how all ought to have been; the solemn
+embassage to her uncle, the stately negotiations; the troth
+plight before the circle of ceremonious kindred and merry
+maidens, of whom she had often been one&mdash;the subsequent
+attentions of the betrothed on all festival days, the piles of
+linen and all plenishings accumulated since babyhood, and all
+reviewed and laid out for general admiration (Ah! poor Aunt
+Johanna still spinning away to add to the many webs in her walnut
+presses!)&mdash;then the grand procession to fetch home the
+bride, the splendid festival with the musicians, dishes, and
+guest-tables to the utmost limit that was allowed by the city
+laws, and the bride&rsquo;s hair so joyously covered by her
+matron&rsquo;s curch amid the merriment of her companion
+maidens.</p>
+<p>Poor child!&nbsp; After she had crept away to her own room,
+glad that her father was not yet returned, she wept bitterly over
+the wrong that she felt she had done to the kind uncle and aunt,
+who must now look in vain for their little Christina, and would
+think her lost to them, and to all else that was good.&nbsp; At
+least she had had the Church&rsquo;s blessing&mdash;but that,
+strange to say, was regarded, in burgher life before the
+Reformation, as rather the ornament of a noble marriage than as
+essential to the civil contract; and a marriage by a priest was
+regarded by the citizens rather as a means of eluding the need of
+obtaining the parent&rsquo;s consent, than as a more regular and
+devout manner of wedding.&nbsp; However, Christina felt this the
+one drop of peace.&nbsp; The blessings and prayers were warm at
+her heart, and gave her hope.&nbsp; And as to drops of joy, of
+them there was no lack, for had not she now a right to love
+Eberhard with all her heart and conscience, and was not it a
+wonderful love on his part that had made him stoop to the little
+white-faced burgher maid, despised even by her own father?&nbsp;
+O better far to wear the maiden&rsquo;s uncovered head for him
+than the myrtle wreath for any one else!</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE SCHNEIDERLEIN&rsquo;S
+RETURN</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> poor little unowned bride had
+more to undergo than her imagination had conceived at the first
+moment.</p>
+<p>When she heard that the marriage was to be a secret, she had
+not understood that Eberhard was by no means disposed to observe
+much more caution than mere silence.&nbsp; A rough, though kindly
+man, he did not thoroughly comprehend the shame and confusion
+that he was bringing upon her by departing from his former
+demeanour.&nbsp; He knew that, so enormous was the distance then
+supposed to exist between the noble and the burgher, there was no
+chance of any one dreaming of the true state of the case, and
+that as long as Christina was not taken for his wife, there was
+no personal danger for her from his mother, who&mdash;so lax were
+the morals of the German nobility with regard to all of inferior
+rank&mdash;would tolerate her with complacency as his favourite
+toy; and he was taken by surprise at the agony of grief and shame
+with which she slowly comprehended his assurance that she had
+nothing to fear.</p>
+<p>There was no help for it.&nbsp; The oubliette would probably
+be the portion of the low-born girl who had interfered with the
+sixteen quarterings of the Adlerstein shield, and poor Christina
+never stepped across its trap-door without a shudder lest it
+should open beneath her.&nbsp; And her father would probably have
+been hung from the highest tower, in spite of his shrewd care to
+be aware of nothing.&nbsp; Christina consoled herself with the
+hope that he knew all the time why he had been sent out of the
+way, for, with a broad grin that had made her blush painfully, he
+had said he knew she would be well taken care of, and that he
+hoped she was not breaking her heart for want of an escort.&nbsp;
+She tried to extort Eberhard&rsquo;s permission to let him at
+least know how it was; but Eberhard laughed, saying he believed
+the old fox knew just as much as he chose; and, in effect, Sorel,
+though now and then gratifying his daughter&rsquo;s scruples, by
+serving as a shield to her meetings with the young Baron, never
+allowed himself to hear a hint of the true state of affairs.</p>
+<p>Eberhard&rsquo;s love and reverence were undiminished, and the
+time spent with him would have been perfectly happy could she
+ever have divested herself of anxiety and alarm; but the periods
+of his absence from the castle were very terrible to her, for the
+other women of the household, quick to perceive that she no
+longer repelled him, had lost that awe that had hitherto kept
+them at a distance from her, and treated her with a familiarity,
+sometimes coarse, sometimes spiteful, always hateful and
+degrading.&nbsp; Even old Ursel had become half-pitying,
+half-patronizing; and the old Baroness, though not molesting her,
+took not the slightest notice of her.</p>
+<p>This state of things lasted much longer than there had been
+reason to expect at the time of the marriage.&nbsp; The two
+Freiherren then intended to set out in a very short time to make
+their long talked-of submission to the Emperor at Ratisbon; but,
+partly from their German tardiness of movement, partly from the
+obstinate delays interposed by the proud old Freiherrinn, who was
+as averse as ever to the measure, partly from reports that the
+Court was not yet arrived at Ratisbon, the expedition was again
+and again deferred, and did not actually take place till
+September was far advanced.</p>
+<p>Poor Christina would have given worlds to go with them, and
+even entreated to be sent to Ulm with an avowal of her marriage
+to her uncle and aunt, but of this Eberhard would not hear.&nbsp;
+He said the Ulmers would thus gain an hostage, and hamper his
+movements; and, if her wedding was not to be confessed&mdash;poor
+child!&mdash;she could better bear to remain where she was than
+to face Hausfrau Johanna.&nbsp; Eberhard was fully determined to
+enrol himself in some troop, either Imperial, or, if not, among
+the Free Companies, among whom men of rank were often found, and
+he would then fetch or send for his wife and avow her openly, so
+soon as she should be out of his mother&rsquo;s reach.&nbsp; He
+longed to leave her father at home, to be some protection to her,
+but Hugh Sorel was so much the most intelligent and skilful of
+the retainers as to be absolutely indispensable to the
+party&mdash;he was their only scribe; and moreover his new suit
+of buff rendered him a creditable member of a troop that had been
+very hard to equip.&nbsp; It numbered about ten men-at-arms, only
+three being left at home to garrison the castle&mdash;namely,
+Hatto, who was too old to take; Hans, who had been hopelessly
+lame and deformed since the old Baron had knocked him off a cliff
+in a passion; and Squinting M&auml;tz, a runaway servant, who had
+murdered his master, the mayor of Strasburg, and might be caught
+and put to death if any one recognized him.&nbsp; If needful the
+villagers could always be called in to defend the castle: but of
+this there was little or no danger&mdash;the Eagle&rsquo;s Steps
+were defence enough in themselves, and the party were not likely
+to be absent more than a week or ten days&mdash;a grievous length
+of time, poor Christina thought, as she stood straining her eyes
+on the top of the watch-tower, to watch them as far as possible
+along the plain.&nbsp; Her heart was very sad, and the omen of
+the burning wheel so continually haunted her that even in her
+sleep that night she saw its brief course repeated, beheld its
+rapid fall and extinction, and then tracked the course of the
+sparks that darted from it, one rising and gleaming high in air
+till it shone like a star, another pursuing a fitful and
+irregular, but still bright course amid the dry grass on the
+hillside, just as she had indeed watched some of the sparks on
+that night, minding her of the words of the Allhallow-tide
+legend: &ldquo;<i>Fulgebunt justi et tanquam scintill&aelig; in
+arundinete discurrent</i>&rdquo;&mdash;a sentence which remained
+with her when awake, and led her to seek it out in her Latin
+Bible in the morning.</p>
+<p>Reluctantly had she gone down to the noontide meal, feeling,
+though her husband and father were far less of guardians than
+they should have been, yet that there was absolute rest, peace,
+and protection in their presence compared with what it was to be
+alone with Freiherrinn Kunigunde and her rude women without
+them.&nbsp; A few sneers on her daintiness and uselessness had
+led her to make an offer of assisting in the grand chopping of
+sausage meat and preparation of winter stores, and she had been
+answered with contempt that my young lord would not have her soil
+her delicate hands, when one of the maids who had been sent to
+fetch beer from the cellar came back with startled looks, and the
+exclamation, &ldquo;There is the Schneiderlein riding up the
+Eagle&rsquo;s Ladder upon Freiherr Ebbo&rsquo;s white
+mare!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>All the women sprang up together, and rushed to the window,
+whence they could indeed recognize both man and horse; and
+presently it became plain that both were stained with blood,
+weary, and spent; indeed, nothing but extreme exhaustion would
+have induced the man-at-arms to trust the tired, stumbling horse
+up such a perilous path.</p>
+<p>Loud were the exclamations, &ldquo;Ah! no good could come of
+not leading that mare through the Johannisfeuer.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This shameful expedition!&nbsp; Only harm could
+befall.&nbsp; This is thy doing, thou mincing
+city-girl.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;All was certain to go wrong when a pale mist widow came
+into the place.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The angry and dismayed cries all blended themselves in
+confusion in the ears of the only silent woman present; the only
+one that sounded distinctly on her brain was that of the last
+speaker, &ldquo;A pale, mist widow,&rdquo; as, holding herself a
+little in the rear of the struggling, jostling little mob of
+women, who hardly made way even for their acknowledged lady, she
+followed with failing limbs the universal rush to the entrance as
+soon as man and horse had mounted the slope and were lost sight
+of.</p>
+<p>A few moments more, and the throng of expectants was at the
+foot of the hall steps, just as the lanzknecht reached the arched
+entrance.&nbsp; His comrade Hans took his bridle, and almost
+lifted him from his horse; he reeled and stumbled as, pale,
+battered, and bleeding, he tried to advance to Freiherinn
+Kunigunde, and, in answer to her hasty interrogation, faltered
+out, &ldquo;Ill news, gracious lady.&nbsp; We have been set upon
+by the accursed Schlangenwaldern, and I am the only living man
+left.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Christina scarce heard even these last words; senses and
+powers alike failed her, and she sank back on the stone steps in
+a deathlike swoon.</p>
+<p>When she came to herself she was lying on her bed, Ursel and
+Else, another of the women, busy over her, and Ursel&rsquo;s
+voice was saying, &ldquo;Ah, she is coming round.&nbsp; Look up,
+sweet lady, and fear not.&nbsp; You are our gracious Lady
+Baroness.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is he here?&nbsp; O, has he said so?&nbsp; O, let me
+see him&mdash;Sir Eberhard,&rdquo; faintly cried Christina with
+sobbing breath.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, no, no,&rdquo; said the old woman; &ldquo;but see
+here,&rdquo; and she lifted up Christina&rsquo;s powerless,
+bloodless hand, and showed her the ring on the finger.&nbsp; Her
+bosom had been evidently searched when her dress was loosened in
+her swoon, and her ring found and put in its place.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;There, you can hold up your head with the best of them; he
+took care of that&mdash;my dear young Freiherr, the boy that I
+nursed,&rdquo; and the old woman&rsquo;s burst of tears brought
+back the truth to Christina&rsquo;s reviving senses.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, tell me,&rdquo; she said, trying to raise herself,
+&ldquo;was it indeed so?&nbsp; O say it was not as he
+said!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, woe&rsquo;s me, woe&rsquo;s me, that it was even
+so,&rdquo; lamented Ursel; &ldquo;but oh, be still, look not so
+wild, dear lady.&nbsp; The dear, true-hearted young lord, he
+spent his last breath in owning you for his true lady, and in
+bidding us cherish you and our young baron that is to be.&nbsp;
+And the gracious lady below&mdash;she owns you; there is no fear
+of her now; so vex not yourself, dearest, most gracious
+lady.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Christina did not break out into the wailing and weeping that
+the old nurse expected; she was still far too much stunned and
+overwhelmed, and she entreated to be told all, lying still, but
+gazing at Ursel with piteous bewildered eyes.&nbsp; Ursel and
+Else helping one another out, tried to tell her, but they were
+much confused; all they knew was that the party had been
+surprised at night in a village hostel by the Schlangenwaldern,
+and all slain, though the young Baron had lived long enough to
+charge the Schneiderlein with his commendation of his wife to his
+mother; but all particulars had been lost in the general
+confusion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, let me see the Schneiderlein,&rdquo; implored
+Christina, by this time able to rise and cross the room to the
+large carved chair; and Ursel immediately turned to her
+underling, saying, &ldquo;Tell the Schneiderlein that the
+gracious Lady Baroness desires his presence.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Else&rsquo;s wooden shoes clattered down stairs, but the next
+moment she returned.&nbsp; &ldquo;He cannot come; he is quite
+spent, and he will let no one touch his arm till Ursel can come,
+not even to get off his doublet.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I will go to him,&rdquo; said Christina, and, revived
+by the sense of being wanted, she moved at once to the turret,
+where she kept some rag and some ointment, which she had found
+needful in the latter stages of Ermentrude&rsquo;s
+illness&mdash;indeed, household surgery was a part of regular
+female education, and Christina had had plenty of practice in
+helping her charitable aunt, so that the superiority of her skill
+to that of Ursel had long been avowed in the castle.&nbsp; Ursel
+made no objection further than to look for something that could
+be at once converted into a widow&rsquo;s veil&mdash;being in the
+midst of her grief quite alive to the need that no matronly badge
+should be omitted&mdash;but nothing came to hand in time, and
+Christina was descending the stairs, on her way to the kitchen,
+where she found the fugitive man-at-arms seated on a rough
+settle, his head and wounded arm resting on the table, while
+groans of pain, weariness, and impatience were interspersed with
+imprecations on the stupid awkward girls who surrounded him.</p>
+<p>Pity and the instinct of affording relief must needs take the
+precedence even of the desire to hear of her husband&rsquo;s
+fate; and, as the girls hastily whispered, &ldquo;Here she
+is,&rdquo; and the lanzknecht hastily tried to gather himself up,
+and rise with tokens of respect; she bade him remain still, and
+let her see what she could do for him.&nbsp; In fact, she at once
+perceived that he was in no condition to give a coherent account
+of anything, he was so completely worn out, and in so much
+suffering.&nbsp; She bade at once that some water should be
+heated, and some of the broth of the dinner set on the fire; then
+with the shears at her girdle, and her soft, light fingers, she
+removed the torn strip of cloth that had been wound round the
+arm, and cut away the sleeve, showing the arm not broken, but
+gashed at the shoulder, and thence the whole length grazed and
+wounded by the descent of the sword down to the wrist.&nbsp; So
+tender was her touch, that he scarcely winced or moaned under her
+hand; and, when she proceeded, with Ursel&rsquo;s help, to bathe
+the wound with the warm water, the relief was such that the
+wearied man absolutely slumbered during the process, which
+Christina protracted on that very account.&nbsp; She then dressed
+and bandaged the arm, and proceeded to skim&mdash;as no one else
+in the castle would do&mdash;the basin of soup, with which she
+then fed her patient as he leant back in the corner of the
+settle, at first in the same somnolent, half-conscious state in
+which he had been ever since the relief from the severe pain; but
+after a few spoonfuls the light and life came back to his eye,
+and he broke out, &ldquo;Thanks, thanks, gracious lady!&nbsp;
+This is the Lady Baroness for me!&nbsp; My young lord was the
+only wise man!&nbsp; Thanks, lady; now am I my own man
+again.&nbsp; It had been long ere the old Freiherrinn had done so
+much for me!&nbsp; I am your man, lady, for life or
+death!&rdquo;&nbsp; And, before she knew what he was about, the
+gigantic Schneiderlein had slid down on his knees, seized her
+hand, and kissed it&mdash;the first act of homage to her rank,
+but most startling and distressing to her.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; she faltered, &ldquo;prithee do not; thou must
+rest.&nbsp; Only if&mdash;if thou canst only tell me if he, my
+own dear lord, sent me any greeting, I would wait to hear the
+rest till thou hast slept.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah! the dog of Schlangenwald!&rdquo; was the first
+answer; then, as he continued, &ldquo;You see, lady, we had
+ridden merrily as far as Jacob M&uuml;ller&rsquo;s hostel, the
+traitor,&rdquo; it became plain that he meant to begin at the
+beginning.&nbsp; She allowed Ursel to seat her on the bench
+opposite to his settle, and, leaning forward, heard his narrative
+like one in a dream.&nbsp; There, the Schneiderlein proceeded to
+say, they put up for the night, entirely unsuspicious of evil;
+Jacob M&uuml;ller, who was known to himself, as well as to Sorel
+and to the others, assuring them that the way was clear to
+Ratisbon, and that he heard the Emperor was most favourably
+disposed to any noble who would tender his allegiance.&nbsp;
+Jacob&rsquo;s liquors were brought out, and were still in course
+of being enjoyed, when the house was suddenly surrounded by an
+overpowering number of the retainers of Schlangenwald, with their
+Count himself at their head.&nbsp; He had been evidently resolved
+to prevent the timely submission of the enemies of his race, and
+suddenly presenting himself before the elder Baron, had
+challenged him to instantaneous battle, claiming credit to
+himself for not having surprised them when asleep.&nbsp; The
+disadvantage had been scarcely less than if this had been the
+case, for the Adlersteinern were all half-intoxicated, and far
+inferior in numbers&mdash;at least, on the showing of the
+Schneiderlein&mdash;and a desperate fight had ended by his being
+flung aside in a corner, bound fast by the ankles and wrists, the
+only living prisoner, except his young lord, who, having several
+terrible wounds, the worst in his chest, was left unbound.</p>
+<p>Both lay helpless, untended, and silent, while the revel that
+had been so fatal to them was renewed by their captors, who
+finally all sunk into a heavy sleep.&nbsp; The torches were not
+all spent, and the moonlight shone into the room, when the
+Schneiderlein, desperate from the agony caused by the ligature
+round his wounded arm, sat up and looked about him.&nbsp; A knife
+thrown aside by one of the drunkards lay near enough to be
+grasped by his bound hands, and he had just reached it when Sir
+Eberhard made a sign to him to put it into his hand, and
+therewith contrived to cut the rope round both hands and
+feet&mdash;then pointed to the door.</p>
+<p>There was nothing to hinder an escape; the men slept the sleep
+of the drunken; but the Schneiderlein, with the rough fidelity of
+a retainer, would have lingered with a hope of saving his
+master.&nbsp; But Eberhard shook his head, and signed again to
+escape; then, making him bend down close to him, he used all his
+remaining power to whisper, as he pressed his sword into the
+retainer&rsquo;s hand,&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Go home; tell my mother&mdash;all the world&mdash;that
+Christina Sorel is my wife, wedded on the Friedmund Wake by Friar
+Peter of Offingen, and if she should bear a child, he is my true
+and lawful heir.&nbsp; My sword for him&mdash;my love to
+her.&nbsp; And if my mother would not be haunted by me, let her
+take care of her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>These words were spoken with extreme difficulty, for the
+nature of the wound made utterance nearly impossible, and each
+broken sentence cost a terrible effusion of blood.&nbsp; The
+final words brought on so choking and fatal a gush that, said the
+Schneiderlein, &ldquo;he fell back as I tried to hold him up, and
+I saw that it was all at an end, and a kind and friendly master
+and lord gone from me.&nbsp; I laid him down, and put his cross
+on his breast that I had seen him kissing many a time that
+evening; and I crossed his hands, and wiped the blood from them
+and his face.&nbsp; And, lady, he had put on his ring; I trust
+the robber caitiff&rsquo;s may have left it to him in his
+grave.&nbsp; And so I came forth, walking soft, and opening the
+door in no small dread, not of the snoring swine, but of the dogs
+without.&nbsp; But happily they were still, and even by the door
+I saw all our poor fellows stark and stiff.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My father?&rdquo; asked Christina.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ay! with his head cleft open by the Graf himself.&nbsp;
+He died like a true soldier, lady, and we have lost the best head
+among us in him.&nbsp; Well, the knave that should have watched
+the horses was as drunken as the rest of them, and I made a shift
+to put the bridle on the white mare and ride off.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Such was the narrative of the Schneiderlein, and all that was
+left to Christina was the picture of her husband&rsquo;s dying
+effort to guard her, and the haunting fancy of those long hours
+of speechless agony on the floor of the hostel, and how direful
+must have been his fears for her.&nbsp; Sad and overcome, yet not
+sinking entirely while any work of comfort remained, her heart
+yearned over her companion in misfortune, the mother who had lost
+both husband and son; and all her fears of the dread Freiherrinn
+could not prevent her from bending her steps, trembling and
+palpitating as she was, towards the hall, to try whether the
+daughter-in-law&rsquo;s right might be vouchsafed to her, of
+weeping with the elder sufferer.</p>
+<p>The Freiherrinn sat by the chimney, rocking herself to and
+fro, and holding consultation with Hatto.&nbsp; She started as
+she saw Christina approaching, and made a gesture of repulsion;
+but, with the feeling of being past all terror in this desolate
+moment, Christina stepped nearer, knelt, and, clasping her hands,
+said, &ldquo;Your pardon, lady.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pardon!&rdquo; returned the harsh voice, even harsher
+for very grief, &ldquo;thou hast naught to fear, girl.&nbsp; As
+things stand, thou canst not have thy deserts.&nbsp; Dost
+hear?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, lady, it was not such pardon that I meant.&nbsp; If
+you would let me be a daughter to you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A daughter!&nbsp; A wood-carver&rsquo;s girl to be a
+daughter of Adlerstein!&rdquo; half laughed the grim
+Baroness.&nbsp; &ldquo;Come here, wench,&rdquo; and Christina
+underwent a series of sharp searching questions on the evidences
+of her marriage.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So,&rdquo; ended the old lady, &ldquo;since better may
+not be, we must own thee for the nonce.&nbsp; Hark ye all, this
+is the Frau Freiherrinn, Freiherr Eberhard&rsquo;s widow, to be
+honoured as such,&rdquo; she added, raising her voice.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;There, girl, thou hast what thou didst strive for.&nbsp;
+Is not that enough?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Alas! lady,&rdquo; said Christina, her eyes swimming in
+tears, &ldquo;I would fain have striven to be a comforter, or to
+weep together.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What! to bewitch me as thou didst my poor son and
+daughter, and well-nigh my lord himself!&nbsp; Girl!&nbsp;
+Girl!&nbsp; Thou know&rsquo;st I cannot burn thee now; but away
+with thee; try not my patience too far.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And, more desolate than ever, the crushed and broken-hearted
+Christina, a widow before she had been owned a wife, returned to
+the room that was now so full of memories as to be even more home
+than Master Gottfried&rsquo;s gallery at Ulm.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">PASSING THE OUBLIETTE</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Who</span> can describe the dreariness of
+being snowed-up all the winter with such a mother-in-law as
+Freiherrinn Kunigunde?</p>
+<p>Yet it was well that the snow came early, for it was the best
+defence of the lonely castle from any attack on the part of the
+Schlangenwaldern, the Swabian League, or the next heir, Freiherr
+Kasimir von Adlerstein Wildschloss.&nbsp; The elder Baroness had,
+at least, the merit of a stout heart, and, even with her
+sadly-reduced garrison, feared none of them.&nbsp; She had been
+brought up in the faith that Adlerstein was impregnable, and so
+she still believed; and, if the disaster that had cut off her
+husband and son was to happen at all, she was glad that it had
+befallen before the homage had been paid.&nbsp; Probably the
+Schlangenwald Count knew how tough a morsel the castle was like
+to prove, and Wildschloss was serving at a distance, for nothing
+was heard of either during the short interval while the roads
+were still open.&nbsp; During this time an attempt had been made
+through Father Norbert to ascertain what had become of the
+corpses of the two Barons and their followers, and it had
+appeared that the Count had carried them all off from the inn, no
+doubt to adorn his castle with their limbs, or to present them to
+the Emperor in evidence of his zeal for order.&nbsp; The old
+Baron could not indeed have been buried in consecrated ground,
+nor have masses said for him; but for the weal of her son&rsquo;s
+soul Dame Kunigunde gave some of her few ornaments, and Christina
+added her gold earrings, and all her scanty purse, that both her
+husband and father might be joined in the prayers of the
+Church&mdash;trying with all her might to put confidence in Hugh
+Sorel&rsquo;s Loretto relic, and the Indulgence he had bought,
+and trusting with more consolatory thoughts to the ever stronger
+dawnings of good she had watched in her own Eberhard.</p>
+<p>She had some consoling intercourse with the priest while all
+this was pending; but throughout the winter she was entirely cut
+off from every creature save the inmates of the castle, where, as
+far as the old lady was concerned, she only existed on
+sufferance, and all her meekness and gentleness could not win for
+her more than the barest toleration.</p>
+<p>That Eberhard had for a few hours survived his father, and
+that thus the Freiherrinn Christina was as much the Dowager
+Baroness as Kunigunde herself, was often insisted on in the
+kitchen by Ursel, Hatto, and the Schneiderlein, whom Christina
+had unconsciously rendered her most devoted servant, not only by
+her daily care of his wound, but by her kind courteous words, and
+by her giving him his proper name of Heinz, dropping the absurd
+<i>nom de guerre</i> of the Schneiderlein, or little tailor,
+which had been originally conferred on him in allusion to the
+valiant Tailorling who boasted of having killed seven flies at a
+blow, and had been carried on chiefly because of the
+contradiction between such a title and his huge brawny strength
+and fierce courage.&nbsp; Poor Eberhard, with his undaunted
+bravery and free reckless good-nature, a ruffian far more by
+education than by nature, had been much loved by his
+followers.&nbsp; His widow would have reaped the benefit of that
+affection even if her exceeding sweetness had not gained it on
+her own account; and this giant was completely gained over to
+her, when, amid all her sorrow and feebleness, she never failed
+to minister to his sufferings to the utmost, while her questions
+about his original home, and revival of the name of his
+childhood, softened him, and awoke in him better feelings.&nbsp;
+He would have died to serve her, and she might have headed an
+opposition party in the castle, had she not been quite
+indifferent to all save her grief; and, except by sitting above
+the salt at the empty table, she laid no claim to any honours or
+authority, and was more seldom than ever seen beyond what was now
+called her own room.</p>
+<p>At last, when for the second time she was seeing the snow
+wreaths dwindle, and the drops shine forth in moisture again,
+while the mountain paths were set free by the might of the
+springtide sun, she spoke almost for the first time with
+authority, as she desired Heinz to saddle her mule, and escort
+her to join in the Easter mass at the Blessed Friedmund&rsquo;s
+Chapel.&nbsp; Ursel heaped up objections; but so urgent was
+Christina for confession and for mass, that the old woman had not
+the heart to stop her by a warning to the elder Baroness, and
+took the alternative of accompanying her.&nbsp; It was a glorious
+sparkling Easter Day, lovely blue sky above, herbage and flowers
+glistening below, snow dazzling in the hollows, peasants
+assembling in holiday garb, and all rejoicing.&nbsp; Even the
+lonely widow, in her heavy veil and black mufflings, took hope
+back to her heart, and smiled when at the church door a little
+child came timidly up to her with a madder-tinted Easter
+egg&mdash;a gift once again like the happy home customs of
+Ulm.&nbsp; She gave the child a kiss&mdash;she had nothing else
+to give, but the sweet face sent it away strangely glad.</p>
+<p>The festival mass in all its exultation was not fully over,
+when anxious faces began to be seen at the door, and whisperings
+went round and many passed out.&nbsp; Nobody at Adlerstein was
+particular about silence in church, and, when the service was not
+in progress, voices were not even lowered, and, after many
+attempts on the part of the Schneiderlein to attract the
+attention of his mistress, his voice immediately succeeded the
+<i>Ite missa est</i>, &ldquo;Gracious lady, we must begone.&nbsp;
+Your mule is ready.&nbsp; There is a party at the Debateable
+Ford, whether Schlangenwald or Wildschloss we know not yet, but
+either way you must be the first thing placed in
+safety.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Christina turned deadly pale.&nbsp; She had long been ready to
+welcome death as a peaceful friend; but, sheltered as her
+girlhood had been in the quiet city, she had never been brought
+in contact with warfare, and her nervous, timid temperament made
+the thought most appalling and frightful to her, certain as she
+was that the old Baroness would resist to the uttermost.&nbsp;
+Father Norbert saw her extreme terror, and, with the thought that
+he might comfort and support her, perhaps mediate between the
+contending parties, plead that it was holy-tide, and proclaim the
+peace of the church, or at the worst protect the lady herself, he
+offered his company; but, though she thanked him, it was as if
+she scarcely understood his kindness, and a shudder passed over
+her whenever the serfs, hastily summoned to augment the garrison,
+came hurrying down the path, or turned aside into the more rugged
+and shorter descents.&nbsp; It was strange, the good father
+thought, that so timorous and fragile a being should have her lot
+cast amid these rugged places and scenes of violence, with no one
+to give her the care and cherishing she so much required.</p>
+<p>Even when she crept up the castle stairs, she was met with an
+angry rebuke, not so much for the peril she had incurred as for
+having taken away the Schneiderlein, by far the most availing
+among the scanty remnant of the retainers of Adlerstein.&nbsp;
+Attempting no answer, and not even daring to ask from what
+quarter came the alarm, Christina made her way out of the turmoil
+to that chamber of her own, the scene of so much fear and sorrow,
+and yet of some share of peace and happiness.&nbsp; But from the
+window, near the fast subsiding waters of the Debateable Ford,
+could plainly be seen the small troop of warriors, of whom Jobst
+the Kohler had brought immediate intelligence.&nbsp; The sun
+glistened on their armour, and a banner floated gaily on the
+wind; but they were a fearful sight to the inmates of the lonely
+castle.</p>
+<p>A stout heart was however Kunigunde&rsquo;s best endowment;
+and, with the steadiness and precision of a general, her commands
+rang out, as she arranged and armed her garrison, perfectly
+resolved against any submission, and confident in the strength of
+her castle; nay, not without a hope of revenge either against
+Schlangenwald or Wildschloss, whom, as a degenerate Adlerstein,
+she hated only less than the slayer of her husband and son.</p>
+<p>The afternoon of Easter Day however passed away without any
+movement on the part of the enemy, and it was not till the
+following day that they could be seen struggling through the
+ford, and preparing to ascend the mountain.&nbsp; Attacks had
+sometimes been disconcerted by posting men in the most dangerous
+passes; but, in the lack of numbers, and of trustworthy
+commanders, the Freiherrinn had judged it wiser to trust entirely
+to her walls, and keep her whole force within them.</p>
+<p>The new comers could hardly have had any hostile intentions,
+for, though well armed and accoutred, their numbers did not
+exceed twenty-five.&nbsp; The banner borne at their head was an
+azure one, with a white eagle, and their leader could be observed
+looking with amazement at the top of the watch-tower, where the
+same eagle had that morning been hoisted for the first time since
+the fall of the two Freiherren.</p>
+<p>So soon as the ascent had been made, the leader wound his
+horn, and, before the echoes had died away among the hills,
+Hatto, acting as seneschal, was demanding his purpose.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am Kasimir von Adlerstein Wildschloss,&rdquo; was the
+reply.&nbsp; &ldquo;I have hitherto been hindered by stress of
+weather from coming to take possession of my inheritance.&nbsp;
+Admit me, that I may arrange with the widowed Frau Freiherrinn as
+to her dower and residence.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The widowed Frau Freiherrinn, born of
+Adlerstein,&rdquo; returned Hatto, &ldquo;thanks the Freiherr von
+Adlerstein Wildschloss; but she holds the castle as guardian to
+the present head of the family, the Freiherr von
+Adlerstein.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is false, old man,&rdquo; exclaimed the Wildschloss;
+&ldquo;the Freiherr had no other son.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Hatto, &ldquo;but Freiherr Eberhard
+hath left us twin heirs, our young lords, for whom we hold this
+castle.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;This trifling will not serve!&rdquo; sternly spoke the
+knight.&nbsp; &ldquo;Eberhard von Adlerstein died
+unmarried.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not so,&rdquo; returned Hatto, &ldquo;our gracious Frau
+Freiherrinn, the younger, was wedded to him at the last Friedmund
+Wake, by the special blessing of our good patron, who would not
+see our house extinct.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I must see thy lady, old man,&rdquo; said Sir Kasimir,
+impatiently, not in the least crediting the story, and believing
+his cousin Kunigunde quite capable of any measure that could
+preserve to her the rule in Schloss Adlerstein, even to erecting
+some passing love affair of her son&rsquo;s into a
+marriage.&nbsp; And he hardly did her injustice, for she had
+never made any inquiry beyond the castle into the validity of
+Christina&rsquo;s espousals, nor sought after the friar who had
+performed the ceremony.&nbsp; She consented to an interview with
+the claimant of the inheritance, and descended to the gateway for
+the purpose.&nbsp; The court was at its cleanest, the thawing
+snow having newly washed away its impurities, and her proud
+figure, under her black hood and veil, made an imposing
+appearance as she stood tall and defiant in the archway.</p>
+<p>Sir Kasimir was a handsome man of about thirty, of partly
+Polish descent, and endowed with Slavonic grace and courtesy, and
+he had likewise been employed in negotiations with Burgundy, and
+had acquired much polish and knowledge of the world.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Lady,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I regret to disturb and
+intrude on a mourning family, but I am much amazed at the tidings
+I have heard; and I must pray of you to confirm them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I thought they would confound you,&rdquo; composedly
+replied Kunigunde.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And pardon me, lady, but the Diet is very nice in
+requiring full proofs.&nbsp; I would be glad to learn what lady
+was chosen by my deceased cousin Eberhard.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The lady is Christina, daughter of his esquire, Hugh
+Sorel, of an honourable family at Ulm.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ha!&nbsp; I know who and what Sorel was!&rdquo;
+exclaimed Wildschloss.&nbsp; &ldquo;Lady cousin, thou wouldst not
+stain the shield of Adlerstein with owning aught that cannot bear
+the examination of the Diet!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sir Kasimir,&rdquo; said Kunigunde proudly, &ldquo;had
+I known the truth ere my son&rsquo;s death, I had strangled the
+girl with mine own hands!&nbsp; But I learnt it only by his dying
+confession; and, had she been a beggar&rsquo;s child, she was his
+wedded wife, and her babes are his lawful heirs.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Knowest thou time&mdash;place&mdash;witnesses?&rdquo;
+inquired Sir Kasimir.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The time, the Friedmund Wake; the place, the Friedmund
+Chapel,&rdquo; replied the Baroness.&nbsp; &ldquo;Come hither,
+Schneiderlein.&nbsp; Tell the knight thy young lord&rsquo;s
+confession.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He bore emphatic testimony to poor Eberhard&rsquo;s last
+words; but as to the point of who had performed the ceremony, he
+knew not,&mdash;his mind had not retained the name.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I must see the Frau herself,&rdquo; said Wildschloss,
+feeling certain that such a being as he expected in a daughter of
+the dissolute lanzknecht Sorel would soon, by dexterous
+questioning, be made to expose the futility of her pretensions so
+flagrantly that even Kunigunde could not attempt to maintain
+them.</p>
+<p>For one moment Kunigunde hesitated, but suddenly a look of
+malignant satisfaction crossed her face.&nbsp; She spoke a few
+words to Squinting M&auml;tz, and then replied that Sir Kasimir
+should be allowed to satisfy himself, but that she could admit no
+one else into the castle; hers was a widow&rsquo;s household, the
+twins were only a few hours old, and she could not open her gates
+to admit any person besides himself.</p>
+<p>So resolved on judging for himself was Adlerstein Wildschloss
+that all this did not stagger him; for, even if he had believed
+more than he did of the old lady&rsquo;s story, there would have
+been no sense of intrusion or impropriety in such a visit to the
+mother.&nbsp; Indeed, had Christina been living in the civilized
+world, her chamber would have been hung with black cloth, black
+velvet would have enveloped her up to the eyes, and the blackest
+of cradles would have stood ready for her fatherless babe; two
+steps, in honour of her baronial rank, would have led to her bed,
+and a beaufet with the due baronial amount of gold and silver
+plate would have held the comfits and caudle to be dispensed to
+all visitors.&nbsp; As it was, the two steps built into the floor
+of the room, and the black hood that Ursel tied over her young
+mistress&rsquo;s head, were the only traces that such etiquette
+had ever been heard of.</p>
+<p>But when Baron Kasimir had clanked up the turret stairs, each
+step bringing to her many a memory of him who should have been
+there, and when he had been led to the bedside, he was completely
+taken by surprise.</p>
+<p>Instead of the great, flat-faced, coarse comeliness of a
+German wench, treated as a lady in order to deceive him, he saw a
+delicate, lily-like face, white as ivory, and the soft, sweet
+brown eyes under their drooping lashes, so full of innocence and
+sad though thankful content, that he felt as if the inquiries he
+came to make were almost sacrilege.</p>
+<p>He had seen enough of the world to know that no agent in a
+clumsy imposition would look like this pure white creature, with
+her arm encircling the two little swaddled babes, whose red faces
+and bald heads alone were allowed to appear above their
+mummy-like wrappings; and he could only make an obeisance lower
+and infinitely more respectful than that with which he had
+favoured the Baroness <i>n&eacute;e</i> von Adlerstein, with a
+few words of inquiry and apology.</p>
+<p>But Christina had her sons&rsquo; rights to defend now, and
+she had far more spirit to do so than ever she had had in
+securing her own position, and a delicate rose tint came into her
+cheek as she said in her soft voice, &ldquo;The Baroness tells
+me, that you, noble sir, would learn who wedded me to my dear and
+blessed lord, Sir Eberhard.&nbsp; It was Friar Peter of the
+Franciscan brotherhood of Offingen, an agent for selling
+indulgences.&nbsp; Two of his lay brethren were present.&nbsp; My
+dear lord gave his own name and mine in full after the holy rite;
+the friar promising his testimony if it were needed.&nbsp; He is
+to be found, or at least heard of, at his own cloister; and the
+hermit at the chapel likewise beheld a part of the
+ceremony.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Enough, enough, lady,&rdquo; replied Sir Kasimir;
+&ldquo;forgive me for having forced the question upon
+you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; replied Christina, with her blush
+deepening, &ldquo;it is but just and due to us all;&rdquo; and
+her soft eyes had a gleam of exultation, as she looked at the two
+little mummies that made up the <i>us</i>&mdash;&ldquo;I would
+have all inquiries made in full.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They shall be made, lady, as will be needful for the
+establishment of your son&rsquo;s right as a free Baron of the
+empire, but not with any doubt on my part, or desire to
+controvert that right.&nbsp; I am fully convinced, and only wish
+to serve you and my little cousins.&nbsp; Which of them is the
+head of our family?&rdquo; he added, looking at the two
+absolutely undistinguishable little chrysalises, so exactly alike
+that Christina herself was obliged to look for the black ribbon,
+on which a medal had been hung, round the neck of the
+elder.&nbsp; Sir Kasimir put one knee to the ground as he kissed
+the red cheek of the infant and the white hand of the mother.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Lady cousin,&rdquo; he said to Kunigunde, who had stood
+by all this time with an anxious, uneasy, scowling expression on
+her face, &ldquo;I am satisfied.&nbsp; I own this babe as the
+true Freiherr von Adlerstein, and far be it from me to trouble
+his heritage.&nbsp; Rather point out the way in which I may serve
+you and him.&nbsp; Shall I represent all to the Emperor, and
+obtain his wardship, so as to be able to protect you from any
+attacks by the enemies of the house?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thanks, sir,&rdquo; returned the elder lady, severely,
+seeing Christina&rsquo;s gratified, imploring face.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;The right line of Adlerstein can take care of itself
+without greedy guardians appointed by usurpers.&nbsp; Our
+submission has never been made, and the Emperor cannot dispose of
+our wardship.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And Kunigunde looked defiant, regarding herself and her
+grandson as quite as good as the Emperor, and ready to blast her
+daughter-in-law with her eyes for murmuring gratefully and
+wistfully, &ldquo;Thanks, noble sir, thanks!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Let me at least win a friendly right in my young
+cousins,&rdquo; said Sir Kasimir, the more drawn by pitying
+admiration towards their mother, as he perceived more of the
+grandmother&rsquo;s haughty repulsiveness and want of
+comprehension of the dangers of her position.&nbsp; &ldquo;They
+are not baptized?&nbsp; Let me become their godfather.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Christina&rsquo;s face was all joy and gratitude, and even the
+grandmother made no objection; in fact, it was the babes&rsquo;
+only chance of a noble sponsor; and Father Norbert, who had
+already been making ready for the baptism, was sent for from the
+hall.&nbsp; Kunigunde, meantime, moved about restlessly, went
+half-way down the stairs, and held council with some one there;
+Ursel likewise, bustled about, and Sir Kasimir remained seated on
+the chair that had been placed for him near Christina&rsquo;s
+bed.</p>
+<p>She was able again to thank him, and add, &ldquo;It may be
+that you will have more cause than the lady grandmother thinks to
+remember your offer of protection to my poor orphans.&nbsp; Their
+father and grandfather were, in very deed, on their way to make
+submission.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That is well known to me,&rdquo; said Sir
+Kasimir.&nbsp; &ldquo;Lady, I will do all in my power for
+you.&nbsp; The Emperor shall hear the state of things; and, while
+no violence is offered to travellers,&rdquo; he added, lowering
+his tone, &ldquo;I doubt not he will wait for full submission
+till this young Baron be of age to tender it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We are scarce in force to offer violence,&rdquo; said
+Christina sighing.&nbsp; &ldquo;I have no power to withstand the
+Lady Baroness.&nbsp; I am like a stranger here; but, oh! sir, if
+the Emperor and Diet will be patient and forbearing with this
+desolate house, my babes, if they live, shall strive to requite
+their mercy by loyalty.&nbsp; And the blessing of the widow and
+fatherless will fall on you, most generous knight,&rdquo; she
+added, fervently, holding out her hand.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I would I could do more for you,&rdquo; said the
+knight.&nbsp; &ldquo;Ask, and all I can do is at your
+service.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, sir,&rdquo; cried Christina, her eyes brightening,
+&ldquo;there is one most inestimable service you could render
+me&mdash;to let my uncle, Master Gottfried, the wood-carver of
+Ulm, know where I am, and of my state, and of my
+children.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Sir Kasimir repeated the name.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said.&nbsp; &ldquo;There was my home,
+there was I brought up by my dear uncle and aunt, till my father
+bore me away to attend on the young lady here.&nbsp; It is
+eighteen months since they had any tidings from her who was as a
+daughter to them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I will see them myself,&rdquo; said Kasimir; &ldquo;I
+know the name.&nbsp; Carved not Master Gottfried the stall-work
+at Augsburg?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, indeed!&nbsp; In chestnut leaves!&nbsp; And the
+Misereres all with fairy tales!&rdquo; exclaimed Christina.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Oh, sir, thanks indeed!&nbsp; Bear to the dear, dear uncle
+and aunt their child&rsquo;s duteous greetings, and tell them she
+loves them with all her heart, and prays them to forgive her, and
+to pray for her and her little ones!&nbsp; And,&rdquo; she added,
+&ldquo;my uncle may not have learnt how his brother, my father,
+died by his lord&rsquo;s side.&nbsp; Oh! pray him, if ever he
+loved his little Christina, to have masses sung for my father and
+my own dear lord.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>As she promised, Ursel came to make the babes ready for their
+baptism, and Sir Kasimir moved away towards the window.&nbsp;
+Ursel was looking uneasy and dismayed, and, as she bent over her
+mistress, she whispered, &ldquo;Lady, the Schneiderlein sends you
+word that M&auml;tz has called him to help in removing the props
+of the door you wot of when <i>he</i> yonder steps across
+it.&nbsp; He would know if it be your will?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The oubliette!&rdquo;&nbsp; This was Frau
+Kunigunde&rsquo;s usage of the relative who was doing his best
+for the welfare of her grandsons!&nbsp; Christina&rsquo;s whole
+countenance looked so frozen with horror, that Ursel felt as if
+she had killed her on the spot; but the next moment a flash of
+relief came over the pale features, and the trembling lip
+commanded itself to say, &ldquo;My best thanks to good
+Heinz.&nbsp; Say to him that I forbid it.&nbsp; If he loves the
+life of his master&rsquo;s children, he will abstain!&nbsp; Tell
+him so.&nbsp; My blessings on him if this knight leave the castle
+safe, Ursel.&rdquo; And her terrified earnest eyes impelled Ursel
+to hasten to do her bidding; but whether it had been executed,
+there was no knowing, for almost immediately the Freiherrinn and
+Father Norbert entered, and Ursel returned with them.&nbsp; Nay,
+the message given, who could tell if Heinz would be able to act
+upon it?&nbsp; In the ordinary condition of the castle, he was
+indeed its most efficient inmate; M&auml;tz did not approach him
+in strength, Hans was a cripple, Hatto would be on the right
+side; but Jobst the Kohler, and the other serfs who had been
+called in for the defence, were more likely to hold with the
+elder than the younger lady.&nbsp; And Frau Kunigunde herself,
+knowing well that the five-and-twenty men outside would be
+incompetent to avenge their master, confident in her
+narrow-minded, ignorant pride that no one could take Schloss
+Adlerstein, and incapable of understanding the changes in society
+that were rendering her isolated condition untenable, was certain
+to scout any representation of the dire consequences that the
+crime would entail.&nbsp; Kasimir had no near kindred, and
+private revenge was the only justice the Baroness believed in;
+she only saw in her crime the satisfaction of an old feud, and
+the union of the Wildschloss property with the parent stem.</p>
+<p>Seldom could such a christening have taken place as that of
+which Christina&rsquo;s bed-room was the scene&mdash;the mother
+scarcely able even to think of the holy sacrament for the horror
+of knowing that the one sponsor was already exulting in the
+speedy destruction of the other; and, poor little feeble thing,
+rallying the last remnants of her severely-tried powers to
+prevent the crime at the most terrible of risks.</p>
+<p>The elder babe received from his grandmother the hereditary
+name of Eberhard, but Sir Kasimir looked at the mother
+inquiringly, ere he gave the other to the priest.&nbsp; Christina
+had well-nigh said, &ldquo;Oubliette,&rdquo; but, recalling
+herself in time, she feebly uttered the name she had longed after
+from the moment she had known that two sons had been her Easter
+gift, &ldquo;Gottfried,&rdquo; after her beloved uncle.&nbsp; But
+Kunigunde caught the sound, and exclaimed, &ldquo;No son of
+Adlerstein shall bear abase craftsman&rsquo;s name.&nbsp; Call
+him R&auml;cher (the avenger);&rdquo; and in the word there
+already rang a note of victory and revenge that made
+Christina&rsquo;s blood run cold.&nbsp; Sir Kasimir marked her
+trouble.&nbsp; &ldquo;The lady mother loves not the sound,&rdquo;
+he said, kindly.&nbsp; &ldquo;Lady, have you any other
+wish?&nbsp; Then will I call him Friedmund.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Christina had almost smiled.&nbsp; To her the omen was of the
+best.&nbsp; Baron Friedmund had been the last common ancestor of
+the two branches of the family, the patron saint was so called,
+his wake was her wedding-day, the sound of the word imported
+peace, and the good Barons Ebbo and Friedel had ever been linked
+together lovingly by popular memory.&nbsp; And so the second
+little Baron received the name of Friedmund, and then the knight
+of Wildschloss, perceiving, with consideration rare in a warrior,
+that the mother looked worn out and feverish, at once prepared to
+kiss her hand and take leave.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;One more favour, Sir Knight,&rdquo; she said, lifting
+up her head, while a burning spot rose on either cheek.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I beg of you to take my two babes down&mdash;yes, both,
+both, in your own arms, and show them to your men, owning them as
+your kinsmen and godsons.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Sir Kasimir looked exceedingly amazed, as if he thought the
+lady&rsquo;s senses taking leave of her, and Dame Kunigunde broke
+out into declarations that it was absurd, and she did not know
+what she was talking of; but she repeated almost with passion,
+&ldquo;Take them, take them, you know not how much depends on
+it.&rdquo;&nbsp; Ursel, with unusual readiness of wit, signed and
+whispered that the young mother must be humoured, for fear of
+consequences; till the knight, in a good-natured, confused way,
+submitted to receive the two little bundles in his arms, while he
+gave place to Kunigunde, who hastily stepped before him in a
+manner that made Christina trust that her precaution would be
+effectual.</p>
+<p>The room was reeling round with her.&nbsp; The agony of those
+few minutes was beyond all things unspeakable.&nbsp; What had
+seemed just before like a certain way of saving the guest without
+real danger to her children, now appeared instead the most
+certain destruction to all, and herself the unnatural mother who
+had doomed her new-born babes for a stranger&rsquo;s sake.&nbsp;
+She could not even pray; she would have shrieked to have them
+brought back, but her voice was dead within her, her tongue clave
+to the roof of her mouth, ringings in her ears hindered her even
+from listening to the descending steps.&nbsp; She lay as one
+dead, when ten minutes afterwards the cry of one of her babes
+struck on her ear, and the next moment Ursel stood beside her,
+laying them down close to her, and saying exultingly,
+&ldquo;Safe! safe out at the gate, and down the hillside, and my
+old lady ready to gnaw off her hands for spite!&rdquo;</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE EAGLETS</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Christina&rsquo;s</span> mental and bodily
+constitution had much similarity&mdash;apparently most delicate,
+tender, and timid, yet capable of a vigour, health, and endurance
+that withstood shocks that might have been fatal to many
+apparently stronger persons.&nbsp; The events of that frightful
+Easter Monday morning did indeed almost kill her; but the
+effects, though severe, were not lasting; and by the time the
+last of Ermentrude&rsquo;s snow-wreath had vanished, she was
+sunning her babes at the window, happier than she had ever
+thought to be&mdash;above all, in the possession of both the
+children.&nbsp; A nurse had been captured for the little Baron
+from the village on the hillside; but the woman had fretted, the
+child had pined, and had been given back to his mother to save
+his life; and ever since both had thriven perfectly under her
+sole care, so that there was very nearly joy in that room.</p>
+<p>Outside it, there was more bitterness than ever.&nbsp; The
+grandmother had softened for a few moments at the birth of the
+children, with satisfaction at obtaining twice as much as she had
+hoped; but the frustration of her vengeance upon Kasimir of
+Adlerstein Wildschloss had renewed all her hatred, and she had no
+scruple in abusing &ldquo;the burgher-woman&rdquo; to the whole
+household for her artful desire to captivate another
+nobleman.&nbsp; She, no doubt, expected that degenerate fool of a
+Wildschlosser to come wooing after her; &ldquo;if he did he
+should meet his deserts.&rdquo;&nbsp; It was the favourite
+reproach whenever she chose to vent her fury on the mute,
+blushing, weeping young widow, whose glance at her babies was her
+only appeal against the cruel accusation.</p>
+<p>On Midsummer eve, Heinz the Schneiderlein, who had all day
+been taking toll from the various attendants at the Friedmund
+Wake, came up and knocked at the door.&nbsp; He had a bundle over
+his shoulder and a bag in his hand, which last he offered to
+her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The toll!&nbsp; It is for the Lady Baroness.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You are my Lady Baroness.&nbsp; I levy toll for this my
+young lord.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Take it to her, good Heinz, she must have the charge,
+and needless strife I will not breed.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The angry notes of Dame Kunigunde came up: &ldquo;How now,
+knave Schneiderlein!&nbsp; Come down with the toll
+instantly.&nbsp; It shall not be tampered with!&nbsp; Down, I
+say, thou thief of a tailor.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Go; prithee go, vex her not,&rdquo; entreated
+Christina.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Coming, lady!&rdquo; shouted Heinz, and, disregarding
+all further objurgations from beneath, he proceeded to deposit
+his bundle, and explain that it had been entrusted to him by a
+pedlar from Ulm, who would likewise take charge of anything she
+might have to send in return, and he then ran down just in time
+to prevent a domiciliary visit from the old lady.</p>
+<p>From Ulm!&nbsp; The very sound was joy; and Christina with
+trembling hands unfastened the cords and stitches that secured
+the canvas covering, within which lay folds on folds of linen,
+and in the midst a rich silver goblet, long ago brought by her
+father from Italy, a few of her own possessions, and a letter
+from her uncle secured with black floss silk, with a black
+seal.</p>
+<p>She kissed it with transport, but the contents were somewhat
+chilling by their grave formality.&nbsp; The opening address to
+the &ldquo;honour-worthy Lady Baroness and love-worthy
+niece,&rdquo; conveyed to her a doubt on good Master
+Gottfried&rsquo;s part whether she were still truly worthy of
+love or honour.&nbsp; The slaughter at Jacob M&uuml;ller&rsquo;s
+had been already known to him, and he expressed himself as
+relieved, but greatly amazed, at the information he had received
+from the Baron of Adlerstein Wildschloss, who had visited him at
+Ulm, after having verified what had been alleged at Schloss
+Adlerstein by application to the friar at Offingen.</p>
+<p>Freiherr von Adlerstein Wildschloss had further requested him
+to make known that, feud-briefs having regularly passed between
+Schlangenwald and Adlerstein, and the two Barons not having been
+within the peace of the empire, no justice could be exacted for
+their deaths; yet, in consideration of the tender age of the
+present heirs, the question of forfeiture or submission should be
+waived till they could act for themselves, and Schlangenwald
+should be withheld from injuring them so long as no molestation
+was offered to travellers.&nbsp; It was plain that Sir Kasimir
+had well and generously done his best to protect the helpless
+twins, and he sent respectful but cordial greetings to their
+mother.&nbsp; These however were far less heeded by her than the
+coldness of her uncle&rsquo;s letter.&nbsp; She had drifted
+beyond the reckoning of her kindred, and they were sending her
+her property and bridal linen, as if they had done with her, and
+had lost their child in the robber-baron&rsquo;s wife.&nbsp; Yet
+at the end there was a touch of old times in offering a blessing,
+should she still value it, and the hopes that heaven and the
+saints would comfort her; &ldquo;for surely, thou poor child,
+thou must have suffered much, and, if thou wiliest still to write
+to thy city kin, thine aunt would rejoice to hear that thou and
+thy babes were in good health.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Precise grammarian and scribe as was Uncle Gottfried, the
+lapse from the formal <i>Sie</i> to the familiar <i>Du</i> went
+to his niece&rsquo;s heart.&nbsp; Whenever her little ones left
+her any leisure, she spent this her first wedding-day in writing
+so earnest and loving a letter as, in spite of medi&aelig;val
+formality, must assure the good burgomaster that, except in
+having suffered much and loved much, his little Christina was not
+changed since she had left him.</p>
+<p>No answer could be looked for till another wake-day; but, when
+it came, it was full and loving, and therewith were sent a few
+more of her favourite books, a girdle, and a richly-scented pair
+of gloves, together with two ivory boxes of comfits, and two
+little purple silk, gold-edged, straight, narrow garments and
+tight round brimless lace caps, for the two little Barons.&nbsp;
+Nor did henceforth a wake-day pass by without bringing some such
+token, not only delightful as gratifying Christina&rsquo;s
+affection by the kindness that suggested them, but supplying
+absolute wants in the dire stress of poverty at Schloss
+Adlerstein.</p>
+<p>Christina durst not tell her mother-in-law of the terms on
+which they were unmolested, trusting to the scantiness of the
+retinue, and to her own influence with the Schneiderlein to
+hinder any serious violence.&nbsp; Indeed, while the Count of
+Schlangenwald was in the neighbourhood, his followers took care
+to secure all that could be captured at the Debateable Ford, and
+the broken forces of Adlerstein would have been insane had they
+attempted to contend with such superior numbers.&nbsp; That the
+castle remained unattacked was attributed by the elder Baroness
+to its own merits; nor did Christina undeceive her.&nbsp; They
+had no intercourse with the outer world, except that once a
+pursuivant arrived with a formal intimation from their kinsman,
+the Baron of Adlerstein Wildschloss, of his marriage with the
+noble Fr&auml;ulein, Countess Valeska von Trautbach, and a
+present of a gay dagger for each of his godsons.&nbsp; Frau
+Kunigunde triumphed a good deal over the notion of
+Christina&rsquo;s supposed disappointment; but the tidings were
+most welcome to the younger lady, who trusted they would put an
+end to all future taunts about Wildschloss.&nbsp; Alas! the
+handle for abuse was too valuable to be relinquished.</p>
+<p>The last silver cup the castle had possessed had to be given
+as a reward to the pursuivant, and mayhap Frau Kunigunde reckoned
+this as another offence of her daughter-in-law, since, had Sir
+Kasimir been safe in the oubliette, the twins might have shared
+his broad lands on the Danube, instead of contributing to the
+fees of his pursuivant.&nbsp; The cup could indeed be ill
+spared.&nbsp; The cattle and swine, the dues of the serfs, and
+the yearly toll at the wake were the sole resources of the
+household; and though there was no lack of meat, milk, and black
+bread, sufficient garments could scarce be come by, with all the
+spinning of the household, woven by the village webster, of whose
+time the baronial household, by prescriptive right, owned the
+lion&rsquo;s share.</p>
+<p>These matters little troubled the two beings in whom
+Christina&rsquo;s heart was wrapped up.&nbsp; Though running
+about barefooted and bareheaded, they were healthy, handsome,
+straight-limbed, noble-looking creatures, so exactly alike, and
+so inseparable, that no one except herself could tell one from
+the other save by the medal of Our Lady worn by the elder, and
+the little cross carved by the mother for the younger; indeed, at
+one time, the urchins themselves would feel for cross or medal,
+ere naming themselves &ldquo;Ebbo,&rdquo; or
+&ldquo;Friedel.&rdquo;&nbsp; They were tall for their age, but
+with the slender make of their foreign ancestry; and, though
+their fair rosy complexions were brightened by mountain mists and
+winds, their rapidly darkening hair, and large liquid brown eyes,
+told of their Italian blood.&nbsp; Their grandmother looked on
+their colouring as a taint, and Christina herself had hoped to
+see their father&rsquo;s simple, kindly blue eyes revive in his
+boys; but she could hardly have desired anything different from
+the dancing, kindling, or earnest glances that used to flash from
+under their long black lashes when they were nestling in her lap,
+or playing by her knee, making music with their prattle, or
+listening to her answers with faces alive with
+intelligence.&nbsp; They scarcely left her time for sorrow or
+regret.</p>
+<p>They were never quarrelsome.&nbsp; Either from the influence
+of her gentleness, or from their absolute union, they could do
+and enjoy nothing apart, and would as soon have thought of their
+right and left hands falling out as of Ebbo and Friedel
+disputing.&nbsp; Ebbo however was always the right hand.&nbsp;
+<i>The</i> Freiherr, as he had been called from the first, had,
+from the time he could sit at the table at all, been put into the
+baronial chair with the eagle carved at the back; every member of
+the household, from his grandmother downwards, placed him
+foremost, and Friedel followed their example, at the less loss to
+himself, as his hand was always in Ebbo&rsquo;s, and all their
+doings were in common.&nbsp; Sometimes however the mother doubted
+whether there would have been this perfect absence of all contest
+had the medal of the firstborn chanced to hang round
+Friedmund&rsquo;s neck instead of Eberhard&rsquo;s.&nbsp; At
+first they were entirely left to her.&nbsp; Their grandmother
+heeded them little as long as they were healthy, and evidently
+regarded them more as heirs of Adlerstein than as grandchildren;
+but, as they grew older, she showed anxiety lest their mother
+should interfere with the fierce, lawless spirit proper to their
+line.</p>
+<p>One winter day, when they were nearly six years old,
+Christina, spinning at her window, had been watching them
+snowballing in the castle court, smiling and applauding every
+large handful held up to her, every laughing combat, every
+well-aimed hit, as the hardy little fellows scattered the snow in
+showers round them, raising their merry fur-capped faces to the
+bright eyes that &ldquo;rained influence and judged the
+prize.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>By and by they stood still; Ebbo&mdash;she knew him by the
+tossed head and commanding air&mdash;was proposing what Friedel
+seemed to disapprove; but, after a short discussion, Ebbo flung
+away from him, and went towards a shed where was kept a wolf-cub,
+recently presented to the young Barons by old Ulrich&rsquo;s
+son.&nbsp; The whelp was so young as to be quite harmless, but it
+was far from amiable; Friedel never willingly approached it, and
+the snarling and whining replies to all advances had begun to
+weary and irritate Ebbo.&nbsp; He dragged it out by its chain,
+and, tethering it to a post, made it a mark for his snowballs,
+which, kneaded hard, and delivered with hearty good-will by his
+sturdy arms, made the poor little beast yelp with pain and
+terror, till the more tender-hearted Friedel threw himself on his
+brother to withhold him, while M&auml;tz stood by laughing and
+applauding the Baron.&nbsp; Seeing Ebbo shake Friedel off with
+unusual petulance, and pitying the tormented animal, Christina
+flung a cloak round her head and hastened down stairs, entering
+the court just as the terrified whelp had made a snap at the boy,
+which was returned by angry, vindictive pelting, not merely with
+snow, but with stones.&nbsp; Friedel sprang to her crying, and
+her call to Ebbo made him turn, though with fury in his face,
+shouting, &ldquo;He would bite me! the evil beast!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Come with me, Ebbo,&rdquo; she said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He shall suffer for it, the spiteful, ungrateful
+brute!&nbsp; Let me alone, mother!&rdquo; cried Ebbo, stamping on
+the snow, but still from habit yielding to her hand on his
+shoulder.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What now?&rdquo; demanded the old Baroness, appearing
+on the scene.&nbsp; &ldquo;Who is thwarting the Baron?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She; she will not let me deal with yonder savage
+whelp,&rdquo; cried the boy.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She!&nbsp; Take thy way, child,&rdquo; said the old
+lady.&nbsp; &ldquo;Visit him well for his malice.&nbsp; None
+shall withstand thee here.&nbsp; At thy peril!&rdquo; she added,
+turning on Christina.&nbsp; &ldquo;What, art not content to have
+brought base mechanical blood into a noble house?&nbsp; Wouldst
+make slaves and cowards of its sons?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I would teach them true courage, not cruelty,&rdquo;
+she tried to say.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What should such as thou know of courage?&nbsp; Look
+here, girl: another word to daunt the spirit of my grandsons, and
+I&rsquo;ll have thee scourged down the mountain-side!&nbsp;
+On!&nbsp; At him, Ebbo!&nbsp; That&rsquo;s my gallant young
+knight!&nbsp; Out of the way, girl, with thy whining looks!&nbsp;
+What, Friedel, be a man, and aid thy brother!&nbsp; Has she made
+thee a puling woman already?&rdquo;&nbsp; And Kunigunde laid an
+ungentle grasp upon Friedmund, who was clinging to his mother,
+hiding his face in her gown.&nbsp; He struggled against the
+clutch, and would not look up or be detached.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Fie, poor little coward!&rdquo; taunted the old lady;
+&ldquo;never heed him, Ebbo, my brave Baron!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Cut to the heart, Christina took refuge in her room, and
+gathered her Friedel to her bosom, as he sobbed out, &ldquo;Oh,
+mother, the poor little wolf!&nbsp; Oh, mother, are you weeping
+too?&nbsp; The grandmother should not so speak to the sweetest,
+dearest motherling,&rdquo; he added, throwing his arms round her
+neck.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Alas, Friedel, that Ebbo should learn that it is brave
+to hurt the weak!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is not like Walther of V&ouml;gelwiede,&rdquo; said
+Friedel, whose mind had been much impressed by the
+Minnesinger&rsquo;s bequest to the birds.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nor like any true Christian knight.&nbsp; Alas, my poor
+boys, must you be taught foul cruelty and I too weak and cowardly
+to save you?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That never will be,&rdquo; said Friedel, lifting his
+head from her shoulder.&nbsp; &ldquo;Hark! what a howl was
+that!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Listen not, dear child; it does but pain
+thee.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But Ebbo is not shouting.&nbsp; Oh, mother, he is
+vexed&mdash;he is hurt!&rdquo; cried Friedel, springing from her
+lap; but, ere either could reach the window, Ebbo had vanished
+from the scene.&nbsp; They only saw the young wolf stretched dead
+on the snow, and the same moment in burst Ebbo, and flung himself
+on the floor in a passion of weeping.&nbsp; Stimulated by the
+applause of his grandmother and of M&auml;tz, he had furiously
+pelted the poor animal with all missiles that came to hand, till
+a blow, either from him or M&auml;tz, had produced such a howl
+and struggle of agony, and then such terrible stillness, as had
+gone to the young Baron&rsquo;s very heart, a heart as soft as
+that of his father had been by nature.&nbsp; Indeed, his sobs
+were so piteous that his mother was relieved to hear only,
+&ldquo;The wolf! the poor wolf!&rdquo; and to find that he
+himself was unhurt; and she was scarcely satisfied of this when
+Dame Kunigunde came up also alarmed, and thus turned his grief to
+wrath.&nbsp; &ldquo;As if I would cry in that way for a
+bite!&rdquo; he said.&nbsp; &ldquo;Go, grandame; you made me do
+it, the poor beast!&rdquo; with a fresh sob.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ulrich shall get thee another cub, my child.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, no; I never will have another cub!&nbsp; Why did
+you let me kill it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For shame, Ebbo!&nbsp; Weep for a spiteful brute!&nbsp;
+That&rsquo;s no better than thy mother or Friedel.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I love my mother!&nbsp; I love Friedel!&nbsp; They
+would have withheld me.&nbsp; Go, go; I hate you!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Peace, peace, Ebbo,&rdquo; exclaimed his mother;
+&ldquo;you know not what you say.&nbsp; Ask your
+grandmother&rsquo;s pardon.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Peace, thou fool!&rdquo; screamed the old lady.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;The Baron speaks as he will in his own castle.&nbsp; He is
+not to be checked here, and thwarted there, and taught to mince
+his words like a cap-in-hand pedlar.&nbsp; Pardon!&nbsp; When did
+an Adlerstein seek pardon?&nbsp; Come with me, my Baron; I have
+still some honey-cakes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not I,&rdquo; replied Ebbo; &ldquo;honey-cakes will not
+cure the wolf whelp.&nbsp; Go: I want my mother and
+Friedel.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Alone with them his pride and passion were gone; but alas!
+what augury for the future of her boys was left with the
+mother!</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER X<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE EAGLE&rsquo;S PREY</span></h2>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">It</span> fell about
+the Lammas tide,<br />
+When moor men win their hay,&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>that all the serfs of Adlerstein were collected to collect
+their lady&rsquo;s hay to be stored for the winter&rsquo;s fodder
+of the goats, and of poor Sir Eberhard&rsquo;s old white mare,
+the only steed as yet ridden by the young Barons.</p>
+<p>The boys were fourteen years old.&nbsp; So monotonous was
+their mother&rsquo;s life that it was chiefly their growth that
+marked the length of her residence in the castle.&nbsp; Otherwise
+there had been no change, except that the elder Baroness was more
+feeble in her limbs, and still more irritable and excitable in
+temper.&nbsp; There were no events, save a few hunting adventures
+of the boys, or the yearly correspondence with Ulm; and the same
+life continued, of shrinking in dread from the old lady&rsquo;s
+tyrannous dislike, and of the constant endeavour to infuse better
+principles into the boys, without the open opposition for which
+there was neither power nor strength.</p>
+<p>The boys&rsquo; love was entirely given to their mother.&nbsp;
+Far from diminishing with their dependence on her, it increased
+with the sense of protection; and, now that they were taller than
+herself, she seemed to be cherished by them more than ever.&nbsp;
+Moreover, she was their oracle.&nbsp; Quick-witted and
+active-minded, loving books the more because their grandmother
+thought signing a feud-letter the utmost literary effort becoming
+to a noble, they never rested till they had acquired all that
+their mother could teach them; or, rather, they then became more
+restless than ever.&nbsp; Long ago had her whole store of tales
+and ballads become so familiar, by repetition, that the boys
+could correct her in the smallest variation; reading and writing
+were mastered as for pleasure; and the Nuremberg Chronicle, with
+its wonderful woodcuts, excited such a passion of curiosity that
+they must needs conquer its Latin and read it for
+themselves.&nbsp; This <i>World History</i>, with <i>Alexander
+and the Nine Worthies</i>, the cities and landscapes, and the
+oft-repeated portraits, was Eberhard&rsquo;s study; but Friedmund
+continued&mdash;constant to Walther of V&ouml;gelweide.&nbsp;
+Eberhard cared for no character in the Vulgate so much as for
+Judas the Maccabee; but Friedmund&rsquo;s heart was all for King
+David; and to both lads, shut up from companionship as they were,
+every acquaintance in their books was a living being whose like
+they fancied might be met beyond their mountain.&nbsp; And, when
+they should go forth, like Dietrich of Berne, in search of
+adventures, doughty deeds were chiefly to fall to the lot of
+Ebbo&rsquo;s lance; while Friedel was to be their Minnesinger;
+and indeed certain verses, that he had murmured in his
+brother&rsquo;s ear, had left no doubt in Ebbo&rsquo;s mind that
+the exploits would be worthily sung.</p>
+<p>The soft dreamy eye was becoming Friedel&rsquo;s
+characteristic, as fire and keenness distinguished his
+brother&rsquo;s glance.&nbsp; When at rest, the twins could be
+known apart by their expression, though in all other respects
+they were as alike as ever; and let Ebbo look thoughtful or
+Friedel eager and they were again undistinguishable; and indeed
+they were constantly changing looks.&nbsp; Had not Friedel been
+beside him, Ebbo would have been deemed a wondrous student for
+his years; had not Ebbo been the standard of comparison, Friedel
+would have been in high repute for spirit and enterprise and
+skill as a cragsman, with the crossbow, and in all feats of arms
+that the Schneiderlein could impart.&nbsp; They shared all
+occupations; and it was by the merest shade that Ebbo excelled
+with the weapon, and Friedel with the book or tool.&nbsp; For the
+artist nature was in them, not intentionally excited by their
+mother, but far too strong to be easily discouraged.&nbsp; They
+had long daily gazed at Ulm in the distance, hoping to behold the
+spire completed; and the illustrations in their mother&rsquo;s
+books excited a strong desire to imitate them.&nbsp; The floor
+had often been covered with charcoal outlines even before
+Christina was persuaded to impart the rules she had learnt from
+her uncle; and her carving-tools were soon seized upon.&nbsp; At
+first they were used only upon knobs of sticks; but one day when
+the boys, roaming on the mountain, had lost their way, and coming
+to the convent had been there hospitably welcomed by Father
+Norbert, they came home wild to make carvings like what they had
+seen in the chapel.&nbsp; Jobst the Kohler was continually
+importuned for soft wood; the fair was ransacked for knives; and
+even the old Baroness could not find great fault with the
+occupation, base and mechanical though it were, which disposed of
+the two restless spirits during the many hours when winter storms
+confined them to the castle.&nbsp; Rude as was their work, the
+constant observation and choice of subjects were an unsuspected
+training and softening.&nbsp; It was not in vain that they lived
+in the glorious mountain fastness, and saw the sun descend in his
+majesty, dyeing the masses of rock with purple and crimson; not
+in vain that they beheld peak and ravine clothed in purest snow,
+flushed with rosy light at morn and eve, or contrasted with the
+purple blue of the sky; or that they stood marvelling at ice
+caverns with gigantic crystal pendants shining with the most
+magical pure depths of sapphire and emerald, &ldquo;as if,&rdquo;
+said Friedel, &ldquo;winter kept in his service all the
+jewel-forging dwarfs of the motherling&rsquo;s tales.&rdquo; And,
+when the snow melted and the buds returned, the ivy spray, the
+smiling saxifrage, the purple gentian bell, the feathery rowan
+leaf, the symmetrical lady&rsquo;s mantle, were hailed and loved
+first as models, then for themselves.</p>
+<p>One regret their mother had, almost amounting to shame.&nbsp;
+Every virtuous person believed in the efficacy of the rod, and,
+maugre her own docility, she had been chastised with it almost as
+a religious duty; but her sons had never felt the weight of a
+blow, except once when their grandmother caught them carving a
+border of eagles and doves round the hall table, and then Ebbo
+had returned the blow with all his might.&nbsp; As to herself, if
+she ever worked herself up to attempt chastisement, the Baroness
+was sure to fall upon her for insulting the noble birth of her
+sons, and thus gave them a triumph far worse for them than
+impunity.&nbsp; In truth, the boys had their own way, or rather
+the Baron had his way, and his way was Baron
+Friedmund&rsquo;s.&nbsp; Poor, bare, and scanty as were all the
+surroundings of their life, everything was done to feed their
+arrogance, with only one influence to counteract their education
+in pride and violence&mdash;a mother&rsquo;s influence, indeed,
+but her authority was studiously taken from her, and her position
+set at naught, with no power save what she might derive from
+their love and involuntary honour, and the sight of the pain
+caused her by their wrong-doings.</p>
+<p>And so the summer&rsquo;s hay-harvest was come.&nbsp; Peasants
+clambered into the green nooks between the rocks to cut down with
+hook or knife the flowery grass, for there was no space for the
+sweep of a scythe.&nbsp; The best crop was on the bank of the
+Braunwasser, by the Debateable Ford, but this was cut and carried
+on the backs of the serfs, much earlier than the mountain grass,
+and never without much vigilance against the Schlangenwaldern;
+but this year the Count was absent at his Styrian castle, and
+little had been seen or heard of his people.</p>
+<p>The full muster of serfs appeared, for Frau Kunigunde admitted
+of no excuses, and the sole absentee was a widow who lived on the
+ledge of the mountain next above that on which the castle
+stood.&nbsp; Her son reported her to be very ill, and with tears
+in his eyes entreated Baron Friedel to obtain leave for him to
+return to her, since she was quite alone in her solitary hut,
+with no one even to give her a drink of water.&nbsp; Friedel
+rushed with the entreaty to his grandmother, but she laughed it
+to scorn.&nbsp; Lazy Koppel only wanted an excuse, or, if not,
+the woman was old and useless, and men could not be spared.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah! good grandame,&rdquo; said Friedel, &ldquo;his
+father died with ours.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The more honour for him!&nbsp; The more he is bound to
+work for us.&nbsp; Off, junker, make no loiterers.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Grieved and discomfited, Friedel betook himself to his mother
+and brother.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Foolish lad not to have come to me!&rdquo; said the
+young Baron.&nbsp; &ldquo;Where is he?&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll send him
+at once.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But Christina interposed an offer to go and take
+Koppel&rsquo;s place beside his mother, and her skill was so much
+prized over all the mountain-side, that the alternative was
+gratefully accepted, and she was escorted up the steep path by
+her two boys to the hovel, where she spent the day in attendance
+on the sick woman.</p>
+<p>Evening came on, the patient was better, but Koppel did not
+return, nor did the young Barons come to fetch their mother
+home.&nbsp; The last sunbeams were dying off the mountain-tops,
+and, beginning to suspect something amiss, she at length set off,
+and half way down met Koppel, who replied to her question,
+&ldquo;Ah, then, the gracious lady has not heard of our
+luck.&nbsp; Excellent booty, and two prisoners!&nbsp; The young
+Baron has been a hero indeed, and has won himself a knightly
+steed.&rdquo;&nbsp; And, on her further interrogation, he added,
+that an unusually rich but small company had been reported by
+Jobst the Kohler to be on the way to the ford, where he had
+skilfully prepared a stumbling-block.&nbsp; The gracious Baroness
+had caused Hatto to jodel all the hay-makers together, and they
+had fallen on the travellers by the straight path down the
+crag.&nbsp; &ldquo;Ach! did not the young Baron spring like a
+young gemsbock?&nbsp; And in midstream down came their
+pack-horses and their wares!&nbsp; Some of them took to flight,
+but, pfui, there were enough for my young lord to show his mettle
+upon.&nbsp; Such a prize the saints have not sent since the old
+Baron&rsquo;s time.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Christina pursued her walk in dismay at this new beginning of
+freebooting in its worst form, overthrowing all her hopes.&nbsp;
+The best thing that could happen would be the immediate
+interference of the Swabian League, while her sons were too young
+to be personally held guilty.&nbsp; Yet this might involve ruin
+and confiscation; and, apart from all consequences, she bitterly
+grieved that the stain of robbery should have fallen on her
+hitherto innocent sons.</p>
+<p>Every peasant she met greeted her with praises of their young
+lord, and, when she mounted the hall-steps, she found the floor
+strewn with bales of goods.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mother,&rdquo; cried Ebbo, flying up to her,
+&ldquo;have you heard?&nbsp; I have a horse! a spirited bay, a
+knightly charger, and Friedel is to ride him by turns with
+me.&nbsp; Where is Friedel?&nbsp; And, mother, Heinz said I
+struck as good a stroke as any of them, and I have a sword for
+Friedel now.&nbsp; Why does he not come?&nbsp; And, motherling,
+this is for you, a gown of velvet, a real black velvet, that will
+make you fairer than our Lady at the Convent.&nbsp; Come to the
+window and see it, mother dear.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The boy was so joyously excited that she could hardly
+withstand his delight, but she did not move.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you like the velvet?&rdquo; he
+continued.&nbsp; &ldquo;We always said that, the first prize we
+won, the motherling should wear velvet.&nbsp; Do but look at
+it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Woe is me, my Ebbo!&rdquo; she sighed, bending to kiss
+his brow.</p>
+<p>He understood her at once, coloured, and spoke hastily and in
+defiance.&nbsp; &ldquo;It was in the river, mother, the horses
+fell; it is our right.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Fairly, Ebbo?&rdquo; she asked in a low voice.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, mother, if Jobst <i>did</i> hide a branch in
+midstream, it was no doing of mine; and the horses fell.&nbsp;
+The Schlangenwaldern don&rsquo;t even wait to let them
+fall.&nbsp; We cannot live, if we are to be so nice and
+dainty.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah! my son, I thought not to hear you call mercy and
+honesty mere niceness.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What do I hear?&rdquo; exclaimed Frau Kunigunde,
+entering from the storeroom, where she had been disposing of some
+spices, a much esteemed commodity.&nbsp; &ldquo;Are you chiding
+and daunting this boy, as you have done with the
+other?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My mother may speak to me!&rdquo; cried Ebbo, hotly,
+turning round.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And quench thy spirit with whining fooleries!&nbsp;
+Take the Baron&rsquo;s bounty, woman, and vex him not after his
+first knightly exploit.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Heaven knows, and Ebbo knows,&rdquo; said the trembling
+Christina, &ldquo;that, were it a knightly exploit, I were the
+first to exult.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thou! thou craftsman&rsquo;s girl! dost presume to call
+in question the knightly deeds of a noble house!&nbsp;
+There!&rdquo; cried the furious Baroness, striking her
+face.&nbsp; &ldquo;Now! dare to be insolent again.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Her hand was uplifted for another blow, when it was grasped by
+Eberhard, and, the next moment, he likewise held the other hand,
+with youthful strength far exceeding hers.&nbsp; She had often
+struck his mother before, but not in his presence, and the
+greatness of the shock seemed to make him cool and absolutely
+dignified.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Be still, grandame,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp; &ldquo;No,
+mother, I am not hurting her,&rdquo; and indeed the surprise
+seemed to have taken away her rage and volubility, and
+unresistingly she allowed him to seat her in a chair.&nbsp; Still
+holding her arm, he made his clear boyish voice resound through
+the hall, saying, &ldquo;Retainers all, know that, as I am your
+lord and master, so is my honoured mother lady of the castle, and
+she is never to be gainsay&rsquo;ed, let her say or do what she
+will.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You are right, Herr Freiherr,&rdquo; said Heinz.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;The Frau Christina is our gracious and beloved dame.&nbsp;
+Long live the Freiherrinn Christina!&rdquo; And the voices of
+almost all the serfs present mingled in the cry.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And hear you all,&rdquo; continued Eberhard, &ldquo;she
+shall rule all, and never be trampled on more.&nbsp; Grandame,
+you understand?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The old woman seemed confounded, and cowered in her chair
+without speaking.&nbsp; Christina, almost dismayed by this
+silence, would have suggested to Ebbo to say something kind or
+consoling; but at that moment she was struck with alarm by his
+renewed inquiry for his brother.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Friedel!&nbsp; Was not he with thee?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No; I never saw him!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ebbo flew up the stairs, and shouted for his brother; then,
+coming down, gave orders for the men to go out on the
+mountain-side, and search and jodel.&nbsp; He was hurrying with
+them, but his mother caught his arm.&nbsp; &ldquo;O Ebbo, how can
+I let you go?&nbsp; It is dark, and the crags are so
+perilous!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mother, I cannot stay!&rdquo; and the boy flung his
+arms round her neck, and whispered in her ear, &ldquo;Friedel
+said it would be a treacherous attack, and I called him a
+craven.&nbsp; Oh, mother, we never parted thus before!&nbsp; He
+went up the hillside.&nbsp; Oh, where is he?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Infected by the boy&rsquo;s despairing voice, yet relieved
+that Friedel at least had withstood the temptation, Christina
+still held Ebbo&rsquo;s hand, and descended the steps with
+him.&nbsp; The clear blue sky was fast showing the stars, and
+into the evening stillness echoed the loud wide jodeln, cast back
+from the other side of the ravine.&nbsp; Ebbo tried to raise his
+voice, but broke down in the shout, and, choked with agitation,
+said, &ldquo;Let me go, mother.&nbsp; None know his haunts as I
+do!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hark!&rdquo; she said, only grasping him tighter.</p>
+<p>Thinner, shriller, clearer came a far-away cry from the
+heights, and Ebbo thrilled from head to foot, then sent up
+another pealing mountain shout, responded to by a jodel so
+pitched as to be plainly not an echo.&nbsp; &ldquo;Towards the
+Red Eyrie,&rdquo; said Hans.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He will have been to the Ptarmigan&rsquo;s Pool,&rdquo;
+said Ebbo, sending up his voice again, in hopes that the answer
+would sound less distant; but, instead of this, its intonations
+conveyed, to these adepts in mountain language, that Friedel
+stood in need of help.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Depend upon it,&rdquo; said the startled Ebbo,
+&ldquo;that he has got up amongst those rocks where the dead
+chamois rolled down last summer;&rdquo; then, as Christina
+uttered a faint cry of terror, Heinz added, &ldquo;Fear not,
+lady, those are not the jodeln of one who has met with a
+hurt.&nbsp; Baron Friedel has the sense to be patient rather than
+risk his bones if he cannot move safely in the dark.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Up after him!&rdquo; said Ebbo, emitting a variety of
+shouts intimating speedy aid, and receiving a halloo in reply
+that reassured even his mother.&nbsp; Equipped with a rope and
+sundry torches of pinewood, Heinz and two of the serfs were
+speedily ready, and Christina implored her son to let her come so
+far as where she should not impede the others.&nbsp; He gave her
+his arm, and Heinz held his torch so as to guide her up a winding
+path, not in itself very steep, but which she could never have
+climbed had daylight shown her what it overhung.&nbsp; Guided by
+the constant exchange of jodeln, they reached a height where the
+wind blew cold and wild, and Ebbo pointed to an intensely black
+shadow overhung by a peak rising like the gable of a house into
+the sky.&nbsp; &ldquo;Yonder lies the tarn,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t stir.&nbsp; This way lies the cliff.&nbsp;
+Fried-mund!&rdquo; exchanging the jodel for the name.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Here!&mdash;this way!&nbsp; Under the Red Eyrie,&rdquo;
+called back the wanderer; and steering their course round the
+rocks above the pool, the rescuers made their way towards the
+base of the peak, which was in fact the summit of the mountain,
+the top of the Eagle&rsquo;s Ladder, the highest step of which
+they had attained.&nbsp; The peak towered over them, and beneath,
+the castle lights seemed as if it would be easy to let a stone
+fall straight down on them.</p>
+<p>Friedel&rsquo;s cry seemed to come from under their
+feet.&nbsp; &ldquo;I am here!&nbsp; I am safe; only it grew so
+dark that I durst not climb up or down.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Schneiderlein explained that he would lower down a rope,
+which, when fastened round Friedel&rsquo;s waist, would enable
+him to climb safely up; and, after a breathless space, the
+torchlight shone upon the longed-for face, and Friedel springing
+on the path, cried, &ldquo;The mother!&mdash;and
+here!&rdquo;&mdash;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Friedel, where have you been?&nbsp; What is this in
+your arms?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He showed them the innocent face of a little white kid.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Whence is it, Friedel?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He pointed to the peak, saying, &ldquo;I was lying on my back
+by the tarn, when my lady eagle came sailing overhead, so low
+that I could see this poor little thing, and hear it
+bleat.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thou hast been to the Eyrie&mdash;the inaccessible
+Eyrie!&rdquo; exclaimed Ebbo, in amazement.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a mistake.&nbsp; It is not hard after the
+first&rdquo; said Friedel.&nbsp; &ldquo;I only waited to watch
+the old birds out again.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Robbed the eagles!&nbsp; And the young ones?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Friedmund, as if half ashamed,
+&ldquo;they were twin eaglets, and their mother had left them,
+and I felt as though I could not harm them; so I only bore off
+their provisions, and stuck some feathers in my cap.&nbsp; But by
+that time the sun was down, and soon I could not see my footing;
+and, when I found that I had missed the path, I thought I had
+best nestle in the nook where I was, and wait for day.&nbsp; I
+grieved for my mother&rsquo;s fear; but oh, to see her
+here!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, Friedel! didst do it to prove my words
+false?&rdquo; interposed Ebbo, eagerly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What words?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thou knowest.&nbsp; Make me not speak them
+again.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, those!&rdquo; said Friedel, only now recalling
+them.&nbsp; &ldquo;No, verily; they were but a moment&rsquo;s
+anger.&nbsp; I wanted to save the kid.&nbsp; I think it is old
+mother Rika&rsquo;s white kid.&nbsp; But oh, motherling!&nbsp; I
+grieve to have thus frightened you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Not a single word passed between them upon Ebbo&rsquo;s
+exploits.&nbsp; Whether Friedel had seen all from the heights, or
+whether he intuitively perceived that his brother preferred
+silence, he held his peace, and both were solely occupied in
+assisting their mother down the pass, the difficulties of which
+were far more felt now than in the excitement of the ascent; only
+when they were near home, and the boys were walking in the
+darkness with arms round one another&rsquo;s necks, Christina
+heard Friedel say low and rather sadly, &ldquo;I think I shall be
+a priest, Ebbo.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>To which Ebbo only answered, &ldquo;Pfui!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Christina understood that Friedel meant that robbery must be a
+severance between the brothers.&nbsp; Alas! had the moment come
+when their paths must diverge?&nbsp; Could Ebbo&rsquo;s step not
+be redeemed?</p>
+<p>Ursel reported that Dame Kunigunde had scarcely spoken again,
+but had retired, like one stunned, into her bed.&nbsp; Friedel
+was half asleep after the exertions of the day; but Ebbo did not
+speak, and both soon betook themselves to their little turret
+chamber within their mother&rsquo;s.</p>
+<p>Christina prayed long that night, her heart full of dread of
+the consequence of this transgression.&nbsp; Rumours of
+freebooting castles destroyed by the Swabian League had reached
+her every wake day, and, if this outrage were once known, the
+sufferance that left Adlerstein unmolested must be over.&nbsp;
+There was hope indeed in the weakness and uncertainty of the
+Government; but present safety would in reality be the ruin of
+Ebbo, since he would be encouraged to persist in the career of
+violence now unhappily begun.&nbsp; She knew not what to ask,
+save that her sons might be shielded from evil, and might fulfil
+that promise of her dream, the star in heaven, the light on
+earth.&nbsp; And for the present!&mdash;the good God guide her
+and her sons through the difficult morrow, and turn the heart of
+the unhappy old woman below!</p>
+<p>When, exhausted with weeping and watching, she rose from her
+knees, she stole softly into her sons&rsquo; turret for a last
+look at them.&nbsp; Generally they were so much alike in their
+sleep that even she was at fault between them; but that night
+there was no doubt.&nbsp; Friedel, pale after the day&rsquo;s
+hunger and fatigue, slept with relaxed features in the most
+complete calm; but though Ebbo&rsquo;s eyes were closed, there
+was no repose in his face&mdash;his hair was tossed, his colour
+flushed, his brow contracted, the arm flung across his brother
+had none of the ease of sleep.&nbsp; She doubted whether he were
+not awake; but, knowing that he would not brook any endeavour to
+force confidence he did not offer, she merely hung over them
+both, murmured a prayer and blessing, and left them.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE CHOICE IN LIFE</span></h2>
+<p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Friedel</span>, wake!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is it day?&rdquo; said Friedel, slowly wakening, and
+crossing himself as he opened his eyes.&nbsp; &ldquo;Surely the
+sun is not up&mdash;?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We must be before the sun!&rdquo; said Ebbo, who was on
+his feet, beginning to dress himself.&nbsp; &ldquo;Hush, and
+come!&nbsp; Do not wake the mother.&nbsp; It must be ere she or
+aught else be astir!&nbsp; Thy prayers&mdash;I tell thee this is
+a work as good as prayer.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Half awake, and entirely bewildered, Friedel dipped his finger
+in the pearl mussel shell of holy water over their bed, and
+crossed his own brow and his brother&rsquo;s; then, carrying
+their shoes, they crossed their mother&rsquo;s chamber, and crept
+down stairs.&nbsp; Ebbo muttered to his brother, &ldquo;Stand
+thou still there, and pray the saints to keep her asleep;&rdquo;
+and then, with bare feet, moved noiselessly behind the wooden
+partition that shut off his grandmother&rsquo;s box-bedstead from
+the rest of the hall.&nbsp; She lay asleep with open mouth,
+snoring loudly, and on her pillow lay the bunch of castle keys,
+that was always carried to her at night.&nbsp; It was a moment of
+peril when Ebbo touched it; but he had nerved himself to be both
+steady and dexterous, and he secured it without a jingle, and
+then, without entering the hall, descended into a passage lit by
+a rough opening cut in the rock.&nbsp; Friedel, who began to
+comprehend, followed him close and joyfully, and at the first
+door he fitted in, and with some difficulty turned, a key, and
+pushed open the door of a vault, where morning light, streaming
+through the grated window, showed two captives, who had started
+to their feet, and now stood regarding the pair in the doorway as
+if they thought their dreams were multiplying the young Baron who
+had led the attack.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Signori</i>&mdash;&rdquo; began the principal of the
+two; but Ebbo spoke.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sir, you have been brought here by a mistake in the
+absence of my mother, the lady of the castle.&nbsp; If you will
+follow me, I will restore all that is within my reach, and put
+you on your way.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The merchant&rsquo;s knowledge of German was small, but the
+purport of the words was plain, and he gladly left the damp,
+chilly vault.&nbsp; Ebbo pointed to the bales that strewed the
+hall.&nbsp; &ldquo;Take all that can be carried,&rdquo; he
+said.&nbsp; &ldquo;Here is your sword, and your purse,&rdquo; he
+said, for these had been given to him in the moment of
+victory.&nbsp; &ldquo;I will bring out your horse and lead you to
+the pass.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Give him food,&rdquo; whispered Friedel; but the
+merchant was too anxious to have any appetite.&nbsp; Only he
+faltered in broken German a proposal to pay his respects to the
+Signora Castellana, to whom he owed so much.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No!&nbsp; <i>Dormit in lecto</i>,&rdquo; said Ebbo,
+with a sudden inspiration caught from the Latinized sound of some
+of the Italian words, but colouring desperately as he spoke.</p>
+<p>The Latin proved most serviceable, and the merchant understood
+that his property was restored, and made all speed to gather it
+together, and transport it to the stable.&nbsp; One or two of his
+beasts of burden had been lost in the fray, and there were more
+packages than could well be carried by the merchant, his servant,
+and his horse.&nbsp; Ebbo gave the aid of the old white
+mare&mdash;now very white indeed&mdash;and in truth the boys
+pitied the merchant&rsquo;s fine young bay for being put to base
+trading uses, and were rather shocked to hear that it had been
+taken in payment for a knight&rsquo;s branched velvet gown, and
+would be sold again at Ulm.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What a poor coxcomb of a knight!&rdquo; said they to
+one another, as they patted the creature&rsquo;s neck with such
+fervent admiration that the merchant longed to present it to
+them, when he saw that the old white mare was the sole steed they
+possessed, and watched their tender guidance both of her and of
+the bay up the rocky path so familiar to them.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But ah, <i>signorini miei</i>, I am an <i>infelice
+infelicissimo</i>, ever persecuted by <i>le Fate</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By whom?&nbsp; A count like Schlangenwald?&rdquo; asked
+Ebbo.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Das Schicksal</i>,&rdquo; whispered Friedel.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Three long miserable years did I spend as a captive
+among the Moors, having lost all, my ships and all I had, and
+being forced to row their galleys, <i>gli
+scomunicati</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Galleys!&rdquo; exclaimed Ebbo; &ldquo;there are some
+pictured in our <i>World History before Carthage</i>.&nbsp; Would
+that I could see one!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The <i>signorino</i> would soon have seen his fill,
+were he between the decks, chained to the bench for weeks
+together, without ceasing to row for twenty-four hours together,
+with a renegade standing over to lash us, or to put a morsel into
+our mouths if we were fainting.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The dogs!&nbsp; Do they thus use Christian men?&rdquo;
+cried Friedel.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>S&igrave;</i>, <i>s&igrave;&mdash;ja wohl</i>.&nbsp;
+There were a good fourscore of us, and among them a Tedesco, a
+good man and true, from whom I learnt <i>la lingua
+loro</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Our tongue!&mdash;from whom?&rdquo; asked one twin of
+the other.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A Tedesco, a fellow-countryman of <i>sue
+eccellenze</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Deutscher</i>!&rdquo; cried both boys, turning in
+horror, &ldquo;our Germans so treated by the pagan
+villains?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yea, truly, <i>signorini miei</i>.&nbsp; This
+fellow-captive of mine was a <i>cavaliere</i> in his own land,
+but he had been betrayed and sold by his enemies, and he mourned
+piteously for <i>la sposa sua</i>&mdash;his bride, as they say
+here.&nbsp; A goodly man and a tall, piteously cramped in the
+narrow deck, I grieved to leave him there when the good
+<i>confraternit&agrave;</i> at Genoa paid my ransom.&nbsp; Having
+learnt to speak <i>il Tedesco</i>, and being no longer able to
+fit out a vessel, I made my venture beyond the Alps; but, alas!
+till this moment fortune has still been adverse.&nbsp; My mules
+died of the toil of crossing the mountains; and, when with
+reduced baggage I came to the river beneath there&mdash;when my
+horses fell and my servants fled, and the peasants came down with
+their hayforks&mdash;I thought myself in hands no better than
+those of the Moors themselves.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was wrongly done,&rdquo; said Ebbo, in an honest,
+open tone, though blushing.&nbsp; &ldquo;I have indeed a right to
+what may be stranded on the bank, but never more shall foul means
+be employed for the overthrow.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The boys had by this time led the traveller through the
+Gemsbock&rsquo;s Pass, within sight of the convent.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;There,&rdquo; said Ebbo, &ldquo;will they give you
+harbourage, food, a guide, and a beast to carry the rest of your
+goods.&nbsp; We are now upon convent land, and none will dare to
+touch your bales; so I will unload old Schimmel.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, <i>signorino</i>, if I might offer any token of
+gratitude&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; said Ebbo, with boyish lordliness,
+&ldquo;make me not a spoiler.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If the <i>signorini</i> should ever come to
+Genoa,&rdquo; continued the trader, &ldquo;and would honour Gian
+Battista dei Battiste with a call, his whole house would be at
+their feet.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thanks; I would that we could see strange lands!&rdquo;
+said Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;But come, Friedel, the sun is high, and I
+locked them all into the castle to make matters safe.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;May the liberated captive know the name of his
+deliverers, that he may commend it to the saints?&rdquo; asked
+the merchant.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am Eberhard, Freiherr von Adlerstein, and this is
+Freiherr Friedmund, my brother.&nbsp; Farewell, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Strange,&rdquo; muttered the merchant, as he watched
+the two boys turn down the pass, &ldquo;strange how like one
+barbarous name is to another.&nbsp; Eberardo!&nbsp; That was what
+we called <i>il Tedesco</i>, and, when he once told me his family
+name, it ended in <i>stino</i>; but all these foreign names sound
+alike.&nbsp; Let us speed on, lest these accursed peasants should
+wake, and be beyond the control of the
+<i>signorino</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; sighed Ebbo, as soon as he had hurried out
+of reach of the temptation, &ldquo;small use in being a baron if
+one is to be no better mounted!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thou art glad to have let that fair creature go free,
+though,&rdquo; said Friedel.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, my mother&rsquo;s eyes would let me have no rest
+in keeping him.&nbsp; Otherwise&mdash;Talk not to me of gladness,
+Friedel!&nbsp; Thou shouldst know better.&nbsp; How is one to be
+a knight with nothing to ride but a beast old enough to be his
+grandmother?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Knighthood of the heart may be content to go
+afoot,&rdquo; said Friedel.&nbsp; &ldquo;Oh, Ebbo, what a brother
+thou art!&nbsp; How happy the mother will be!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pfui, Friedel; what boots heart without spur?&nbsp; I
+am sick of being mewed up here within these walls of rock!&nbsp;
+No sport, not even with falling on a traveller.&nbsp; I am worse
+off than ever were my forefathers!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But how is it?&nbsp; I cannot understand,&rdquo; asked
+Friedel.&nbsp; &ldquo;What has changed thy mind?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thou, and the mother, and, more than all, the
+grandame.&nbsp; Listen, Friedel: when thou camest up, in all the
+whirl of eagerness and glad preparation, with thy grave face and
+murmur that Jobst had put forked stakes in the stream, it was
+past man&rsquo;s endurance to be baulked of the fray.&nbsp; Thou
+hast forgotten what I said to thee then, good Friedel?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Long since.&nbsp; No doubt I thrust in
+vexatiously.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not so,&rdquo; said Ebbo; &ldquo;and I saw thou hadst
+reason, for the stakes were most maliciously planted, with long
+branches hid by the current; but the fellows were showing fight,
+and I could not stay to think then, or I should have seemed to
+fear them!&nbsp; I can tell you we made them run!&nbsp; But I
+never meant the grandmother to put yon poor fellow in the
+dungeon, and use him worse than a dog.&nbsp; I wot that he was my
+captive, and none of hers.&nbsp; And then came the mother; and
+oh, Friedel, she looked as if I were slaying her when she saw the
+spoil; and, ere I had made her see right and reason, the old lady
+came swooping down in full malice and spite, and actually came to
+blows.&nbsp; She struck the motherling&mdash;struck her on the
+face, Friedel!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I fear me it has so been before,&rdquo; said Friedel,
+sadly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Never will it be so again,&rdquo; said Ebbo, standing
+still.&nbsp; &ldquo;I took the old hag by the hands, and told her
+she had ruled long enough!&nbsp; My father&rsquo;s wife is as
+good a lady of the castle as my grandfather&rsquo;s, and I myself
+am lord thereof; and, since my Lady Kunigunde chooses to cross me
+and beat my mother about this capture, why she has seen the last
+of it, and may learn who is master, and who is
+mistress!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Ebbo!&nbsp; I would I had seen it!&nbsp; But was
+not she outrageous?&nbsp; Was not the mother shrinking and ready
+to give back all her claims at once?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps she would have been, but just then she found
+thou wast not with me, and I found thou wast not with her, and we
+thought of nought else.&nbsp; But thou must stand by me, Friedel,
+and help to keep the grandmother in her place, and the mother in
+hers.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If the mother <i>will</i> be kept,&rdquo; said
+Friedel.&nbsp; &ldquo;I fear me she will only plead to be left to
+the grandame&rsquo;s treatment, as before.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Never, Friedel!&nbsp; I will never see her so used
+again.&nbsp; I released this man solely to show that she is to
+rule here.&mdash;Yes, I know all about freebooting being a deadly
+sin, and moreover that it will bring the League about our ears;
+and it was a cowardly trick of Jobst to put those branches in the
+stream.&nbsp; Did I not go over it last night till my brain was
+dizzy?&nbsp; But still, it is but living and dying like our
+fathers, and I hate tameness or dullness, and it is like a fool
+to go back from what one has once begun.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No; it is like a brave man, when one has begun
+wrong,&rdquo; said Friedel.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But then I thought of the grandame triumphing over the
+gentle mother&mdash;and I know the mother wept over her beads
+half the night.&nbsp; She <i>shall</i> find she has had her own
+way for once this morning.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Friedel was silent for a few moments, then said, &ldquo;Let me
+tell thee what I saw yesterday, Ebbo.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So,&rdquo; answered the other brother.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I liked not to vex my mother by my tidings, so I
+climbed up to the tarn.&nbsp; There is something always healing
+in that spot, is it not so, Ebbo?&nbsp; When the grandmother has
+been raving&rdquo; (hitherto Friedel&rsquo;s worst grievance)
+&ldquo;it is like getting up nearer the quiet sky in the
+stillness there, when the sky seems to have come down into the
+deep blue water, and all is so still, so wondrous still and
+calm.&nbsp; I wonder if, when we see the great Dome Kirk itself,
+it will give one&rsquo;s spirit wings, as does the gazing up from
+the Ptarmigan&rsquo;s Pool.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thou minnesinger, was it the blue sky thou hadst to
+tell me of?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, brother, it was ere I reached it that I saw this
+sight.&nbsp; I had scaled the peak where grows the stunted rowan,
+and I sat down to look down on the other side of the gorge.&nbsp;
+It was clear where I sat, but the ravine was filled with clouds,
+and upon them&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The shape of the blessed Friedmund, thy
+patron?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Our</i> patron,&rdquo; said Friedel; &ldquo;I saw
+him, a giant form in gown and hood, traced in grey shadow upon
+the dazzling white cloud; and oh, Ebbo! he was struggling with a
+thinner, darker, wilder shape bearing a club.&nbsp; He strove to
+withhold it; his gestures threatened and warned!&nbsp; I watched
+like one spell-bound, for it was to me as the guardian spirit of
+our race striving for thee with the enemy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How did it end?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The cloud darkened, and swallowed them; nor should I
+have known the issue, if suddenly, on the very cloud where the
+strife had been, there had not beamed forth a rainbow&mdash;not a
+common rainbow, Ebbo, but a perfect ring, a soft-glancing,
+many-tinted crown of victory.&nbsp; Then I knew the saint had
+won, and that thou wouldst win.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I!&nbsp; What, not thyself&mdash;his own
+namesake?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I thought, Ebbo, if the fight went very hard&mdash;nay,
+if for a time the grandame led thee her way&mdash;that belike I
+might serve thee best by giving up all, and praying for thee in
+the hermit&rsquo;s cave, or as a monk.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thou!&mdash;thou, my other self!&nbsp; Aid me by
+burrowing in a hole like a rat!&nbsp; What foolery wilt say
+next?&nbsp; No, no, Friedel, strike by my side, and I will strike
+with thee; pray by my side, and I will pray with thee; but if
+thou takest none of the strokes, then will I none of the
+prayers!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ebbo, thou knowest not what thou sayest.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No one knows better!&nbsp; See, Friedel, wouldst thou
+have me all that the old Adlersteinen were, and worse too? then
+wilt thou leave me and hide thine head in some priestly
+cowl.&nbsp; Maybe thou thinkest to pray my soul into safety at
+the last moment as a favour to thine own abundant sanctity; but I
+tell thee, Friedel, that&rsquo;s no manly way to salvation.&nbsp;
+If thou follow&rsquo;st that track, I&rsquo;ll take care to get
+past the border-line within which prayer can help.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Friedel crossed himself, and uttered an imploring exclamation
+of horror at these wild words.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Stay,&rdquo; said Ebbo; &ldquo;I said not I meant any
+such thing&mdash;so long as thou wilt be with me.&nbsp; My
+purpose is to be a good man and true, a guard to the weak, a
+defence against the Turk, a good lord to my vassals, and, if it
+may not be otherwise, I will take my oath to the Kaiser, and keep
+it.&nbsp; Is that enough for thee, Friedel, or wouldst thou see
+me a monk at once?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Ebbo, this is what we ever planned.&nbsp; I only
+dreamed of the other when&mdash;when thou didst seem to be on the
+other track.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, what can I do more than turn back?&nbsp;
+I&rsquo;ll get absolution on Sunday, and tell Father Norbert that
+I will do any penance he pleases; and warn Jobst that, if he sets
+any more traps in the river, I will drown him there next!&nbsp;
+Only get this priestly fancy away, Friedel, once and for
+ever!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Never, never could I think of what would sever
+us,&rdquo; cried Friedel, &ldquo;save&mdash;when&mdash;&rdquo; he
+added, hesitating, unwilling to harp on the former string.&nbsp;
+Ebbo broke in imperiously,</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Friedmund von Adlerstein, give me thy solemn word that
+I never again hear of this freak of turning priest or
+hermit.&nbsp; What! art slow to speak?&nbsp; Thinkest me too bad
+for thee?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, Ebbo.&nbsp; Heaven knows thou art stronger, more
+resolute than I.&nbsp; I am more likely to be too bad for
+thee.&nbsp; But so long as we can be true, faithful God-fearing
+Junkern together, Heaven forbid that we should part!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is our bond!&rdquo; said Ebbo; &ldquo;nought shall
+part us.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nought but death,&rdquo; said Friedmund, solemnly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For my part,&rdquo; said Ebbo, with perfect
+seriousness, &ldquo;I do not believe that one of us can live or
+die without the other.&nbsp; But, hark! there&rsquo;s an outcry
+at the castle!&nbsp; They have found out that they are locked
+in!&nbsp; Ha! ho! hilloa, Hatto, how like you playing
+prisoner?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ebbo would have amused himself with the dismay of his garrison
+a little longer, had not Friedel reminded him that their mother
+might be suffering for their delay, and this suggestion made him
+march in hastily.&nbsp; He found her standing drooping under the
+pitiless storm which Frau Kunigunde was pouring out at the
+highest pitch of her cracked, trembling voice, one hand uplifted
+and clenched, the other grasping the back of a chair, while her
+whole frame shook with rage too mighty for her strength.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Grandame,&rdquo; said Ebbo, striding up to the scene of
+action, &ldquo;cease.&nbsp; Remember my words
+yestereve.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She has stolen the keys!&nbsp; She has tampered with
+the servants!&nbsp; She has released the prisoner&mdash;thy
+prisoner, Ebbo!&nbsp; She has cheated us as she did with <a
+name="page126"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+126</span>Wildschloss!&nbsp; False burgherinn!&nbsp; I trow she
+wanted another suitor!&nbsp; Bane&mdash;pest of
+Adlerstein!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Friedmund threw a supporting arm round his mother, but Ebbo
+confronted the old lady.&nbsp; &ldquo;Grandmother,&rdquo; he
+said, &ldquo;I freed the captive.&nbsp; I stole the keys&mdash;I
+and Friedel!&nbsp; No one else knew my purpose.&nbsp; He was my
+captive, and I released him because he was foully taken.&nbsp; I
+have chosen my lot in life,&rdquo; he added; and, standing in the
+middle of the hall, he took off his cap, and spoke
+gravely:&mdash;&ldquo;I will not be a treacherous robber-outlaw,
+but, so help me God, a faithful, loyal, godly
+nobleman.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>His mother and Friedel breathed an &ldquo;Amen&rdquo; with all
+their hearts; and he continued,</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And thou, grandame, peace!&nbsp; Such reverence shalt
+thou have as befits my father&rsquo;s mother; but henceforth mine
+own lady-mother is the mistress of this castle, and whoever
+speaks a rude word to her offends the Freiherr von
+Adlerstein.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p126b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"&ldquo;&lsquo;Henceforth mine own lady-mother is the mistress of
+this castle, and whoever speaks a rude word to her offends the
+Freiherr von Adlerstein&rsquo;&rdquo;&mdash;Page 126"
+title=
+"&ldquo;&lsquo;Henceforth mine own lady-mother is the mistress of
+this castle, and whoever speaks a rude word to her offends the
+Freiherr von Adlerstein&rsquo;&rdquo;&mdash;Page 126"
+src="images/p126s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>That last day&rsquo;s work had made a great step in
+Ebbo&rsquo;s life, and there he stood, grave and firm, ready for
+the assault; for, in effect, he and all besides expected that the
+old lady would fly at him or at his mother like a wild cat, as
+she would assuredly have done in a like case a year earlier; but
+she took them all by surprise by collapsing into her chair and
+sobbing piteously.&nbsp; Ebbo, much distressed, tried to make her
+understand that she was to have all care and honour; but she
+muttered something about ingratitude, and continued to exhaust
+herself with weeping, spurning away all who approached her; and
+thenceforth she lived in a gloomy, sullen acquiescence in her
+deposition.</p>
+<p>Christina inclined to the opinion that she must have had some
+slight stroke in the night, for she was never the same woman
+again; her vigour had passed away, and she would sit spinning, or
+rocking herself in her chair, scarcely alive to what passed, or
+scolding and fretting like a shadow of her old violence.&nbsp;
+Nothing pleased her but the attentions of her grandsons, and
+happily she soon ceased to know them apart, and gave Ebbo credit
+for all that was done for her by Friedel, whose separate
+existence she seemed to have forgotten.</p>
+<p>As long as her old spirit remained she would not suffer the
+approach of her daughter-in-law, and Christina could only make
+suggestions for her comfort to be acted on by Ursel; and though
+the reins of government fast dropped from the aged hands, they
+were but gradually and cautiously assumed by the younger
+Baroness.</p>
+<p>Only Elsie remained of the rude, demoralized girls whom she
+had found in the castle, and their successors, though dull and
+uncouth, were meek and manageable; the men of the castle had all,
+except M&auml;tz, been always devoted to the Frau Christina; and
+M&auml;tz, to her great relief, ran away so soon as he found that
+decency and honesty were to be the rule.&nbsp; Old Hatto,
+humpbacked Hans, and Heinz the Schneiderlein, were the whole male
+establishment, and had at least the merit of attachment to
+herself and her sons; and in time there was a shade of greater
+civilization about the castle, though impeded both by dire
+poverty and the doggedness of the old retainers.&nbsp; At least
+the court was cleared of the swine, and, within doors, the table
+was spread with dainty linen out of the parcels from Ulm, and the
+meals served with orderliness that annoyed the boys at first, but
+soon became a subject of pride and pleasure.</p>
+<p>Frau Kunigunde lingered long, with increasing
+infirmities.&nbsp; After the winter day, when, running down at a
+sudden noise, Friedel picked her up from the hearthstone,
+scorched, bruised, almost senseless, she accepted
+Christina&rsquo;s care with nothing worse than a snarl, and
+gradually seemed to forget the identity of her nurse with the
+interloping burgher girl.&nbsp; Thanks or courtesy had been no
+part of her nature, least of all towards her own sex, and she did
+little but grumble, fret, and revile her attendant; but she soon
+depended so much on Christina&rsquo;s care, that it was hardly
+possible to leave her.&nbsp; At her best and strongest, her talk
+was maundering abuse of her son&rsquo;s low-born wife; but at
+times her wanderings showed black gulfs of iniquity and
+coarseness of soul that would make the gentle listener tremble,
+and be thankful that her sons were out of hearing.&nbsp; And thus
+did Christina von Adlerstein requite fifteen years of
+persecution.</p>
+<p>The old lady&rsquo;s first failure had been in the summer of
+1488; it was the Advent season of 1489, when the snow was at the
+deepest, and the frost at the hardest, that the two hardy
+mountaineer grandsons fetched over the pass Father Norbert, and a
+still sturdier, stronger monk, to the dying woman.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Are we in time, mother?&rdquo; asked Ebbo, from the
+door of the upper chamber, where the Adlersteins began and ended
+life, shaking the snow from his mufflings.&nbsp; Ruddy with
+exertion in the sharp wind, what a contrast he was to all within
+the room!</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who is that?&rdquo; said a thin, feeble voice.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is Ebbo.&nbsp; It is the Baron,&rdquo; said
+Christina.&nbsp; &ldquo;Come in, Ebbo.&nbsp; She is somewhat
+revived.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Will she be able to speak to the priest?&rdquo; asked
+Ebbo.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Priest!&rdquo; feebly screamed the old woman.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;No priest for me!&nbsp; My lord died unshriven,
+unassoilzied.&nbsp; Where he is, there will I be.&nbsp; Let a
+priest approach me at his peril!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Stony insensibility ensued; nor did she speak again, though
+life lasted many hours longer.&nbsp; The priests did their
+office; for, impenitent as the life and frantic as the words had
+been, the opinions of the time deemed that their rites might yet
+give the departing soul a chance, though the body was
+unconscious.</p>
+<p>When all was over, snow was again falling, shifting and
+drifting, so that it was impossible to leave the castle, and the
+two monks were kept there for a full fortnight, during which
+Christmas solemnities were observed in the chapel, for the first
+time since the days of Friedmund the Good.&nbsp; The corpse of
+Kunigunde, preserved&mdash;we must say the word&mdash;salted, was
+placed in a coffin, and laid in that chapel to await the melting
+of the snows, when the vault at the Hermitage could be
+opened.&nbsp; And this could not be effected till Easter had
+nearly come round again, and it was within a week of their
+sixteenth birthday that the two young Barons stood together at
+the coffin&rsquo;s head, serious indeed, but more with the
+thought of life than of death.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XII<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">BACK TO THE DOVECOTE</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">For</span> the first time in her residence
+at Adlerstein, now full half her life, the Freiherrinn Christina
+ventured to send a messenger to Ulm, namely, a lay brother of the
+convent of St. Ruprecht, who undertook to convey to Master
+Gottfried Sorel her letter, informing him of the death of her
+mother-in-law, and requesting him to send the same tidings to the
+Freiherr von Adlerstein Wildschloss, the kinsman and godfather of
+her sons.</p>
+<p>She was used to wait fifty-two weeks for answers to her
+letters, and was amazed when, at the end of three, two stout
+serving-men were guided by Jobst up the pass; but her heart
+warmed to their flat caps and round jerkins, they looked so like
+home.&nbsp; They bore a letter of invitation to her and her sons
+to come at once to her uncle&rsquo;s house.&nbsp; The King of the
+Romans, and perhaps the Emperor, were to come to the city early
+in the summer, and there could be no better opportunity of
+presenting the young Barons to their sovereign.&nbsp; Sir Kasimir
+of Adlerstein Wildschloss would meet them there for the purpose,
+and would obtain their admission to the League, in which all
+Swabian nobles had bound themselves to put down robbery and
+oppression, and outside which there was nothing but outlawry and
+danger.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So must it be?&rdquo; said Ebbo, between his teeth, as
+he leant moodily against the wall, while his mother was gone to
+attend to the fare to be set before the messengers.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What! art not glad to take wing at last?&rdquo;
+exclaimed Friedel, cut short in an exclamation of delight.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Take wing, forsooth!&nbsp; To be guest of a greasy
+burgher, and call cousin with him!&nbsp; Fear not, Friedel;
+I&rsquo;ll not vex the motherling.&nbsp; Heaven knows she has had
+pain, grief, and subjection enough in her lifetime, and I would
+not hinder her visit to her home; but I would she could go alone,
+nor make us show our poverty to the swollen city folk, and listen
+to their endearments.&nbsp; I charge thee, Friedel, do as I do;
+be not too familiar with them.&nbsp; Could we but sprain an ankle
+over the crag&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, she would stay to nurse us,&rdquo; said Friedel,
+laughing; &ldquo;besides, thou art needed for the matter of
+homage.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Look, Friedel,&rdquo; said Ebbo, sinking his voice,
+&ldquo;I shall not lightly yield my freedom to king or
+Kaiser.&nbsp; Maybe, there is no help for it; but it irks me to
+think that I should be the last Lord of Adlerstein to whom the
+title of Freiherr is not a mockery.&nbsp; Why dost bend thy brow,
+brother?&nbsp; What art thinking of?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Only a saying in my mother&rsquo;s book, that
+well-ordered service is true freedom,&rdquo; said Friedel.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;And methinks there will be freedom in rushing at last into
+the great far-off!&rdquo;&mdash;the boy&rsquo;s eye expanded and
+glistened with eagerness.&nbsp; &ldquo;Here are we
+prisoners&mdash;to ourselves, if you like&mdash;but prisoners
+still, pent up in the rocks, seeing no one, hearing scarce an
+echo from the knightly or the poet world, nor from all the
+wonders that pass.&nbsp; And the world has a history going on
+still, like the <i>Chronicle</i>.&nbsp; Oh, Ebbo, think of being
+in the midst of life, with lance and sword, and seeing the
+Kaiser&mdash;the Kaiser of the holy Roman Empire!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;With lance and sword, well and good; but would it were
+not at the cost of liberty!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>However Ebbo forbore to damp his mother&rsquo;s joy, save by
+the one warning&mdash;&ldquo;Understand, mother, that I will not
+be pledged to anything.&nbsp; I will not bend to the yoke ere I
+have seen and judged for myself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The manly sound of the words gave a sweet sense of exultation
+to the mother, even while she dreaded the proud spirit, and
+whispered, &ldquo;God direct thee, my son.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Certainly Ebbo, hitherto the most impetuous and least
+thoughtful of the two lads, had a gravity and seriousness about
+him, that, but for his naturally sweet temper, would have seemed
+sullen.&nbsp; His aspirations for adventure had hitherto been
+more vehement than Friedel&rsquo;s; but, when the time seemed at
+hand, his regrets at what he might have to yield overpowered his
+hopes of the future.&nbsp; The fierce haughtiness of the old
+Adlersteins could not brook the descent from the crag, even while
+the keen, clear burgher wit that Ebbo inherited from the other
+side of the house taught him that the position was untenable, and
+that his isolated glory was but a poor mean thing after
+all.&nbsp; And the struggle made him sad and moody.</p>
+<p>Friedel, less proud, and with nothing to yield, was open to
+blithe anticipations of what his fancy pictured as the home of
+all the beauty, sacred or romantic, that he had glimpsed at
+through his mother.&nbsp; Religion, poetry, learning, art,
+refinement, had all come to him through her; and though he had a
+soul that dreamt and soared in the lonely grandeur of the
+mountain heights, it craved further aliment for its yearnings for
+completeness and perfection.&nbsp; Long ago had Friedel come to
+the verge of such attainments as he could work out of his present
+materials, and keen had been his ardour for the means of
+progress, though only the mountain tarn had ever been witness to
+the full outpouring of the longings with which he gazed upon the
+dim, distant city like a land of enchantment.</p>
+<p>The journey was to be at once, so as to profit by the escort
+of Master Sorel&rsquo;s men.&nbsp; Means of transport were
+scanty, but Ebbo did not choose that the messengers should report
+the need, and bring back a bevy of animals at the burgher&rsquo;s
+expense; so the mother was mounted on the old white mare, and her
+sons and Heinz trusted to their feet.&nbsp; By setting out early
+on a May morning, the journey could be performed ere night, and
+the twilight would find them in the domains of the free city,
+where their small numbers would be of no importance.&nbsp; As to
+their appearance, the mother wore a black woollen gown and
+mantle, and a black silk hood tied under her chin, and sitting
+loosely round the stiff frame of her white cap&mdash;a nun-like
+garb, save for the soft brown hair, parted over her brow, and
+more visible than she sometimes thought correct, but her sons
+would not let her wear it out of sight.</p>
+<p>The brothers had piece by piece surveyed the solitary suit of
+armour remaining in the castle; but, though it might serve for
+defence, it could not be made fit for display, and they must
+needs be contented with blue cloth, spun, woven, dyed, fashioned,
+and sewn at home, chiefly by their mother, and by her embroidered
+on the breast with the white eagle of Adlerstein.&nbsp; Short
+blue cloaks and caps of the same, with an eagle plume in each,
+and leggings neatly fashioned of deerskin, completed their
+equipments.&nbsp; Ebbo wore his father&rsquo;s sword, Friedel had
+merely a dagger and crossbow.&nbsp; There was not a gold chain,
+not a brooch, not an approach to an ornament among the three,
+except the medal that had always distinguished Ebbo, and the
+coral rosary at Christina&rsquo;s girdle.&nbsp; Her own trinkets
+had gone in masses for the souls of her father and husband; and
+though a few costly jewels had been found in Frau
+Kunigunde&rsquo;s hoards, the mode of their acquisition was so
+doubtful, that it had seemed fittest to bestow them in alms and
+masses for the good of her soul.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What ornament, what glory could any one desire better
+than two such sons?&rdquo; thought Christina, as for the first
+time for eighteen years she crossed the wild ravine where her
+father had led her, a trembling little captive, longing for wings
+like a dove&rsquo;s to flutter home again.&nbsp; Who would then
+have predicted that she should descend after so long and weary a
+time, and with a gallant boy on either side of her, eager to aid
+her every step, and reassure her at each giddy pass, all joy and
+hope before her and them?&nbsp; Yet she was not without some
+dread and misgiving, as she watched her elder son, always
+attentive to her, but unwontedly silent, with a stern gravity on
+his young brow, a proud sadness on his lip.&nbsp; And when he had
+come to the Debateable Ford, and was about to pass the boundaries
+of his own lands, he turned and gazed back on the castle and
+mountain with a silent but passionate ardour, as though he felt
+himself doing them a wrong by perilling their independence.</p>
+<p>The sun had lately set, and the moon was silvering the Danube,
+when the travellers came full in view of the imperial free city,
+girt in with mighty walls and towers&mdash;the vine-clad hill
+dominated by its crowning church; the irregular outlines of the
+unfinished spire of the cathedral traced in mysterious dark
+lacework against the pearly sky; the lofty steeple-like
+gate-tower majestically guarding the bridge.&nbsp; Christina
+clasped her hands in thankfulness, as at the familiar face of a
+friend; Friedel glowed like a minstrel introduced to his fair
+dame, long wooed at a distance; Ebbo could not but exclaim,
+&ldquo;Yea, truly, a great city is a solemn and a glorious
+sight!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The gates were closed, and the serving-men had to parley at
+the barbican ere the heavy door was opened to admit the party to
+the bridge, between deep battlemented stone walls, with here and
+there loopholes, showing the shimmering of the river
+beneath.&nbsp; The slow, tired tread of the old mare sounded
+hollow; the river rushed below with the full swell of evening
+loudness; a deep-toned convent-bell tolled gravely through the
+stillness, while, between its reverberations, clear, distinct
+notes of joyous music were borne on the summer wind, and a
+nightingale sung in one of the gardens that bordered the
+banks.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mother, it is all that I dreamt!&rdquo; breathlessly
+murmured Friedel, as they halted under the dark arch of the great
+gateway tower.</p>
+<p>Not however in Friedel&rsquo;s dreams had been the hearty
+voice that proceeded from the lighted guard-room in the thickness
+of the gateway.&nbsp; &ldquo;Freiherrinn von Adlerstein!&nbsp; Is
+it she?&nbsp; Then must I greet my old playmate!&rdquo;&nbsp; And
+the captain of the watch appeared among upraised lanterns and
+torches that showed a broad, smooth, plump face beneath a plain
+steel helmet.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Welcome, gracious lady, welcome to your old city.&nbsp;
+What! do you not remember Lippus Grundt, your poor
+Valentine?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Master Philip Grundt!&rdquo; exclaimed Christina,
+amazed at the breadth of visage and person; &ldquo;and how fares
+it with my good Regina?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Excellent well, good lady.&nbsp; She manages her trade
+and house as well as the good man Bartol&auml;us Fleischer
+himself.&nbsp; Blithe will she be to show you her goodly ten, as
+I shall my eight,&rdquo; he continued, walking by her side;
+&ldquo;and Barbara&mdash;you remember Barbara Schmidt,
+lady&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My dear Barbara?&mdash;That do I indeed!&nbsp; Is she
+your wife?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ay, truly, lady,&rdquo; he answered, in an odd sort of
+apologetic tone; &ldquo;you see, you returned not, and the
+housefathers, they would have it so&mdash;and Barbara is a good
+housewife.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Truly do I rejoice!&rdquo; said Christina, wishing she
+could convey to him how welcome he had been to marry any one he
+liked, as far as she was concerned&mdash;he, in whom her fears of
+mincing goldsmiths had always taken form&mdash;then signing with
+her hand, &ldquo;I have my sons likewise to show her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, on foot!&rdquo; muttered Grundt, as a not
+well-conceived apology for not having saluted the young
+gentlemen.&nbsp; &ldquo;I greet you well, sirs,&rdquo; with a
+bow, most haughtily returned by Ebbo, who was heartily wishing
+himself on his mountain.&nbsp; &ldquo;Two lusty, well-grown
+Junkern indeed, to whom my Martin will be proud to show the
+humours of Ulm.&nbsp; A fair good night, lady!&nbsp; You will
+find the old folks right cheery.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Well did Christina know the turn down the street, darkened by
+the overhanging brows of the tall houses, but each lower window
+laughing with the glow of light within that threw out the heavy
+mullions and the circles and diamonds of the latticework, and
+here and there the brilliant tints of stained glass sparkled like
+jewels in the upper panes, pictured with Scripture scene, patron
+saint, or trade emblem.&nbsp; The familiar porch was reached, the
+familiar knock resounded on the iron-studded door.&nbsp; Friedel
+lifted his mother from her horse, and felt that she was quivering
+from head to foot, and at the same moment the light streamed from
+the open door on the white horse, and the two young faces, one
+eager, the other with knit brows and uneasy eyes.&nbsp; A kind of
+echo pervaded the house, &ldquo;She is come! she is come!&rdquo;
+and as one in a dream Christina entered, crossed the well-known
+hall, looked up to her uncle and aunt on the stairs, perceived
+little change on their countenances, and sank upon her knees,
+with bowed head and clasped hands.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My child! my dear child!&rdquo; exclaimed her uncle,
+raising her with one hand, and crossing her brow in benediction
+with the other.&nbsp; &ldquo;Art thou indeed returned?&rdquo; and
+he embraced her tenderly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Welcome, fair niece!&rdquo; said Hausfrau Johanna, more
+formally.&nbsp; &ldquo;I am right glad to greet you
+here.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Dear, dear mother!&rdquo; cried Christina, courting her
+fond embrace by gestures of the most eager affection, &ldquo;how
+have I longed for this moment! and, above all, to show you my
+boys!&nbsp; Herr Uncle, let me present my sons&mdash;my Eberhard,
+my Friedmund.&nbsp; O Housemother, are not my twins well-grown
+lads?&rdquo;&nbsp; And she stood with a hand on each, proud that
+their heads were so far above her own, and looking still so
+slight and girlish in figure that she might better have been
+their sister than their mother.&nbsp; The cloud that the sudden
+light had revealed on Ebbo&rsquo;s brow had cleared away, and he
+made an inclination neither awkward nor ungracious in its free
+mountain dignity and grace, but not devoid of mountain rusticity
+and shy pride, and far less cordial than was Friedel&rsquo;s
+manner.&nbsp; Both were infinitely relieved to detect nothing of
+the greasy burgher, and were greatly struck with the fine
+venerable head before them; indeed, Friedel would, like his
+mother, have knelt to ask a blessing, had he not been under
+command not to outrun his brother&rsquo;s advances towards her
+kindred.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Welcome, fair Junkern!&rdquo; said Master Gottfried;
+&ldquo;welcome both for your mother&rsquo;s sake and your
+own!&nbsp; These thy sons, my little one?&rdquo; he added,
+smiling.&nbsp; &ldquo;Art sure I neither dream nor see
+double!&nbsp; Come to the gallery, and let me see thee
+better.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And, ceremoniously giving his hand, he proceeded to lead his
+niece up the stairs, while Ebbo, labouring under ignorance of
+city forms and uncertainty of what befitted his dignity,
+presented his hand to his aunt with an air that half-amused,
+half-offended the shrewd dame.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;All is as if I had left you but yesterday!&rdquo;
+exclaimed Christina.&nbsp; &ldquo;Uncle, have you pardoned
+me?&nbsp; You bade me return when my work was done.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I should have known better, child.&nbsp; Such return is
+not to be sought on this side the grave.&nbsp; Thy work has been
+more than I then thought of.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah! and now will you deem it begun&mdash;not
+done!&rdquo; softly said Christina, though with too much
+heartfelt exultation greatly to doubt that all the world must be
+satisfied with two such boys, if only Ebbo would be his true
+self.</p>
+<p>The luxury of the house, the wainscoted and tapestried walls,
+the polished furniture, the lamps and candles, the damask linen,
+the rich array of silver, pewter, and brightly-coloured glass,
+were a great contrast to the bare walls and scant necessaries of
+Schloss Adlerstein; but Ebbo was resolved not to expose himself
+by admiration, and did his best to stifle Friedel&rsquo;s
+exclamations of surprise and delight.&nbsp; Were not these
+citizens to suppose that everything was tenfold more costly at
+the baronial castle?&nbsp; And truly the boy deserved credit for
+the consideration for his mother, which made him merely reserved,
+while he felt like a wild eagle in a poultry-yard.&nbsp; It was
+no small proof of his affection to forbear more interference with
+his mother&rsquo;s happiness than was the inevitable effect of
+that intuition which made her aware that he was chafing and ill
+at ease.&nbsp; For his sake, she allowed herself to be placed in
+the seat of honour, though she longed, as of old, to nestle at
+her uncle&rsquo;s feet, and be again his child; but, even while
+she felt each acceptance of a token of respect as almost an
+injury to them, every look and tone was showing how much the same
+Christina she had returned.</p>
+<p>In truth, though her life had been mournful and oppressed, it
+had not been such as to age her early.&nbsp; It had been all
+submission, without wear and tear of mind, and too simple in its
+trials for care and moiling; so the fresh, lily-like sweetness of
+her maiden bloom was almost intact, and, much as she had
+undergone, her once frail health had been so braced by the
+mountain breezes, that, though delicacy remained, sickliness was
+gone from her appearance.&nbsp; There was still the exquisite
+purity and tender modesty of expression, but with greater
+sweetness in the pensive brown eyes.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, little one!&rdquo; said her uncle, after duly
+contemplating her; &ldquo;the change is all for the better!&nbsp;
+Thou art grown a wondrously fair dame.&nbsp; There will scarce be
+a lovelier in the Kaiserly train.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ebbo almost pardoned his great-uncle for being his
+great-uncle.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;When she is arrayed as becomes the Frau
+Freiherrinn,&rdquo; said the housewife aunt, looking with concern
+at the coarse texture of her black sleeve.&nbsp; &ldquo;I long to
+see our own lady ruffle it in her new gear.&nbsp; I am glad that
+the lofty pointed cap has passed out; the coif becomes my child
+far better, and I see our tastes still accord as to
+fashion.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Fashion scarce came above the Debateable Ford,&rdquo;
+said Christina, smiling.&nbsp; &ldquo;I fear my boys look as if
+they came out of the <i>Weltgeschichte</i>, for I could only
+shape their garments after my remembrance of the gallants of
+eighteen years ago.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Their garments are your own shaping!&rdquo; exclaimed
+the aunt, now in an accent of real, not conventional respect.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Spinning and weaving, shaping and sewing,&rdquo; said
+Friedel, coming near to let the housewife examine the
+texture.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Close woven, even threaded, smooth tinted!&nbsp; Ah,
+Stina, thou didst learn something!&nbsp; Thou wert not quite
+spoilt by the housefather&rsquo;s books and carvings.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I cannot tell whose teachings have served me best, or
+been the most precious to me,&rdquo; said Christina, with clasped
+hands, looking from one to another with earnest love.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thou art a good child.&nbsp; Ah! little one, forgive
+me; you look so like our child that I cannot bear in mind that
+you are the Frau Freiherrinn.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, I should deem myself in disgrace with you, did you
+keep me at a distance, and not <i>thou</i> me, as your little
+Stina,&rdquo; she fondly answered, half regretting her fond eager
+movement, as Ebbo seemed to shrink together with a gesture
+perceived by her uncle.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is my young lord there who would not forgive the
+freedom,&rdquo; he said, good-humouredly, though gravely.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not so,&rdquo; Ebbo forced himself to say; &ldquo;not
+so, if it makes my mother happy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He held up his head rather as if he thought it a fool&rsquo;s
+paradise, but Master Gottfried answered: &ldquo;The noble
+Freiherr is, from all I have heard, too good a son to grudge his
+mother&rsquo;s duteous love even to burgher kindred.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There was something in the old man&rsquo;s frank, dignified
+tone of grave reproof that at once impressed Ebbo with a sense of
+the true superiority of that wise and venerable old age to his
+own petulant baronial self-assertion.&nbsp; He had both head and
+heart to feel the burgher&rsquo;s victory, and with a deep blush,
+though not without dignity, he answered, &ldquo;Truly, sir, my
+mother has ever taught us to look up to you as her kindest and
+best&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He was going to say &ldquo;friend,&rdquo; but a look into the
+grand benignity of the countenance completed the conquest, and he
+turned it into &ldquo;father.&rdquo;&nbsp; Friedel at the same
+instant bent his knee, exclaiming, &ldquo;It is true what Ebbo
+says!&nbsp; We have both longed for this day.&nbsp; Bless us,
+honoured uncle, as you have blessed my mother.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For in truth there was in the soul of the boy, who had never
+had any but women to look up to, a strange yearning towards
+reverence, which was called into action with inexpressible force
+by the very aspect and tone of such a sage elder and counsellor
+as Master Gottfried Sorel, and he took advantage of the first
+opening permitted by his brother.&nbsp; And the sympathy always
+so strong between the two quickened the like feeling in Ebbo, so
+that the same movement drew him on his knee beside Friedel in
+oblivion or renunciation of all lordly pride towards a kinsman
+such as he had here encountered.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Truly and heartily, my fair youths,&rdquo; said Master
+Gottfried, with the same kind dignity, &ldquo;do I pray the good
+God to bless you, and render you faithful and loving sons, not
+only to your mother, but to your fatherland.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He was unable to distinguish between the two exactly similar
+forms that knelt before him, yet there was something in the
+quivering of Friedel&rsquo;s head, which made him press it with a
+shade more of tenderness than the other.&nbsp; And in truth tears
+were welling into the eyes veiled by the fingers that Friedel
+clasped over his face, for such a blessing was strange and sweet
+to him.</p>
+<p>Their mother was ready to weep for joy.&nbsp; There was now no
+drawback to her bliss, since her son and her uncle had accepted
+one another; and she repaired to her own beloved old chamber a
+happier being than she had been since she had left its wainscoted
+walls.</p>
+<p>Nay, as she gazed out at the familiar outlines of roof and
+tower, and felt herself truly at home, then knelt by the little
+undisturbed altar of her devotions, with the cross above and her
+own patron saint below in carved wood, and the flowers which the
+good aunt had ever kept as a freshly renewed offering, she felt
+that she was happier, more fully thankful and blissful than even
+in the girlish calm of her untroubled life.&nbsp; Her prayer that
+she might come again in peace had been more than fulfilled; nay,
+when she had seen her boys kneel meekly to receive her
+uncle&rsquo;s blessing, it was in some sort to her as if the work
+was done, as if the millstone had been borne up for her, and had
+borne her and her dear ones with it.</p>
+<p>But there was much to come.&nbsp; She knew full well that,
+even though her sons&rsquo; first step had been in the right
+direction, it was in a path beset with difficulties; and how
+would her proud Ebbo meet them?</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE EAGLETS IN THE CITY</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">After</span> having once accepted Master
+Gottfried, Ebbo froze towards him and Dame Johanna no more, save
+that a naturally imperious temper now and then led to fitful
+stiffnesses and momentary haughtiness, which were easily excused
+in one so new to the world and afraid of compromising his
+rank.&nbsp; In general he could afford to enjoy himself with a
+zest as hearty as that of the simpler-minded Friedel.</p>
+<p>They were early afoot, but not before the heads of the
+household were coming forth for the morning devotions at the
+cathedral; and the streets were stirring into activity, and
+becoming so peopled that the boys supposed that it was a great
+fair day.&nbsp; They had never seen so many people together even
+at the Friedmund Wake, and it was several days before they ceased
+to exclaim at every passenger as a new curiosity.</p>
+<p>The Dome Kirk awed and hushed them.&nbsp; They had looked to
+it so long that perhaps no sublunary thing could have realized
+their expectations, and Friedel avowed that he did not know what
+he thought of it.&nbsp; It was not such as he had dreamt, and,
+like a German as he was, he added that he could not think, he
+could only feel, that there was something ineffable in it; yet he
+was almost disappointed to find his visions unfulfilled, and the
+hues of the painted glass less pure and translucent than those of
+the ice crystals on the mountains.&nbsp; However after his eye
+had become trained, the deep influence of its dim solemn majesty,
+and of the echoes of its organ tones, and chants of high praise
+or earnest prayer, began to enchain his spirit; and, if ever he
+were missing, he was sure to be found among the mysteries of the
+cathedral aisles, generally with Ebbo, who felt the spell of the
+same grave fascination, since whatever was true of the one
+brother was generally true of the other.&nbsp; They were
+essentially alike, though some phases of character and taste were
+more developed in the one or the other.</p>
+<p>Master Gottfried was much edified by their perfect knowledge
+of the names and numbers of his books.&nbsp; They instantly,
+almost resentfully, missed the Cicero&rsquo;s <i>Offices</i> that
+he had parted with, and joyfully hailed his new acquisitions,
+often sitting with heads together over the same book, reading
+like active-minded youths who were used to out-of-door life and
+exercise in superabundant measure, and to study as a valued
+recreation, with only food enough for the intellect to awaken
+instead of satisfying it.</p>
+<p>They were delighted to obtain instruction from a travelling
+student, then attending the schools of Ulm&mdash;a meek, timid
+lad who, for love of learning and desire of the priesthood, had
+endured frightful tyranny from the Bacchanten or elder scholars,
+and, having at length attained that rank, had so little heart to
+retaliate on the juniors that his contemporaries despised him,
+and led him a cruel life until he obtained food and shelter from
+Master Gottfried at the pleasant cost of lessons to the young
+Barons.&nbsp; Poor Bastien! this land of quiet, civility, and
+books was a foretaste of Paradise to him after the hard living,
+barbarity, and coarse vices of his comrades, of whom he now and
+then disclosed traits that made his present pupils long to give
+battle to the big shaggy youths who used to send out the lesser
+lads to beg and steal for them, and cruelly maltreated such as
+failed in the quest.</p>
+<p>Lessons in music and singing were gladly accepted by both
+lads, and from their uncle&rsquo;s carving they could not keep
+their hands.&nbsp; Ebbo had begun by enjoining Friedel to
+remember that the work that had been sport in the mountains would
+be basely mechanical in the city, and Friedel as usual yielded
+his private tastes; but on the second day Ebbo himself was
+discovered in the workshop, watching the magic touch of the deft
+workman, and he was soon so enticed by the perfect appliances as
+to take tool in hand and prove himself not unadroit in the
+craft.&nbsp; Friedel however excelled in delicacy of touch and
+grace and originality of conception, and produced such
+workmanship that Master Gottfried could not help stroking his
+hair and telling him it was a pity he was not born to belong to
+the guild.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I cannot spare him, sir,&rdquo; cried Ebbo;
+&ldquo;priest, scholar, minstrel, artist&mdash;all want
+him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What, Hans of all streets, Ebbo?&rdquo; interrupted
+Friedel.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And guildmaster of none,&rdquo; said Ebbo, &ldquo;save
+as a warrior; the rest only enough for a gentleman!&nbsp; For
+what I am thou must be!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But Ebbo did not find fault with the skill Friedel was
+bestowing on his work&mdash;a carving in wood of a dove brooding
+over two young eagles&mdash;the device that both were resolved to
+assume.&nbsp; When their mother asked what their lady-loves would
+say to this, Ebbo looked up, and with the fullest conviction in
+his lustrous eyes declared that no love should ever rival his
+motherling in his heart.&nbsp; For truly her tender sweetness had
+given her sons&rsquo; affection a touch of romance, for which
+Master Gottfried liked them the better, though his wife thought
+their familiarity with her hardly accordant with the patriarchal
+discipline of the citizens.</p>
+<p>The youths held aloof from these burghers, for Master
+Gottfried wisely desired to give them time to be tamed before
+running risk of offence, either to, or by, their wild shy pride;
+and their mother contrived to time her meetings with her old
+companions when her sons were otherwise occupied.&nbsp; Master
+Gottfried made it known that the marriage portion he had designed
+for his niece had been intrusted to a merchant trading in peltry
+to Muscovy, and the sum thus realized was larger than any bride
+had yet brought to Adlerstein.&nbsp; Master Gottfried would have
+liked to continue the same profitable speculations with it; but
+this would have been beyond the young Baron&rsquo;s endurance,
+and his eyes sparkled when his mother spoke of repairing the
+castle, refitting the chapel, having a resident chaplain,
+cultivating more land, increasing the scanty stock of cattle, and
+attempting the improvements hitherto prevented by lack of
+means.&nbsp; He fervently declared that the motherling was more
+than equal to the wise spinning Queen Bertha of legend and lay;
+and the first pleasant sense of wealth came in the acquisition of
+horses, weapons, and braveries.&nbsp; In his original mood, Ebbo
+would rather have stood before the Diet in his home-spun blue
+than have figured in cloth of gold at a burgher&rsquo;s expense;
+but he had learned to love his uncle, he regarded the marriage
+portion as family property, and moreover he sorely longed to feel
+himself and his brother well mounted, and scarcely less to see
+his mother in a velvet gown.</p>
+<p>Here was his chief point of sympathy with the housemother,
+who, herself precluded from wearing miniver, velvet, or pearls,
+longed to deck her niece therewith, in time to receive Sir
+Kasimir of Adlerstein Wildschloss, as he had promised to meet his
+godsons at Ulm.&nbsp; The knight&rsquo;s marriage had lasted only
+a few years, and had left him no surviving children except one
+little daughter, whom he had placed in a nunnery at Ulm, under
+the care of her mother&rsquo;s sister.&nbsp; His lands lay higher
+up the Danube, and he was expected at Ulm shortly before the
+Emperor&rsquo;s arrival.&nbsp; He had been chiefly in Flanders
+with the King of the Romans, and had only returned to Germany
+when the Netherlanders had refused the regency of Maximilian, and
+driven him out of their country, depriving him of the custody of
+his children.</p>
+<p>Pfingsttag, or Pentecost-day, was the occasion of
+Christina&rsquo;s first full toilet, and never was bride more
+solicitously or exultingly arrayed than she, while one boy held
+the mirror and the other criticized and admired as the aunt
+adjusted the pearl-bordered coif, and long white veil floating
+over the long-desired black velvet dress.&nbsp; How the two lads
+admired and gazed, caring far less for their own new and noble
+attire!&nbsp; Friedel was indeed somewhat concerned that the
+sword by his side was so much handsomer than that which Ebbo
+wore, and which, for all its dinted scabbard and battered hilt,
+he was resolved never to discard.</p>
+<p>It was a festival of brilliant joy.&nbsp; Wreaths of flowers
+hung from the windows; rich tapestries decked the Dome Kirk, and
+the relics were displayed in shrines of wonderful costliness of
+material and beauty of workmanship; little birds, with thin cakes
+fastened to their feet, were let loose to fly about the church,
+in strange allusion to the event of the day; the clergy wore
+their most gorgeous robes; and the exulting music of the mass
+echoed from the vaults of the long-drawn aisles, and brought a
+rapt look of deep calm ecstasy over Friedel&rsquo;s sensitive
+features.&nbsp; The beggars evidently considered a festival as a
+harvest-day, and crowded round the doors of the cathedral.&nbsp;
+As the Lady of Adlerstein came out leaning on Ebbo&rsquo;s arm,
+with Friedel on her other side, they evidently attracted the
+notice of a woman whose thin brown face looked the darker for the
+striped red and yellow silk kerchief that bound the dark locks
+round her brow, as, holding out a beringed hand, she fastened her
+glittering jet black eyes on them, and exclaimed, &ldquo;Alms! if
+the fair dame and knightly Junkern would hear what fate has in
+store for them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We meddle not with the future, I thank thee,&rdquo;
+said Christina, seeing that her sons, to whom gipsies were an
+amazing novelty, were in extreme surprise at the fortune-telling
+proposal.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yet could I tell much, lady,&rdquo; said the woman,
+still standing in the way.&nbsp; &ldquo;What would some here
+present give to know that the locks that were shrouded by the
+widow&rsquo;s veil ere ever they wore the matron&rsquo;s coif
+shall yet return to the coif once more?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ebbo gave a sudden start of dismay and passion; his mother
+held him fast.&nbsp; &ldquo;Push on, Ebbo, mine; heed her not;
+she is a mere Bohemian.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But how knew she your history, mother?&rdquo; asked
+Friedel, eagerly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That might be easily learnt at our Wake,&rdquo; began
+Christina; but her steps were checked by a call from Master
+Gottfried just behind.&nbsp; &ldquo;Frau Freiherrinn, Junkern,
+not so fast.&nbsp; Here is your noble kinsman.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A tall, fine-looking person, in the long rich robe worn on
+peaceful occasions, stood forth, doffing his eagle-plumed bonnet,
+and, as the lady turned and curtsied low, he put his knee to the
+ground and kissed her hand, saying, &ldquo;Well met, noble dame;
+I felt certain that I knew you when I beheld you in the
+Dome.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He was gazing at her all the time,&rdquo; whispered
+Ebbo to his brother; while their mother, blushing, replied,
+&ldquo;You do me too much honour, Herr Freiherr.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Once seen, never to be forgotten,&rdquo; was the
+courteous answer: &ldquo;and truly, but for the stately height of
+these my godsons I would not believe how long since our meeting
+was.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Thereupon, in true German fashion, Sir Kasimir embraced each
+youth in the open street, and then, removing his long,
+embroidered Spanish glove, he offered his hand, or rather the
+tips of his fingers, to lead the Frau Christina home.</p>
+<p>Master Sorel had invited him to become his guest at a very
+elaborate ornamental festival meal in honour of the great
+holiday, at which were to be present several wealthy citizens
+with their wives and families, old connections of the Sorel
+family.&nbsp; Ebbo had resolved upon treating them with courteous
+reserve and distance; but he was surprised to find his cousin of
+Wildschloss comporting himself among the burgomasters and their
+dames as freely as though they had been his equals, and to see
+that they took such demeanour as perfectly natural.&nbsp; Quick
+to perceive, the boy gathered that the gulf between noble and
+burgher was so great that no intimacy could bridge it over, no
+reserve widen it, and that his own bashful hauteur was almost a
+sign that he knew that the gulf had been passed by his own
+parents; but shame and consciousness did not enable him to alter
+his manner but rather added to its stiffness.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The Junker is like an Englishman,&rdquo; said Sir
+Kasimir, who had met many of the exiles of the Roses at the court
+of Mary of Burgundy; and then he turned to discuss with the
+guildmasters the interruption to trade caused by Flemish
+jealousies.</p>
+<p>After the lengthy meal, the tables were removed, the long
+gallery was occupied by musicians, and Master Gottfried crossed
+the hall to tell his eldest grandnephew that to him he should
+depute the opening of the dance with the handsome bride of the
+Rathsherr, Ulrich Burger.&nbsp; Ebbo blushed up to the eyes, and
+muttered that he prayed his uncle to excuse him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So!&rdquo; said the old citizen, really displeased;
+&ldquo;thy kinsman might have proved to thee that it is no
+derogation of thy lordly dignity.&nbsp; I have been patient with
+thee, but thy pride passes&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; interposed Friedel hastily, raising his
+sweet candid face with a look between shame and merriment,
+&ldquo;it is not that; but you forget what poor mountaineers we
+are.&nbsp; Never did we tread a measure save now and then with
+our mother on a winter evening, and we know no more than a
+chamois of your intricate measures.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Master Gottfried looked perplexed, for these dances were
+matters of great punctilio.&nbsp; It was but seven years since
+the Lord of Praunstein had defied the whole city of Frankfort
+because a damsel of that place had refused to dance with one of
+his Cousins; and, though &ldquo;Fistright&rdquo; and letters of
+challenge had been made illegal, yet the whole city of Ulm would
+have resented the affront put on it by the young lord of
+Adlerstein.&nbsp; Happily the Freiherr of Adlerstein Wildschloss
+was at hand.&nbsp; &ldquo;Herr Burgomaster,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;let me commence the dance with your fair lady niece.&nbsp;
+By your testimony,&rdquo; he added, smiling to the youths,
+&ldquo;she can tread a measure.&nbsp; And, after marking us, you
+may try your success with the Rathsherrinn.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Christina would gladly have transferred her noble partner to
+the Rathsherrinn, but she feared to mortify her good uncle and
+aunt further, and consented to figure alone with Sir Kasimir in
+one of the majestic, graceful dances performed by a single couple
+before a gazing assembly.&nbsp; So she let him lead her to her
+place, and they bowed and bent, swept past one another, and moved
+in interlacing lines and curves, with a grand slow movement that
+displayed her quiet grace and his stately port and courtly
+air.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is it not beautiful to see the motherling?&rdquo; said
+Friedel to his brother; &ldquo;she sails like a white cloud in a
+soft wind.&nbsp; And he stands grand as a stag at
+gaze.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Like a malapert peacock, say I,&rdquo; returned Ebbo;
+&ldquo;didst not see, Friedel, how he kept his eyes on her in
+church?&nbsp; My uncle says the Bohemians are mere
+deceivers.&nbsp; Depend on it the woman had spied his insolent
+looks when she made her ribald prediction.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;See,&rdquo; said Friedel, who had been watching the
+steps rather than attending, &ldquo;it will be easy to dance it
+now.&nbsp; It is a figure my mother once tried to teach us.&nbsp;
+I remember it now.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then go and do it, since better may not be.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, but it should be thou.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who will know which of us it is?&nbsp; I hated his
+presumption too much to mark his antics.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Friedel came forward, and the substitution was undetected by
+all save their mother and uncle; by the latter only because,
+addressing Ebbo, he received a reply in a tone such as Friedel
+never used.</p>
+<p>Natural grace, quickness of ear and eye, and a skilful
+partner, rendered Friedel&rsquo;s so fair a performance that he
+ventured on sending his brother to attend the councilloress with
+wine and comfits; while he in his own person performed another
+dance with the city dame next in pretension, and their mother was
+amused by Sir Kasimir&rsquo;s remark, that her second son danced
+better than the elder, but both must learn.</p>
+<p>The remark displeased Ebbo.&nbsp; In his isolated castle he
+knew no superior, and his nature might yield willingly, but
+rebelled at being put down.&nbsp; His brother was his perfect
+equal in all mental and bodily attributes, but it was the absence
+of all self-assertion that made Ebbo so often give him the
+preference; it was his mother&rsquo;s tender meekness in which
+lay her power with him; and if he yielded to Gottfried
+Sorel&rsquo;s wisdom and experience, it was with the inward
+consciousness of voluntary deference to one of lower rank.&nbsp;
+But here was Wildschloss, of the same noble blood with himself,
+his elder, his sponsor, his protector, with every right to direct
+him, so that there was no choice between grateful docility and
+headstrong folly.&nbsp; If the fellow had been old, weak, or in
+any way inferior, it would have been more bearable; but he was a
+tried warrior, a sage counsellor, in the prime vigour of manhood,
+and with a kindly reasonable authority to which only a fool could
+fail to attend, and which for that very reason chafed Ebbo
+excessively.</p>
+<p>Moreover there was the gipsy prophecy ever rankling in the
+lad&rsquo;s heart, and embittering to him the sight of every
+civility from his kinsman to his mother.&nbsp; Sir Kasimir lodged
+at a neighbouring hostel; but he spent much time with his
+cousins, and tried to make them friends with his squire, Count
+Rudiger.&nbsp; A great offence to Ebbo was however the criticisms
+of both knight and squire on the bearing of the young Barons in
+military exercises.&nbsp; Truly, with no instructor but the rough
+lanzknecht Heinz, they must, as Friedel said, have been born
+paladins to have equalled youths whose life had been spent in
+chivalrous training.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;See us in a downright fight,&rdquo; said Ebbo;
+&ldquo;we could strike as hard as any courtly minion.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;As hard, but scarce as dexterously,&rdquo; said
+Friedel, &ldquo;and be called for our pains the wild
+mountaineers.&nbsp; I heard the men-at-arms saying I sat my horse
+as though it were always going up or down a precipice; and Master
+Schmidt went into his shop the other day shrugging his shoulders,
+and saying we hailed one another across the market-place as if we
+thought Ulm was a mountain full of gemsbocks.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thou heardst! and didst not cast his insolence in his
+teeth?&rdquo; cried Ebbo.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How could I,&rdquo; laughed Friedel, &ldquo;when the
+echo was casting back in my teeth my own shout to thee?&nbsp; I
+could only laugh with Rudiger.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The chief delight I could have, next to getting home,
+would be to lay that fellow Rudiger on his back in the
+tilt-yard,&rdquo; said Ebbo.</p>
+<p>But, as Rudiger was by four years his senior, and very expert,
+the upshot of these encounters was quite otherwise, and the young
+gentlemen were disabused of the notion that fighting came by
+nature, and found that, if they desired success in a serious
+conflict, they must practise diligently in the city tilt-yard,
+where young men were trained to arms.&nbsp; The crossbow was the
+only weapon with which they excelled; and, as shooting was a
+favourite exercise of the burghers, their proficiency was not as
+exclusive as had seemed to Ebbo a baronial privilege.&nbsp;
+Harquebuses were novelties to them, and they despised them as
+burgher weapons, in spite of Sir Kasimir&rsquo;s assurance that
+firearms were a great subject of study and interest to the King
+of the Romans.&nbsp; The name of this personage was, it may be
+feared, highly distasteful to the Freiherr von Adlerstein, both
+as Wildschloss&rsquo;s model of knightly perfection, and as one
+who claimed submission from his haughty spirit.&nbsp; When Sir
+Kasimir spoke to him on the subject of giving his allegiance, he
+stiffly replied, &ldquo;Sir, that is a question for ripe
+consideration.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is the question,&rdquo; said Wildschloss, rather
+more lightly than agreed with the Baron&rsquo;s dignity,
+&ldquo;whether you like to have your castle pulled down about
+your ears.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That has never happened yet to Adlerstein!&rdquo; said
+Ebbo, proudly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, because since the days of the Hohenstaufen there
+has been neither rule nor union in the empire.&nbsp; But times
+are changing fast, my Junker, and within the last ten years forty
+castles such as yours have been consumed by the Swabian League,
+as though they were so many walnuts.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The shell of Adlerstein was too hard for them,
+though.&nbsp; They never tried.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And wherefore, friend Eberhard?&nbsp; It was because I
+represented to the Kaiser and the Graf von Wurtemberg that little
+profit and no glory would accrue from attacking a crag full of
+women and babes, and that I, having the honour to be your next
+heir, should prefer having the castle untouched, and under the
+peace of the empire, so long as that peace was kept.&nbsp; When
+you should come to years of discretion, then it would be for you
+to carry out the intention wherewith your father and grandfather
+left home.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then we have been protected by the peace of the empire
+all this time?&rdquo; said Friedel, while Ebbo looked as if the
+notion were hard of digestion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Even so; and, had you not freely and nobly released
+your Genoese merchant, it had gone hard with
+Adlerstein.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Could Adlerstein be taken?&rdquo; demanded Ebbo
+triumphantly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Your grandmother thought not,&rdquo; said Sir Kasimir,
+with a shade of irony in his tone.&nbsp; &ldquo;It would be a
+troublesome siege; but the League numbers 1,500 horse, and 9,000
+foot, and, with Schlangenwald&rsquo;s concurrence, you would be
+assuredly starved out.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ebbo was so much the more stimulated to take his chance, and
+do nothing on compulsion; but Friedel put in the question to what
+the oaths would bind them.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Only to aid the Emperor with sword and counsel in field
+or Diet, and thereby win fame and honour such as can scarce be
+gained by carrying prey to yon eagle roost.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;One may preserve one&rsquo;s independence without
+robbery,&rdquo; said Ebbo coldly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, lad: did you ever hear of a wolf that could live
+without marauding?&nbsp; Or if he tried, would he get credit for
+so doing?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;After all,&rdquo; said Friedel, &ldquo;does not the
+present agreement hold till we are of age?&nbsp; I suppose the
+Swabian League would attempt nothing against minors, unless we
+break the peace?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Probably not; I will do my utmost to give the Freiherr
+there time to grow beyond his grandmother&rsquo;s maxims,&rdquo;
+said Wildschloss.&nbsp; &ldquo;If Schlangenwald do not meddle in
+the matter, he may have the next five years to decide whether
+Adlerstein can hold out against all Germany.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Freiherr Kasimir von Adlerstein Wildschloss,&rdquo;
+said Eberhard, turning solemnly on him, &ldquo;I do you to wit
+once for all that threats will not serve with me.&nbsp; If I
+submit, it will be because I am convinced it is right.&nbsp;
+Otherwise we had rather both be buried in the ruins of our
+castle, as its last free lords.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So!&rdquo; said the provoking kinsman; &ldquo;such
+burials look grim when the time comes, but happily it is not
+coming yet!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Meantime, as Ebbo said to Friedel, how much might
+happen&mdash;a disruption of the empire, a crusade against the
+Turks, a war in Italy, some grand means of making the Diet value
+the sword of a free baron, without chaining him down to gratify
+the greed of hungry Austria.&nbsp; If only Wildschloss could be
+shaken off!&nbsp; But he only became constantly more friendly and
+intrusive, almost paternal.&nbsp; No wonder, when the mother and
+her uncle made him so welcome, and were so intolerably grateful
+for his impertinent interference, while even Friedel confessed
+the reasonableness of his counsels, as if that were not the very
+sting of them.</p>
+<p>He even asked leave to bring his little daughter Thekla from
+her convent to see the Lady of Adlerstein.&nbsp; She was a
+pretty, flaxen-haired maiden of five years old, in a round cap,
+and long narrow frock, with a little cross at the neck.&nbsp; She
+had never seen any one beyond the walls of the nunnery; and, when
+her father took her from the lay sister&rsquo;s arms, and carried
+her to the gallery, where sat Hausfrau Johanna, in dark green,
+slashed with cherry colour, Master Gottfried, in sober crimson,
+with gold medal and chain, Freiherrinn Christina, in
+silver-broidered black, and the two Junkern stood near in the
+shining mail in which they were going to the tilt yard, she
+turned her head in terror, struggled with her scarce known
+father, and shrieked for Sister Grethel.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was all too sheen,&rdquo; she sobbed, in the lay
+sister&rsquo;s arms; &ldquo;she did not want to be in Paradise
+yet, among the saints!&nbsp; O! take her back!&nbsp; The two
+bright, holy Michaels would let her go, for indeed she had made
+but one mistake in her Ave.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Vain was the attempt to make her lift her face from the black
+serge shoulder where she had hidden it.&nbsp; Sister Grethel
+coaxed and scolded, Sir Kasimir reproved, the housemother offered
+comfits, and Christina&rsquo;s soft voice was worst of all, for
+the child, probably taking her for Our Lady herself, began to
+gasp forth a general confession.&nbsp; &ldquo;I will never do so
+again!&nbsp; Yes, it was a fib, but Mother Hildegard gave me a
+bit of marchpane not to tell&mdash;&rdquo;&nbsp; Here the lay
+sister took strong measures for closing the little mouth, and
+Christina drew back, recommending that the child should be left
+gradually to discover their terrestrial nature.&nbsp; Ebbo had
+looked on with extreme disgust, trying to hurry Friedel, who had
+delayed to trace some lines for his mother on her broidery
+pattern.&nbsp; In passing the step where Grethel sat with Thekla
+on her lap, the clank of their armour caused the uplifting of the
+little flaxen head, and two wide blue eyes looked over
+Grethel&rsquo;s shoulder, and met Friedel&rsquo;s sunny
+glance.&nbsp; He smiled; she laughed back again.&nbsp; He held
+out his arms, and, though his hands were gauntleted, she let him
+lift her up, and curiously smoothed and patted his cheek, as if
+he had been a strange animal.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You have no wings,&rdquo; she said.&nbsp; &ldquo;Are
+you St. George, or St. Michael?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Neither the one nor the other, pretty one.&nbsp; Only
+your poor cousin Friedel von Adlerstein, and here is Ebbo, my
+brother.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was not in Ebbo&rsquo;s nature not to smile encouragement
+at the fair little face, with its wistful look.&nbsp; He drew off
+his glove to caress her silken hair, and for a few minutes she
+was played with by the two brothers like a newly-invented toy,
+receiving their attentions with pretty half-frightened
+graciousness, until Count Rudiger hastened in to summon them, and
+Friedel placed her on his mother&rsquo;s knee, where she speedily
+became perfectly happy, and at ease.</p>
+<p>Her extreme delight, when towards evening the Junkern
+returned, was flattering even to Ebbo; and, when it was time for
+her to be taken home, she made strong resistance, clinging fast
+to Christina, with screams and struggles.&nbsp; To the
+lady&rsquo;s promise of coming to see her she replied,
+&ldquo;Friedel and Ebbo, too,&rdquo; and, receiving no response
+to this request, she burst out, &ldquo;Then I won&rsquo;t
+come!&nbsp; I am the Freiherrinn Thekla, the heiress of
+Adlerstein Wildschloss and Felsenbach.&nbsp; I won&rsquo;t be a
+nun.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll be married!&nbsp; You shall be my
+husband,&rdquo; and she made a dart at the nearest youth, who
+happened to be Ebbo.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ay, ay, you shall have him.&nbsp; He will come for you,
+sweetest Fraulein,&rdquo; said the perplexed Grethel, &ldquo;so
+only you will come home!&nbsp; Nobody will come for you if you
+are naughty.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Will you come if I am good?&rdquo; said the spoilt
+cloister pet, clinging tight to Ebbo.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said her father, as she still resisted,
+&ldquo;come back, my child, and one day shall you see Ebbo, and
+have him for a brother.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Thereat Ebbo shook off the little grasping fingers, almost as
+if they had belonged to a noxious insect.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The matron&rsquo;s coif should succeed the
+widow&rsquo;s veil.&rdquo;&nbsp; He might talk with scholarly
+contempt of the new race of Bohemian impostors; but there was no
+forgetting that sentence.&nbsp; And in like manner, though his
+grandmother&rsquo;s allegation that his mother had been bent on
+captivating Sir Kasimir in that single interview at Adlerstein,
+had always seemed to him the most preposterous of all
+Kunigunde&rsquo;s forms of outrage, the recollection would recur
+to him; and he could have found it in his heart to wish that his
+mother had never heard of the old lady&rsquo;s designs as to the
+oubliette.&nbsp; He did most sincerely wish Master Gottfried had
+never let Wildschloss know of the mode in which his life had been
+saved.&nbsp; Yet, while it would have seemed to him profane to
+breathe even to Friedel the true secret of his repugnance to this
+meddlesome kinsman, it was absolutely impossible to avoid his
+most distasteful authority and patronage.</p>
+<p>And the mother herself was gently, thankfully happy and
+unsuspicious, basking in the tender home affection of which she
+had so long been deprived, proud of her sons, and, though anxious
+as to Ebbo&rsquo;s decision, with a quiet trust in his foundation
+of principle, and above all trusting to prayer.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE DOUBLE-HEADED EAGLE</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">One</span> summer evening, when shooting
+at a bird on a pole was in full exercise in the tilt-yard, the
+sports were interrupted by a message from the Provost that a
+harbinger had brought tidings that the Imperial court was within
+a day&rsquo;s journey.</p>
+<p>All was preparation.&nbsp; Fresh sand had to be strewn on the
+arena.&nbsp; New tapestry hangings were to deck the galleries,
+the houses and balconies to be brave with drapery, the fountain
+in the market-place was to play Rhine wine, all Ulm was astir to
+do honour to itself and to the Kaisar, and Ebbo stood amid all
+the bustle, drawing lines in the sand with the stock of his
+arblast, subject to all that oppressive self-magnification so
+frequent in early youth, and which made it seem to him as if the
+Kaisar and the King of the Romans were coming to Ulm with the
+mere purpose of destroying his independence, and as if the eyes
+of all Germany were watching for his humiliation.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;See! see!&rdquo; suddenly exclaimed Friedel;
+&ldquo;look! there is something among the tracery of the Dome
+Kirk Tower.&nbsp; Is it man or bird?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Bird, folly!&nbsp; Thou couldst see no bird less than
+an eagle from hence,&rdquo; said Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;No doubt they
+are about to hoist a banner.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That is not their wont,&rdquo; returned Sir
+Kasimir.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I see him,&rdquo; interrupted Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;Nay,
+but he is a bold climber!&nbsp; We went up to that stage, close
+to the balcony, but there&rsquo;s no footing beyond but crockets
+and canopies.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And a bit of rotten scaffold,&rdquo; added
+Friedel.&nbsp; &ldquo;Perhaps he is a builder going to examine
+it!&nbsp; Up higher, higher!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A builder!&rdquo; said Ebbo; &ldquo;a man with a head
+and foot like that should be a chamois hunter!&nbsp; Shouldst
+thou deem it worse than the Red Eyrie, Friedel?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yea, truly!&nbsp; The depth beneath is plainer!&nbsp;
+There would be no climbing there without&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Without what, cousin?&rdquo; asked Wildschloss.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Without great cause,&rdquo; said Friedel.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;It is fearful!&nbsp; He is like a fly against the
+sky.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Beaten again!&rdquo; muttered Ebbo; &ldquo;I did think
+that none of these town-bred fellows could surpass us when it
+came to a giddy height!&nbsp; Who can he be?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Look! look!&rdquo; burst out Friedel.&nbsp; &ldquo;The
+saints protect him!&nbsp; He is on that narrowest topmost
+ledge&mdash;measuring; his heel is over the parapet&mdash;half
+his foot!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Holding on by the rotten scaffold pole!&nbsp; St.
+Barbara be his speed; but he is a brave man!&rdquo; shouted
+Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;Oh! the pole has broken.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Heaven forefend!&rdquo; cried Wildschloss, with despair
+on his face unseen by the boys, for Friedel had hidden his eyes,
+and Ebbo was straining his with the intense gaze of horror.&nbsp;
+He had carried his glance downwards, following the 380 feet fall
+that must be the lot of the adventurer.&nbsp; Then looking up
+again he shouted, &ldquo;I see him!&nbsp; I see him!&nbsp; Praise
+to St. Barbara!&nbsp; He is safe!&nbsp; He has caught by the
+upright stone work.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where? where?&nbsp; Show me!&rdquo; cried Wildschloss,
+grasping Ebbo&rsquo;s arm.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There! clinging to that upright bit of tracery,
+stretching his foot out to yonder crocket.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I cannot see.&nbsp; Mine eyes swim and dazzle,&rdquo;
+said Wildschloss.&nbsp; &ldquo;Merciful heavens! is this another
+tempting of Providence?&nbsp; How is it with him now,
+Ebbo?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Swarming down another slender bit of the stone
+network.&nbsp; It must be easy now to one who could keep head and
+hand steady in such a shock.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There!&rdquo; added Friedel, after a breathless space,
+&ldquo;he is on the lower parapet, whence begins the stair.&nbsp;
+Do you know him, sir?&nbsp; Who is he?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Either a Venetian mountebank,&rdquo; said Wildschloss,
+&ldquo;or else there is only one man I know of either so
+foolhardy or so steady of head.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Be he who he may,&rdquo; said Ebbo, &ldquo;he is the
+bravest man that ever I beheld.&nbsp; Who is he, Sir
+Kasimir?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;An eagle of higher flight than ours, no doubt,&rdquo;
+said Wildschloss.&nbsp; &ldquo;But come; we shall reach the Dome
+Kirk by the time the climber has wound his way down the turret
+stairs, and we shall see what like he is.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Their coming was well timed, for a small door at the foot of
+the tower was just opening to give exit to a very tall knight, in
+one of those short Spanish cloaks the collar of which could be
+raised so as to conceal the face.&nbsp; He looked to the right
+and left, and had one hand raised to put up the collar when he
+recognized Sir Kasimir, and, holding out both hands, exclaimed,
+&ldquo;Ha, Adlerstein! well met!&nbsp; I looked to see thee
+here.&nbsp; No unbonneting; I am not come yet.&nbsp; I am at
+Strasburg, with the Kaisar and the Archduke, and am not here till
+we ride in, in purple and in pall by the time the good folk have
+hung out their arras, and donned their gold chains, and conned
+their speeches, and mounted their mules.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well that their speeches are not over the lykewake of
+his kingly kaisarly highness,&rdquo; gravely returned Sir
+Kasimir.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ha!&nbsp; Thou sawest?&nbsp; I came out here to avoid
+the gaping throng, who don&rsquo;t know what a hunter can
+do.&nbsp; I have been in worse case in the Tyrol.&nbsp;
+Snowdrifts are worse footing than stone vine leaves.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where abides your highness?&rdquo; asked
+Wildschloss.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I ride back again to the halting-place for the night,
+and meet my father in time to do my part in the pageant.&nbsp; I
+was sick of the addresses, and, moreover, the purse-proud
+Flemings have made such a stiff little fop of my poor boy that I
+am ashamed to look at him, or hear his French accent.&nbsp; So I
+rode off to get a view of this notable Dom in peace, ere it be
+bedizened in holiday garb; and one can&rsquo;t stir without all
+the Chapter waddling after one.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Your highness has found means of distancing
+them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, truly, the Prior would scarce delight in the view
+from yonder parapet,&rdquo; laughed his highness.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Ha!&nbsp; Adlerstein, where didst get such a perfect pair
+of pages?&nbsp; I would I could match my hounds as
+well.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They are no pages of mine, so please you,&rdquo; said
+the knight; &ldquo;rather this is the head of my name.&nbsp; Let
+me present to your kingly highness the Freiherr von
+Adlerstein.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thou dost not thyself distinguish between them!&rdquo;
+said Maximilian, as Friedmund stepped back, putting forward
+Eberhard, whose bright, lively smile of interest and admiration
+had been the cause of his cousin&rsquo;s mistake.&nbsp; They
+would have doffed their caps and bent the knee, but were hastily
+checked by Maximilian.&nbsp; &ldquo;No, no, Junkern, I shall owe
+you no thanks for bringing all the street on
+me!&mdash;that&rsquo;s enough.&nbsp; Reserve the rest for Kaisar
+Fritz.&rdquo;&nbsp; Then, familiarly taking Sir Kasimir&rsquo;s
+arm, he walked on, saying, &ldquo;I remember now.&nbsp; Thou
+wentest after an inheritance from the old Mouser of the
+Debateable Ford, and wert ousted by a couple of lusty boys sprung
+of a peasant wedlock.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, my lord, of a burgher lady, fair as she is wise
+and virtuous; who, spite of all hindrances, has bred up these
+youths in all good and noble nurture.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is this so?&rdquo; said the king, turning sharp round
+on the twins.&nbsp; &ldquo;Are ye minded to quit freebooting, and
+come a crusading against the Turks with me?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Everywhere with such a leader!&rdquo; enthusiastically
+exclaimed Ebbo.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What? up there?&rdquo; said Maximilian, smiling.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Thou hast the tread of a chamois-hunter.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Friedel has been on the Red Eyrie,&rdquo; exclaimed
+Ebbo; then, thinking he had spoken foolishly, he coloured.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Which is the Red Eyrie?&rdquo; good-humouredly asked
+the king.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is the crag above our castle,&rdquo; said Friedel,
+modestly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;None other has been there,&rdquo; added Ebbo,
+perceiving his auditor&rsquo;s interest; &ldquo;but he saw the
+eagle flying away with a poor widow&rsquo;s kid, and the sight
+must have given him wings, for we never could find the same path;
+but here is one of the feathers he brought
+down&rdquo;&mdash;taking off his cap so as to show a feather
+rather the worse for wear, and sheltered behind a fresher
+one.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; said Friedel, &ldquo;thou shouldst say that
+I came to a ledge where I had like to have stayed all night, but
+that ye all came out with men and ropes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We know what such a case is!&rdquo; said the
+king.&nbsp; &ldquo;It has chanced to us to hang between heaven
+and earth; I&rsquo;ve even had the Holy Sacrament held up for my
+last pious gaze by those who gave me up for lost on the
+mountain-side.&nbsp; Adlerstein?&nbsp; The peak above the
+Braunwasser?&nbsp; Some day shall ye show me this eyrie of yours,
+and we will see whether we can amaze our cousins the
+eagles.&nbsp; We see you at our father&rsquo;s court
+to-morrow?&rdquo; he graciously added, and Ebbo gave a ready bow
+of acquiescence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There,&rdquo; said the king, as after their dismissal
+he walked on with Sir Kasimir, &ldquo;never blame me for rashness
+and imprudence.&nbsp; Here has this height of the steeple proved
+the height of policy.&nbsp; It has made a loyal subject of a
+Mouser on the spot.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pray Heaven it may have won a heart, true though
+proud!&rdquo; said Wildschloss; &ldquo;but mousing was cured
+before by the wise training of the mother.&nbsp; Your highness
+will have taken out the sting of submission, and you will scarce
+find more faithful subjects.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How old are the Junkern?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Some sixteen years, your highness.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That is what living among mountains does for a
+lad.&nbsp; Why could not those thrice-accursed Flemish towns let
+me breed up my boy to be good for something in the mountains,
+instead of getting duck-footed and muddy-witted in the
+fens?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>In the meantime Ebbo and Friedel were returning home in that
+sort of passion of enthusiasm that ingenuous boyhood feels when
+first brought into contact with greatness or brilliant
+qualities.</p>
+<p>And brilliance was the striking point in Maximilian.&nbsp; The
+Last of the Knights, in spite of his many defects, was, by
+personal qualities, and the hereditary influence of
+long-descended rank, verily a king of men in aspect and
+demeanour, even when most careless and simple.&nbsp; He was at
+this time a year or two past thirty, unusually tall, and with a
+form at once majestic and full of vigour and activity; a noble,
+fair, though sunburnt countenance; eyes of dark gray, almost
+black; long fair hair, a keen aquiline nose, a lip only beginning
+to lengthen to the characteristic Austrian feature, an expression
+always lofty, sometimes dreamy, and yet at the same time full of
+acuteness and humour.&nbsp; His abilities were of the highest
+order, his purposes, especially at this period of his life, most
+noble and becoming in the first prince of Christendom; and, if
+his life were a failure, and his reputation unworthy of his
+endowments, the cause seems to have been in great measure the
+bewilderment and confusion that unusual gifts sometimes cause to
+their possessor, whose sight their conflicting illumination
+dazzles so as to impair his steadiness of aim, while their
+contending gleams light him into various directions, so that one
+object is deserted for another ere its completion.&nbsp; Thus
+Maximilian cuts a figure in history far inferior to that made by
+his grandson, Charles V., whom he nevertheless excelled in every
+personal quality, except the most needful of all, force of
+character; and, in like manner, his remote descendant, the
+narrow-minded Ferdinand of Styria, gained his ends, though the
+able and brilliant Joseph II. was to die broken-hearted, calling
+his reign a failure and mistake.&nbsp; However, such terms as
+these could not be applied to Maximilian with regard to home
+affairs.&nbsp; He has had hard measure from those who have only
+regarded his vacillating foreign policy, especially with respect
+to Italy&mdash;ever the temptation and the bane of Austria; but
+even here much of his uncertain conduct was owing to the
+unfulfilled promises of what he himself called his &ldquo;realm
+of kings,&rdquo; and a sovereign can only justly be estimated by
+his domestic policy.&nbsp; The contrast of the empire before his
+time with the subsequent Germany is that of chaos with
+order.&nbsp; Since the death of Friedrich II. the Imperial title
+had been a mockery, making the prince who chanced to bear it a
+mere mark for the spite of his rivals; there was no centre of
+justice, no appeal; everybody might make war on everybody, with
+the sole preliminary of exchanging a challenge;
+&ldquo;fist-right&rdquo; was the acknowledged law of the land;
+and, except in the free cities, and under such a happy accident
+as a right-minded prince here and there, the state of Germany
+seems to have been rather worse than that of Scotland from Bruce
+to the union of the Crowns.&nbsp; Under Maximilian, the Diet
+became an effective council, fist-right was abolished,
+independent robber-lords put down, civilization began to effect
+an entrance, the system of circles was arranged, and the empire
+again became a leading power in Europe, instead of a mere vortex
+of disorder and misrule.&nbsp; Never would Charles V. have held
+the position he occupied had he come after an ordinary man,
+instead of after an able and sagacious reformer like that
+Maximilian who is popularly regarded as a fantastic caricature of
+a knight-errant, marred by avarice and weakness of purpose.</p>
+<p>At the juncture of which we are writing, none of
+Maximilian&rsquo;s less worthy qualities had appeared; he had not
+been rendered shifty and unscrupulous by difficulties and
+disappointments in money matters, and had not found it impossible
+to keep many of the promises he had given in all good
+faith.&nbsp; He stood forth as the hope of Germany, in salient
+contrast to the feeble and avaricious father, who was felt to be
+the only obstacle in the way of his noble designs of establishing
+peace and good discipline in the empire, and conducting a general
+crusade against the Turks, whose progress was the most
+threatening peril of Christendom.&nbsp; His fame was, of course,
+frequently discussed among the citizens, with whom he was very
+popular, not only from his ease and freedom of manner, but
+because his graceful tastes, his love of painting, sculpture,
+architecture, and the mechanical turn which made him an improver
+of fire-arms and a patron of painting and engraving, rendered
+their society more agreeable to him than that of his dull,
+barbarous nobility.&nbsp; Ebbo had heard so much of the
+perfections of the King of the Romans as to be prepared to hate
+him; but the boy, as we have seen, was of a generous, sensitive
+nature, peculiarly prone to enthusiastic impressions of
+veneration; and Maximilian&rsquo;s high-spirited manhood,
+personal fascination, and individual kindness had so entirely
+taken him by surprise, that he talked of him all the evening in a
+more fervid manner than did even Friedel, though both could
+scarcely rest for their anticipations of seeing him on the morrow
+in the full state of his entry.</p>
+<p>Richly clad, and mounted on cream-coloured steeds, nearly as
+much alike as themselves, the twins were a pleasant sight for a
+proud mother&rsquo;s eyes, as they rode out to take their place
+in the procession that was to welcome the royal guests.&nbsp;
+Master Sorel, in ample gown, richly furred, with medal and chain
+of office, likewise went forth as Guildmaster; and Christina,
+with smiling lips and liquid eyes, recollected the days when to
+see him in such array was her keenest pleasure, and the utmost
+splendour her fancy could depict.</p>
+<p>Arrayed, as her sons loved to see her, in black velvet, and
+with pearl-bordered cap, Christina sat by her aunt in the
+tapestried balcony, and between them stood or sat little Thekla
+von Adlerstein Wildschloss, whose father had entrusted her to
+their care, to see the procession pass by.&nbsp; A rich Eastern
+carpet, of gorgeous colouring, covered the upper balustrade, over
+which they leant, in somewhat close quarters with the
+scarlet-bodiced dames of the opposite house, but with ample space
+for sight up and down the rows of smiling expectants at each
+balcony, or window, equally gay with hangings, while the bells of
+all the churches clashed forth their gayest chimes, and fitful
+bursts of music were borne upon the breeze.&nbsp; Little Thekla
+danced in the narrow space for very glee, and wondered why any
+one should live in a cloister when the world was so wide and so
+fair.&nbsp; And Dame Johanna tried to say something pious of
+worldly temptations, and the cloister shelter; but Thekla
+interrupted her, and, clinging to Christina, exclaimed,
+&ldquo;Nay, but I am always naughty with Mother Ludmilla in the
+convent, and I know I should never be naughty out here with you
+and the barons; I should be so happy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hush! hush! little one; here they come!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>On they came&mdash;stout lanzknechts first, the city guard
+with steel helmets unadorned, buff suits, and bearing either
+harquebuses, halberts, or those handsome but terrible weapons,
+morning stars.&nbsp; Then followed guild after guild, each
+preceded by the banner bearing its homely emblem&mdash;the
+cauldron of the smiths, the hose of the clothiers, the helmet of
+the armourers, the bason of the barbers, the boot of the sutors;
+even the sausage of the cooks, and the shoe of the shoeblacks,
+were re-presented, as by men who gloried in the calling in which
+they did life&rsquo;s duty and task.</p>
+<p>First in each of these bands marched the prentices, stout,
+broad, flat-faced lads, from twenty to fourteen years of age,
+with hair like tow hanging from under their blue caps, staves in
+their hands, and knives at their girdles.&nbsp; Behind them came
+the journeymen, in leathern jerkins and steel caps, and armed
+with halberts or cross-bows; men of all ages, from sixty to one
+or two and twenty, and many of the younger ones with foreign
+countenances and garb betokening that they were strangers
+spending part of their wandering years in studying the Ulm
+fashions of their craft.&nbsp; Each trade showed a large array of
+these juniors; but the masters who came behind were comparatively
+few, mostly elderly, long-gowned, gold-chained personages, with a
+weight of solid dignity on their wise brows&mdash;men who
+respected themselves, made others respect them, and kept their
+city a peaceful, well-ordered haven, while storms raged in the
+realm beyond&mdash;men too who had raised to the glory of their
+God a temple, not indeed fulfilling the original design, but a
+noble effort, and grand monument of burgher devotion.</p>
+<p>Then came the ragged regiment of scholars, wild lads from
+every part of Germany and Switzerland, some wan and pinched with
+hardship and privation, others sturdy, selfish rogues, evidently
+well able to take care of themselves.&nbsp; There were many rude,
+tyrannical-looking lads among the older lads; and, though here
+and there a studious, earnest face might be remarked, the
+prospect of Germany&rsquo;s future priests and teachers was not
+encouraging.&nbsp; And what a searching ordeal was awaiting those
+careless lads when the voice of one, as yet still a student,
+should ring through Germany!</p>
+<p>Contrasting with these ill-kempt pupils marched the grave
+professors and teachers, in square ecclesiastic caps and long
+gowns, whose colours marked their degrees and the Universities
+that had conferred them&mdash;some thin, some portly, some
+jocund, others dreamy; some observing all the humours around,
+others still intent on Aristotelian ethics; all men of high fame,
+with doctor at the beginning of their names, and &ldquo;or&rdquo;
+or &ldquo;us&rdquo; at the close of them.&nbsp; After them rode
+the magistracy, a burgomaster from each guild, and the Herr
+Provost himself&mdash;as great a potentate within his own walls
+as the Doge of Venice or of Genoa, or perhaps greater, because
+less jealously hampered.&nbsp; In this dignified group was Uncle
+Gottfried, by complacent nod and smile acknowledging his good
+wife and niece, who indeed had received many a previous glance
+and bow from friends passing beneath.&nbsp; But Master Sorel was
+no new spectacle in a civic procession, and the sight of him was
+only a pleasant fillip to the excitement of his ladies.</p>
+<p>Here was jingling of spurs and trampling of horses; heraldic
+achievements showed upon the banners, round which rode the
+mail-clad retainers of country nobles who had mustered to meet
+their lords.&nbsp; Then, with still more of clank and tramp, rode
+a bright-faced troop of lads, with feathered caps and gay
+mantles.&nbsp; Young Count Rudiger looked up with courteous
+salutation; and just behind him, with smiling lips and upraised
+faces, were the pair whose dark eyes, dark hair, and slender
+forms rendered them conspicuous among the fair Teutonic
+youth.&nbsp; Each cap was taken off and waved, and each pair of
+lustrous eyes glanced up pleasure and exultation at the sight of
+the lovely &ldquo;Mutterlein.&rdquo;&nbsp; And she?&nbsp; The
+pageant was well-nigh over to her, save for heartily agreeing
+with Aunt Johanna that there was not a young noble of them all to
+compare with the twin Barons of Adlerstein!&nbsp; However, she
+knew she should be called to account if she did not look well at
+&ldquo;the Romish King;&rdquo; besides, Thekla was shrieking with
+delight at the sight of her father, tall and splendid on his
+mighty black charger, with a smile for his child, and for the
+lady a bow so low and deferential that it was evidently remarked
+by those at whose approach every lady in the balconies was
+rising, every head in the street was bared.</p>
+<p>A tall, thin, shrivelled, but exceedingly stately old man on a
+gray horse was in the centre.&nbsp; Clad in a purple velvet
+mantle, and bowing as he went, he looked truly the Kaisar, to
+whom stately courtesy was second nature.&nbsp; On one side, in
+black and gold, with the jewel of the Golden Fleece on his
+breast, rode Maximilian, responding gracefully to the salutations
+of the people, but his keen gray eye roving in search of the
+object of Sir Kasimir&rsquo;s salute, and lighting on Christina
+with such a rapid, amused glance of discovery that, in her
+confusion, she missed what excited Dame Johanna&rsquo;s rapturous
+admiration&mdash;the handsome boy on the Emperor&rsquo;s other
+side, a fair, plump lad, the young sovereign of the Low
+Countries, beautiful in feature and complexion, but lacking the
+fire and the loftiness that characterized his father&rsquo;s
+countenance.&nbsp; The train was closed by the Reitern of the
+Emperor&rsquo;s guard&mdash;steel-clad mercenaries who were
+looked on with no friendly eyes by the few gazers in the street
+who had been left behind in the general rush to keep up with the
+attractive part of the show.</p>
+<p>Pageants of elaborate mythological character impeded the
+imperial progress at every stage, and it was full two hours ere
+the two youths returned, heartily weary of the lengthened
+ceremonial, and laughing at having actually seen the King of the
+Romans enduring to be conducted from shrine to shrine in the
+cathedral by a large proportion of its dignitaries.&nbsp; Ebbo
+was sure he had caught an archly disconsolate wink!</p>
+<p>Ebbo had to dress for the banquet spread in the
+town-hall.&nbsp; Space was wanting for the concourse of guests,
+and Master Sorel had decided that the younger Baron should not be
+included in the invitation.&nbsp; Friedel pardoned him more
+easily than did Ebbo, who not only resented any slight to his
+double, but in his fits of shy pride needed the aid of his
+readier and brighter other self.&nbsp; But it might not be, and
+Sir Kasimir and Master Gottfried alone accompanied him, hoping
+that he would not look as wild as a hawk, and would do nothing to
+diminish the favourable impression he had made on the King of the
+Romans.</p>
+<p>Late, according to medi&aelig;val hours, was the return, and
+Ebbo spoke in a tone of elation.&nbsp; &ldquo;The Kaisar was most
+gracious, and the king knew me,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and asked
+for thee, Friedel, saying one of us was nought without the
+other.&nbsp; But thou wilt go to-morrow, for we are to receive
+knighthood.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Already!&rdquo; exclaimed Friedel, a bright glow
+rushing to his cheek.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yea,&rdquo; said Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;The Romish king
+said somewhat about waiting to win our spurs; but the Kaisar said
+I was in a position to take rank as a knight, and I thanked him,
+so thou shouldst share the honour.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The Kaisar,&rdquo; said Wildschloss, &ldquo;is not the
+man to let a knight&rsquo;s fee slip between his fingers.&nbsp;
+The king would have kept off their grip, and reserved you for
+knighthood from his own sword under the banner of the empire; but
+there is no help for it now, and you must make your vassals send
+in their dues.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My vassals?&rdquo; said Ebbo; &ldquo;what could they
+send?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The aid customary on the knighthood of the
+heir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But there is&mdash;there is nothing!&rdquo; said
+Friedel.&nbsp; &ldquo;They can scarce pay meal and poultry enough
+for our daily fare; and if we were to flay them alive, we should
+not get sixty groschen from the whole.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;True enough!&nbsp; Knighthood must wait till we win
+it,&rdquo; said Ebbo, gloomily.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, it is accepted,&rdquo; said Wildschloss.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;The Kaisar loves his iron chest too well to let you go
+back.&nbsp; You must be ready with your round sum to the
+chancellor, and your spur-money and your fee to the heralds, and
+largess to the crowd.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mother, the dowry,&rdquo; said Ebbo.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;At your service, my son,&rdquo; said Christina, anxious
+to chase the cloud from his brow.</p>
+<p>But it was a deep haul, for the avaricious Friedrich IV. made
+exorbitant charges for the knighting his young nobles; and Ebbo
+soon saw that the improvements at home must suffer for the
+honours that would have been so much better won than bought.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If your vassals cannot aid, yet may not your
+kinsman&mdash;?&rdquo; began Wildschloss.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No!&rdquo; interrupted Ebbo, lashed up to hot
+indignation.&nbsp; &ldquo;No, sir!&nbsp; Rather will my mother,
+brother, and I ride back this very night to unfettered liberty on
+our mountain, without obligation to any living man.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Less hotly, Sir Baron,&rdquo; said Master Gottfried,
+gravely.&nbsp; &ldquo;You broke in on your noble godfather, and
+you had not heard me speak.&nbsp; You and your brother are the
+old man&rsquo;s only heirs, nor do ye incur any obligation that
+need fret you by forestalling what would be your just
+right.&nbsp; I will see my nephews as well equipped as any young
+baron of them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The mother looked anxiously at Ebbo.&nbsp; He bent his head
+with rising colour, and said, &ldquo;Thanks, kind uncle.&nbsp;
+From <i>you</i> I have learnt to look on goodness as
+fatherly.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Only,&rdquo; added Friedel, &ldquo;if the Baron&rsquo;s
+station renders knighthood fitting for him, surely I might remain
+his esquire.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Never, Friedel!&rdquo; cried his brother.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Without thee, nothing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well said, Freiherr,&rdquo; said Master Sorel;
+&ldquo;what becomes the one becomes the other.&nbsp; I would not
+have thee left out, my Friedel, since I cannot leave thee the
+mysteries of my craft.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To-morrow!&rdquo; said Friedel, gravely.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Then must the vigil be kept to-night.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The boy thinks these are the days of Roland and Karl
+the Great,&rdquo; said Wildschloss.&nbsp; &ldquo;He would fain
+watch his arms in the moonlight in the Dome Kirk!&nbsp; Alas! no,
+my Friedel!&nbsp; Knighthood in these days smacks more of bezants
+than of deeds of prowess.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Unbearable fellow!&rdquo; cried Ebbo, when he had
+latched the door of the room he shared with his brother.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;First, holding up my inexperience to scorn!&nbsp; As
+though the Kaisar knew not better than he what befits me!&nbsp;
+Then trying to buy my silence and my mother&rsquo;s gratitude
+with his hateful advance of gold.&nbsp; As if I did not loathe
+him enough without!&nbsp; If I pay my homage, and sign the League
+to-morrow, it will be purely that he may not plume himself on our
+holding our own by sufferance, in deference to him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You will sign it&mdash;you will do homage!&rdquo;
+exclaimed Friedel.&nbsp; &ldquo;How rejoiced the mother will
+be.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I had rather depend at once&mdash;if depend I
+must&mdash;on yonder dignified Kaisar and that noble king than on
+our meddling kinsman,&rdquo; said Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;I shall be
+his equal now!&nbsp; Ay, and no more classed with the court
+Junkern I was with to-day.&nbsp; The dullards!&nbsp; No one
+reasonable thing know they but the chase.&nbsp; One had been at
+Florence; and when I asked him of the Baptistery and rare Giotto
+of whom my uncle told us, he asked if he were a knight of the
+Medici.&nbsp; All he knew was that there were ortolans at Ser
+Lorenzo&rsquo;s table; and he and the rest of them talked over
+wines as many and as hard to call as the roll of
+&AElig;neas&rsquo;s comrades; and when each one must drink to her
+he loved best, and I said I loved none like my sweet mother, they
+gibed me for a simple dutiful mountaineer.&nbsp; Yea, and when
+the servants brought a bowl, I thought it was a wholesome draught
+of spring water after all their hot wines and fripperies.&nbsp;
+Pah!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The rose-water, Ebbo!&nbsp; No wonder they
+laughed!&nbsp; Why, the bowls for our fingers came round at the
+banquet here.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah! thou hast eyes for their finikin manners!&nbsp; Yet
+what know they of what we used to long for in polished
+life!&nbsp; Not one but vowed he abhorred books, and cursed Dr.
+Faustus for multiplying them.&nbsp; I may not know the taste of a
+stew, nor the fit of a glove, as they do, but I trust I bear a
+less empty brain.&nbsp; And the young Netherlanders that came
+with the Archduke were worst of all.&nbsp; They got together and
+gabbled French, and treated the German Junkern with the very same
+sauce with which they had served me.&nbsp; The Archduke laughed
+with them, and when the Provost addressed him, made as if he
+understood not, till his father heard, and thundered out,
+&lsquo;How now, Philip!&nbsp; Deaf on thy German ear?&nbsp; I
+tell thee, Herr Probst, he knows his own tongue as well as thou
+or I, and thou shalt hear him speak as becomes the son of an
+Austrian hunter.&rsquo;&nbsp; That Romish king is a knight of
+knights, Friedel.&nbsp; I could follow him to the world&rsquo;s
+end.&nbsp; I wonder whether he will ever come to climb the Red
+Eyrie.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It does not seem the world&rsquo;s end when one is
+there,&rdquo; said Friedel, with strange yearnings in his
+breast.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Even the Dom steeple never rose to its full
+height,&rdquo; he added, standing in the window, and gazing
+pensively into the summer sky.&nbsp; &ldquo;Oh, Ebbo! this
+knighthood has come very suddenly after our many dreams; and,
+even though its outward tokens be lowered, it is still a holy,
+awful thing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Nurtured in mountain solitude, on romance transmitted through
+the pure medium of his mother&rsquo;s mind, and his spirit
+untainted by contact with the world, Friedmund von Adlerstein
+looked on chivalry with the temper of a Percival or Galahad, and
+regarded it with a sacred awe.&nbsp; Eberhard, though treating it
+more as a matter of business, was like enough to his brother to
+enter into the force of the vows they were about to make; and if
+the young Barons of Adlerstein did not perform the night-watch
+over their armour, yet they kept a vigil that impressed their own
+minds as deeply, and in early morn they went to confession and
+mass ere the gay parts of the city were astir.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sweet niece,&rdquo; said Master Sorel, as he saw the
+brothers&rsquo; grave, earnest looks, &ldquo;thou hast done well
+by these youths; yet I doubt me at times whether they be not too
+much lifted out of this veritable world of ours.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, fair uncle, were they not above it, how could they
+face its temptations?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;True, my child; but how will it be when they find how
+lightly others treat what to them is so solemn?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There must be temptations for them, above all for
+Ebbo,&rdquo; said Christina, &ldquo;but still, when I remember
+how my heart sank when their grandmother tried to bring them up
+to love crime as sport and glory, I cannot but trust that the
+good work will be wrought out, and my dream fulfilled, that they
+may be lights on earth and stars in heaven.&nbsp; Even this
+matter of homage, that seemed so hard to my Ebbo, has now been
+made easy to him by his veneration for the Emperor.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was even so.&nbsp; If the sense that he was the last
+veritable <i>free</i> lord of Adlerstein rushed over Ebbo, he
+was, on the other hand, overmastered by the kingliness of
+Friedrich and Maximilian, and was aware that this submission,
+while depriving him of little or no actual power, brought him
+into relations with the civilized world, and opened to him paths
+of true honour.&nbsp; So the ceremonies were gone through, his
+oath of allegiance was made, investiture was granted to him by
+the delivery of a sword, and both he and Friedel were dubbed
+knights.&nbsp; Then they shared another banquet, where, as away
+from the Junkern and among elder men, Ebbo was happier than the
+day before.&nbsp; Some of the knights seemed to him as rude and
+ignorant as the Schneiderlein, but no one talked to him nor
+observed his manners, and he could listen to conversation on war
+and policy such as interested him far more than the subjects
+affected by youths a little older than himself.&nbsp; Their
+lonely life and training had rendered the minds of the brothers
+as much in advance of their fellows as they were behind them in
+knowledge of the world.</p>
+<p>The crass obtuseness of most of the nobility made it a relief
+to return to the usual habits of the Sorel household when the
+court had left Ulm.&nbsp; Friedmund, anxious to prove that his
+new honours were not to alter his home demeanour, was drawing on
+a block of wood from a tinted pen-and-ink sketch; Ebbo was deeply
+engaged with a newly-acquired copy of Virgil; and their mother
+was embroidering some draperies for the long-neglected castle
+chapel,&mdash;all sitting, as Master Gottfried loved to have
+them, in his studio, whence he had a few moments before been
+called away, when, as the door slowly opened, a voice was heard
+that made both lads start and rise.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yea, truly, Herr Guildmaster, I would see these
+masterpieces.&nbsp; Ha!&nbsp; What have you here for
+masterpieces?&nbsp; Our two new double-ganger
+knights?&rdquo;&nbsp; And Maximilian entered in a simple
+riding-dress, attended by Master Gottfried, and by Sir Kasimir of
+Adlerstein Wildschloss.</p>
+<p>Christina would fain have slipped out unperceived, but the
+king was already removing his cap from his fair curling locks,
+and bending his head as he said, &ldquo;The Frau Freiherrinn von
+Adlerstein?&nbsp; Fair lady, I greet you well, and thank you in
+the Kaisar&rsquo;s name and mine for having bred up for us two
+true and loyal subjects.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;May they so prove themselves, my liege!&rdquo; said
+Christina, bending low.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And not only loyal-hearted,&rdquo; added Maximilian,
+smiling, &ldquo;but ready-brained, which is less frequent among
+our youth.&nbsp; What is thy book, young knight?&nbsp; Virgilius
+Maro?&nbsp; Dost thou read the Latin?&rdquo; he added, in that
+tongue.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not as well as we wish, your kingly highness,&rdquo;
+readily answered Ebbo, in Latin, &ldquo;having learnt solely of
+our mother till we came hither.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Never fear for that, my young blade,&rdquo; laughed the
+king.&nbsp; &ldquo;Knowst not that the wiseacres thought me too
+dull for teaching till I was past ten years?&nbsp; And what is
+thy double about?&nbsp; Drawing on wood?&nbsp; How now!&nbsp; An
+able draughtsman, my young knight?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My nephew Sir Friedmund is good to the old man,&rdquo;
+said Gottfried, himself almost regretting the lad&rsquo;s
+avocation.&nbsp; &ldquo;My eyes are failing me, and he is aiding
+me with the graving of this border.&nbsp; He has the knack that
+no teaching will impart to any of my present
+journeymen.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Born, not made,&rdquo; quoth Maximilian.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; as Friedel coloured deeper at the sense that
+Ebbo was ashamed of him, &ldquo;no blushes, my boy; it is a rare
+gift.&nbsp; I can make a hundred knights any day, but the
+Almighty alone can make a genius.&nbsp; It was this very matter
+of graving that led me hither.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>For Maximilian had a passion for composition, and chiefly for
+autobiography, and his head was full of that curious performance,
+<i>Der Weisse K&ouml;nig</i>, which occupied many of the leisure
+moments of his life, being dictated to his former writing-master,
+Marcus Sauerwein.&nbsp; He had already designed the portrayal of
+his father as the old white king, and himself as the young white
+king, in a series of woodcuts illustrating the narrative which
+culminated in the one romance of his life, his brief happy
+marriage with Mary of Burgundy; and he continued eagerly to talk
+to Master Gottfried about the mystery of graving, and the various
+scenes in which he wished to depict himself learning languages
+from native speakers&mdash;Czech from a peasant with a basket of
+eggs, English from the exiles at the Burgundian court, who had
+also taught him the use of the longbow, building from architects
+and masons, painting from artists, and, more imaginatively,
+astrology from a wonderful flaming sphere in the sky, and the
+black art from a witch inspired by a long-tailed demon perched on
+her shoulder.&nbsp; No doubt &ldquo;the young white king&rdquo;
+made an exceedingly prominent figure in the discourse, but it was
+so quaint and so brilliant that it did not need the charm of
+royal condescension to entrance the young knights, who stood
+silent auditors.&nbsp; Ebbo at least was convinced that no
+species of knowledge or skill was viewed by his kaisarly kingship
+as beneath his dignity; but still he feared Friedel&rsquo;s being
+seized upon to be as prime illustrator to the royal
+autobiography&mdash;a lot to which, with all his devotion to
+Maximilian, he could hardly have consigned his brother, in the
+certainty that the jeers of the ruder nobles would pursue the
+craftsman baron.</p>
+<p>However, for the present, Maximilian was keen enough to see
+that the boy&rsquo;s mechanical skill was not as yet equal to his
+genius; so he only encouraged him to practise, adding that he
+heard there was a rare lad, one D&uuml;rer, at Nuremburg, whose
+productions were already wonderful.&nbsp; &ldquo;And what is
+this?&rdquo; he asked; &ldquo;what is the daintily-carved group I
+see yonder?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Your highness means, &lsquo;The Dove in the
+Eagle&rsquo;s Nest,&rsquo;&rdquo; said Kasimir.&nbsp; &ldquo;It
+is the work of my young kinsmen, and their appropriate
+device.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;As well chosen as carved,&rdquo; said Maximilian,
+examining it.&nbsp; &ldquo;Well is it that a city dove should now
+and then find her way to the eyrie.&nbsp; Some of my nobles would
+cut my throat for the heresy, but I am safe here, eh, Sir
+Kasimir?&nbsp; Fare ye well, ye dove-trained eaglets.&nbsp; We
+will know one another better when we bear the cross against the
+infidel.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The brothers kissed his hand, and he descended the steps from
+the hall door.&nbsp; Ere he had gone far, he turned round upon
+Sir Kasimir with a merry smile: &ldquo;A very white and tender
+dove indeed, and one who might easily nestle in another eyrie,
+methinks.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Deems your kingly highness that consent could be
+won?&rdquo; asked Wildschloss</p>
+<p>&ldquo;From the Kaisar?&nbsp; Pfui, man, thou knowst as well
+as I do the golden key to his consent.&nbsp; So thou wouldst risk
+thy luck again!&nbsp; Thou hast no male heir.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And I would fain give my child a mother who would deal
+well with her.&nbsp; Nay, to say sooth, that gentle, innocent
+face has dwelt with me for many years.&nbsp; But for my
+pre-contract, I had striven long ago to win her, and had been a
+happier man, mayhap.&nbsp; And, now I have seen what she has made
+of her sons, I feel I could scarce find her match among our
+nobility.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nor elsewhere,&rdquo; said the king; &ldquo;and I
+honour thee for not being so besotted in our German haughtiness
+as not to see that it is our free cities that make refined and
+discreet dames.&nbsp; I give you good speed, Adlerstein; but, if
+I read aright the brow of one at least of these young fellows,
+thou wilt scarce have a willing or obedient stepson.&rdquo;</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XV<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE RIVAL EYRIE</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Ebbo</span> trusted that his kinsman of
+Wildschloss was safe gone with the Court, and his temper smoothed
+and his spirits rose in proportion while preparations for a
+return to Adlerstein were being completed&mdash;preparations by
+which the burgher lady might hope to render the castle far more
+habitable, not to say baronial, than it had ever been.</p>
+<p>The lady herself felt thankful that her stay at Ulm had turned
+out well beyond all anticipations in the excellent understanding
+between her uncle and her sons, and still more in Ebbo&rsquo;s
+full submission and personal loyalty towards the imperial
+family.&nbsp; The die was cast, and the first step had been taken
+towards rendering the Adlerstein family the peaceful, honourable
+nobles she had always longed to see them.</p>
+<p>She was one afternoon assisting her aunt in some of the duties
+of her wirthschaft, when Master Gottfried entered the apartment
+with an air of such extreme complacency that both turned round
+amazed; the one exclaiming, &ldquo;Surely funds have come in for
+finishing the spire!&rdquo; the other, &ldquo;Have they appointed
+thee Provost for next year, house-father?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Neither the one nor the other,&rdquo; was the
+reply.&nbsp; &ldquo;But heard you not the horse&rsquo;s
+feet?&nbsp; Here has the Lord of Adlerstein Wildschloss been with
+me in full state, to make formal proposals for the hand of our
+child, Christina.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For Christina!&rdquo; cried Hausfrau Johanna with
+delight; &ldquo;truly that is well.&nbsp; Truly our maiden has
+done honour to her breeding.&nbsp; A second nobleman demanding
+her&mdash;and one who should be able richly to endow
+her!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And who will do so,&rdquo; said Master Gottfried.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;For morning gift he promises the farms and lands of
+Gr&uuml;nau&mdash;rich both in forest and corn glebe.&nbsp;
+Likewise, her dower shall be upon Wildschloss&mdash;where the
+soil is of the richest pasture, and there are no less than three
+mills, whence the lord obtains large rights of multure.&nbsp;
+Moreover, the Castle was added to and furnished on his marriage
+with the late baroness, and might serve a Kurf&uuml;rst; and
+though the jewels of Freiherrinn Valeska must be inherited by her
+daughter, yet there are many of higher price which have descended
+from his own ancestresses, and which will all be hers.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And what a wedding we will have!&rdquo; exclaimed
+Johanna; &ldquo;it shall be truly baronial.&nbsp; I will take my
+hood and go at once to neighbour Sophie Lemsberg, who was wife to
+the Markgraf&rsquo;s Under Keller-Meister.&nbsp; She will tell me
+point device the ceremonies befitting the espousals of a
+baron&rsquo;s widow.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Poor Christina had sat all this time with drooping head and
+clasped hands, a tear stealing down as the formal terms of the
+treaty sent her spirit back to the urgent, pleading, imperious
+voice that had said, &ldquo;Now, little one, thou wilt not shut
+me out;&rdquo; and as she glanced at the ring that had lain on
+that broad palm, she felt as if her sixteen cheerful years had
+been an injury to her husband in his nameless bloody grave.&nbsp;
+But protection was so needful in those rude ages, and second
+marriages so frequent, that reluctance was counted as
+weakness.&nbsp; She knew her uncle and aunt would never believe
+that aught but compulsion had bound her to the rude outlaw, and
+her habit of submission was so strong that, only when her aunt
+was actually rising to go and consult her gossip, she found
+breath to falter,</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hold, dear aunt&mdash;my sons&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, child, it is the best thing thou couldst do for
+them.&nbsp; Wonders hast thou wrought, yet are they too old to be
+without fatherly authority.&nbsp; I speak not of Friedel; the lad
+is gentle and pious, though spirited, but for the baron.&nbsp;
+The very eye and temper of my poor brother Hugh&mdash;thy father,
+Stine&mdash;are alive again in him.&nbsp; Yea, I love the lad the
+better for it, while I fear.&nbsp; He minds me precisely of Hugh
+ere he was &rsquo;prenticed to the weapon-smith, and all became
+bitterness.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, truly,&rdquo; said Christina, raising her eyes
+&ldquo;all would become bitterness with my Ebbo were I to give a
+father&rsquo;s power to one whom he would not love.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then were he sullen and unruly, indeed!&rdquo; said the
+old burgomaster with displeasure; &ldquo;none have shown him more
+kindness, none could better aid him in court and empire.&nbsp;
+The lad has never had restraint enough.&nbsp; I blame thee not,
+child, but he needs it sorely, by thine own showing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Alas, uncle! mine be the blame, but it is over
+late.&nbsp; My boy will rule himself for the love of God and of
+his mother, but he will brook no hand over him&mdash;least of all
+now he is a knight and thinks himself a man.&nbsp; Uncle, I
+should be deprived of both my sons, for Friedel&rsquo;s very soul
+is bound up with his brother&rsquo;s.&nbsp; I pray thee enjoin
+not this thing on me,&rdquo; she implored.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Child!&rdquo; exclaimed Master Gottfried, &ldquo;thou
+thinkst not that such a contract as this can be declined for the
+sake of a wayward Junker!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Stay, house-father, the little one will doubtless hear
+reason and submit,&rdquo; put in the aunt.&nbsp; &ldquo;Her sons
+were goodly and delightsome to her in their upgrowth, but they
+are well-nigh men.&nbsp; They will be away to court and camp, to
+love and marriage; and how will it be with her then, young and
+fair as she still is?&nbsp; Well will it be for her to have a
+stately lord of her own, and a new home of love and honour
+springing round her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;True,&rdquo; continued Sorel; &ldquo;and though she be
+too pious and wise to reck greatly of such trifles, yet it may
+please her dreamy brain to hear that Sir Kasimir loves her even
+like a paladin, and the love of a tried man of six-and-forty is
+better worth than a mere kindling of youthful fancy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mine Eberhard loved me!&rdquo; murmured Christina,
+almost to herself, but her aunt caught the word.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And what was such love worth?&nbsp; To force thee into
+a stolen match, and leave thee alone and unowned to the
+consequences!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Peace!&rdquo; exclaimed Christina, with crimson cheek
+and uplifted head.&nbsp; &ldquo;Peace!&nbsp; My own dear lord
+loved me with true and generous love!&nbsp; None but myself knows
+how much.&nbsp; Not a word will I hear against that tender
+heart.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, peace,&rdquo; returned Gottfried in a conciliatory
+tone,&mdash;&ldquo;peace to the brave Sir Eberhard.&nbsp; Thine
+aunt meant no ill of him.&nbsp; He truly would rejoice that the
+wisdom of his choice should receive such testimony, and that his
+sons should be thus well handled.&nbsp; Nay, little as I heed
+such toys, it will doubtless please the lads that the baron will
+obtain of the Emperor letters of nobility for this house, which
+verily sprang of a good Walloon family, and so their shield will
+have no blank.&nbsp; The Romish king promises to give thee rank
+with any baroness, and hath fully owned what a pearl thou art,
+mine own sweet dove!&nbsp; Nay, Sir Kasimir is coming to-morrow
+in the trust to make the first betrothal with Graf von Kaulwitz
+as a witness, and I thought of asking the Provost on the other
+hand.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To-morrow!&rdquo; exclaimed Johanna; &ldquo;and how is
+she to be meetly clad?&nbsp; Look at this widow-garb; and how is
+time to be found for procuring other raiment?&nbsp; House-father,
+a substantial man like you should better understand!&nbsp; The
+meal too!&nbsp; I must to gossip Sophie!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Verily, dear mother and father,&rdquo; said Christina,
+who had rallied a little, &ldquo;have patience with me.&nbsp; I
+may not lightly or suddenly betroth myself; I know not that I can
+do so at all, assuredly not unless my sons were heartily
+willing.&nbsp; Have I your leave to retire?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Granted, my child, for meditation will show thee that
+this is too fair a lot for any but thee.&nbsp; Much had I longed
+to see thee wedded ere thy sons outgrew thy care, but I shunned
+proposing even one of our worthy guildmasters, lest my young
+Freiherr should take offence; but this knight, of his own blood,
+true and wise as a burgher, and faithful and God-fearing withal,
+is a better match than I durst hope, and is no doubt a special
+reward from thy patron saint.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Let me entreat one favour more,&rdquo; implored
+Christina.&nbsp; &ldquo;Speak of this to no one ere I have seen
+my sons.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She made her way to her own chamber, there to weep and
+flutter.&nbsp; Marriage was a matter of such high contract
+between families that the parties themselves had usually no voice
+in the matter, and only the widowed had any chance of a personal
+choice; nor was this always accorded in the case of females, who
+remained at the disposal of their relatives.&nbsp; Good
+substantial wedded affection was not lacking, but romantic love
+was thought an unnecessary preliminary, and found a vent in
+extravagant adoration, not always in reputable quarters.&nbsp;
+Obedience first to the father, then to the husband, was the first
+requisite; love might shift for itself; and the fair widow of
+Adlerstein, telling her beads in sheer perplexity, knew not
+whether her strong repugnance to this marriage and warm sympathy
+with her son Ebbo were not an act of rebellion.&nbsp; Yet each
+moment did her husband rise before her mind more vividly, with
+his rugged looks, his warm, tender heart, his dawnings of
+comprehension, his generous forbearance and reverential
+love&mdash;the love of her youth&mdash;to be equalled by no
+other.&nbsp; The accomplished courtier and polished man of the
+world might be his superior, but she loathed the superiority,
+since it was to her husband.&nbsp; Might not his one chosen dove
+keep heart-whole for him to the last?&nbsp; She recollected that
+coarsest, cruellest reproach of all that her mother-in-law had
+been wont to fling at her,&mdash;that she, the recent widow, the
+new-made mother of Eberhard&rsquo;s babes, in her grief, her
+terror, and her weakness had sought to captivate this suitor by
+her blandishments.&nbsp; The taunt seemed justified, and her
+cheeks burned with absolute shame &ldquo;My husband! my loving
+Eberhard! left with none but me to love thee, unknown to thine
+own sons!&nbsp; I cannot, I will not give my heart away from
+thee!&nbsp; Thy little bride shall be faithful to thee, whatever
+betide.&nbsp; When we meet beyond the grave I will have been
+thine only, nor have set any before thy sons.&nbsp; Heaven
+forgive me if I be undutiful to my uncle; but thou must be
+preferred before even him!&nbsp; Hark!&rdquo; and she started as
+if at Eberhard&rsquo;s foot-step; then smiled, recollecting that
+Ebbo had his father&rsquo;s tread.&nbsp; But her husband had been
+too much in awe of her to enter with that hasty agitated step and
+exclamation, &ldquo;Mother, mother, what insolence is
+this!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hush, Ebbo!&nbsp; I prayed mine uncle to let me speak
+to thee.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is true, then,&rdquo; said Ebbo, dashing his cap on
+the ground; &ldquo;I had soundly beaten that grinning
+&rsquo;prentice for telling Heinz.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Truly the house rings with the rumour, mother,&rdquo;
+said Friedel, &ldquo;but we had not believed it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I believed Wildschloss assured enough for aught,&rdquo;
+said Ebbo, &ldquo;but I thought he knew where to begin.&nbsp;
+Does he not know who is head of the house of Adlerstein, since he
+must tamper with a mechanical craftsman, cap in hand to any sprig
+of nobility!&nbsp; I would have soon silenced his
+overtures!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is it in sooth as we heard?&rdquo; asked Friedel,
+blushing to the ears, for the boy was shy as a maiden.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Mother, we know what you would say,&rdquo; he added,
+throwing himself on his knees beside her, his arm round her
+waist, his cheek on her lap, and his eyes raised to hers.</p>
+<p>She bent down to kiss him.&nbsp; &ldquo;Thou knewst it,
+Friedel, and now must thou aid me to remain thy father&rsquo;s
+true widow, and to keep Ebbo from being violent.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ebbo checked his hasty march to put his hand on her chair and
+kiss her brow.&nbsp; &ldquo;Motherling, I will restrain myself,
+so you will give me your word not to desert us.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, Ebbo,&rdquo; said Friedel, &ldquo;the motherling
+is too true and loving for us to bind her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Children,&rdquo; she answered, &ldquo;hear me
+patiently.&nbsp; I have been communing with myself, and deeply do
+I feel that none other can I love save him who is to you a mere
+name, but to me a living presence.&nbsp; Nor would I put any
+between you and me.&nbsp; Fear me not, Ebbo.&nbsp; I think the
+mothers and sons of this wider, fuller world do not prize one
+another as we do.&nbsp; But, my son, this is no matter for rage
+or ingratitude.&nbsp; Remember it is no small condescension in a
+noble to stoop to thy citizen mother.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He knew what painted puppets noble ladies are,&rdquo;
+growled Ebbo.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Moreover,&rdquo; continued Christina, &ldquo;thine
+uncle is highly gratified, and cannot believe that I can
+refuse.&nbsp; He understands not my love for thy father, and sees
+many advantages for us all.&nbsp; I doubt me if he believes I
+have power to resist his will, and for thee, he would not count
+thine opposition valid.&nbsp; And the more angry and vehement
+thou art, the more will he deem himself doing thee a service by
+overruling thee.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Come home, mother.&nbsp; Let Heinz lead our horses to
+the door in the dawn, and when we are back in free Adlerstein it
+will be plain who is master.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Such a flitting would scarce prove our wisdom,&rdquo;
+said Christina, &ldquo;to run away with thy mother like a lover
+in a ballad.&nbsp; Nay, let me first deal gently with thine
+uncle, and speak myself with Sir Kasimir, so that I may show him
+the vanity of his suit.&nbsp; Then will we back to Adlerstein
+without leaving wounds to requite kindness.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ebbo was wrought on to promise not to attack the burgomaster
+on the subject, but he was moody and silent, and Master Gottfried
+let him alone, considering his gloom as another proof of his need
+of fatherly authority, and as a peace-lover forbearing to provoke
+his fiery spirit.</p>
+<p>But when Sir Kasimir&rsquo;s visit was imminent, and Christina
+had refused to make the change in her dress by which a young
+widow was considered to lay herself open to another courtship,
+Master Gottfried called the twins apart.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My young lords,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I fear me ye are
+vexing your gentle mother by needless strife at what must take
+place.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pardon me, good uncle,&rdquo; said Ebbo, &ldquo;I
+utterly decline the honour of Sir Kasimir&rsquo;s suit to my
+mother.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Master Gottfried smiled.&nbsp; &ldquo;Sons are not wont to be
+the judges in such cases, Sir Eberhard.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps not,&rdquo; he answered; &ldquo;but my
+mother&rsquo;s will is to the nayward, nor shall she be
+coerced.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is merely because of you and your pride,&rdquo; said
+Master Gottfried.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I think not so,&rdquo; rejoined the calmer Friedel;
+&ldquo;my mother&rsquo;s love for my father is still
+fresh.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Young knights,&rdquo; said Master Gottfried, &ldquo;it
+would scarce become me to say, nor you to hear, how much matter
+of fancy such love must have been towards one whom she knew but
+for a few short months, though her pure sweet dreams, through
+these long years, have moulded him into a hero.&nbsp; Boys, I
+verily believe ye love her truly.&nbsp; Would it be well for her
+still to mourn and cherish a dream while yet in her fresh age,
+capable of new happiness, fuller than she has ever
+enjoyed?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She is happy with us,&rdquo; rejoined Ebbo.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And ye are good lads and loving sons, though less
+duteous in manner than I could wish.&nbsp; But look you, you may
+not ever be with her, and when ye are absent in camp or court, or
+contracting a wedlock of your own, would you leave her to her
+lonesome life in your solitary castle?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Friedel&rsquo;s unselfishness might have been startled, but
+Ebbo boldly answered, &ldquo;All mine is hers.&nbsp; No joy to me
+but shall be a joy to her.&nbsp; We can make her happier than
+could any stranger.&nbsp; Is it not so, Friedel?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is,&rdquo; said Friedel, thoughtfully.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, rash bloods, promising beyond what ye can
+keep.&nbsp; Nature will be too strong for you.&nbsp; Love your
+mother as ye may, what will she be to you when a bride comes in
+your way?&nbsp; Fling not away in wrath, Sir Baron; it was so
+with your parents both before you; and what said the law of the
+good God at the first marriage?&nbsp; How can you withstand the
+nature He has given?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Belike I may wed,&rdquo; said Ebbo, bluntly; &ldquo;but
+if it be not for my mother&rsquo;s happiness, call me man-sworn
+knight.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not so,&rdquo; good-humouredly answered Gottfried,
+&ldquo;but boy-sworn paladin, who talks of he knows not
+what.&nbsp; Speak knightly truth, Sir Baron, and own that this
+opposition is in verity from distaste to a stepfather&rsquo;s
+rule.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I own that I will not brook such rule,&rdquo; said
+Ebbo; &ldquo;nor do I know what we have done to deserve that it
+should be thrust on us.&nbsp; You have never blamed Friedel, at
+least; and verily, uncle, my mother&rsquo;s eye will lead me
+where a stranger&rsquo;s hand shall never drive me.&nbsp; Did I
+even think she had for this man a quarter of the love she bears
+to my dead father, I would strive for endurance; but in good
+sooth we found her in tears, praying us to guard her from
+him.&nbsp; I may be a boy, but I am man enough to prevent her
+from being coerced.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Was this so, Friedel?&rdquo; asked Master Gottfried,
+moved more than by all that had gone before.&nbsp; &ldquo;Ach, I
+thought ye all wiser.&nbsp; And spake she not of Sir
+Kasimir&rsquo;s offers?&mdash;Interest with the Romish
+king?&mdash;Yea, and a grant of nobility and arms to this house,
+so as to fill the blank in your scutcheon?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My father never asked if she were noble,&rdquo; said
+Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;Nor will I barter her for a cantle of a
+shield.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There spake a manly spirit,&rdquo; said his uncle,
+delighted.&nbsp; &ldquo;Her worth hath taught thee how little to
+prize these gewgaws!&nbsp; Yet, if you look to mingling with your
+own proud kind, ye may fall among greater slights than ye can
+brook.&nbsp; It may matter less to you, Sir Baron, but Friedel
+here, ay, and your sons, will be ineligible to the choicest
+orders of knighthood, and the canonries and chapters that are
+honourable endowments.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Friedel looked as if he could bear it, and Eberhard said,
+&ldquo;The order of the Dove of Adlerstein is enough for
+us.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Headstrong all, headstrong all,&rdquo; sighed Master
+Gottfried.&nbsp; &ldquo;One romantic marriage has turned all your
+heads.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Baron of Adlerstein Wildschloss, unprepared for the
+opposition that awaited him, was riding down the street equipped
+point device, and with a goodly train of followers, in brilliant
+suits.&nbsp; Private wooing did not enter into the honest ideas
+of the burghers, and the suitor was ushered into the full family
+assembly, where Christina rose and came forward a few steps to
+meet him, curtseying as low as he bowed, as he said, &ldquo;Lady,
+I have preferred my suit to you through your honour-worthy uncle,
+who is good enough to stand my friend.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You are over good, sir.&nbsp; I feel the honour, but a
+second wedlock may not be mine.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; murmured Ebbo to his brother, as the knight
+and lady seated themselves in full view, &ldquo;now will the
+smooth-tongued fellow talk her out of her senses.&nbsp; Alack!
+that gipsy prophecy!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Wildschloss did not talk like a young wooer; such days were
+over for both; but he spoke as a grave and honourable man, deeply
+penetrated with true esteem and affection.&nbsp; He said that at
+their first meeting he had been struck with her sweetness and
+discretion, and would soon after have endeavoured to release her
+from her durance, but that he was bound by the contract already
+made with the Trautbachs, who were dangerous neighbours to
+Wildschloss.&nbsp; He had delayed his distasteful marriage as
+long as possible, and it had caused him nothing but trouble and
+strife; his children would not live, and Thekla, the only
+survivor, was, as his sole heiress, a mark for the cupidity of
+her uncle, the Count of Trautbach, and his almost savage son
+Lassla; while the right to the Wildschloss barony would become so
+doubtful between her and Ebbo, as heir of the male line, that
+strife and bloodshed would be well-nigh inevitable.&nbsp; These
+causes made it almost imperative that he should re-marry, and his
+own strong preference and regard for little Thekla directed his
+wishes towards the Freiherrinn von Adlerstein.&nbsp; He backed
+his suit with courtly compliments, as well as with
+representations of his child&rsquo;s need of a mother&rsquo;s
+training, and the twins&rsquo; equal want of fatherly guidance,
+dilating on the benefits he could confer on them.</p>
+<p>Christina felt his kindness, and had full trust in his
+intentions.&nbsp; &ldquo;No&rdquo; was a difficult syllable to
+her, but she had that within her which could not accept him; and
+she firmly told him that she was too much bound to both her
+Eberhards.&nbsp; But there was no daunting him, nor preventing
+her uncle and aunt from encouraging him.&nbsp; He professed that
+he would wait, and give her time to consider; and though she
+reiterated that consideration would not change her mind, Master
+Gottfried came forward to thank him, and express his confidence
+of bringing her to reason.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;While I, sir,&rdquo; said Ebbo, with flashing eyes, and
+low but resentful voice, &ldquo;beg to decline the honour in the
+name of the elder house of Adlerstein.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He held himself upright as a dart, but was infinitely annoyed
+by the little mocking bow and smile that he received in return,
+as Sir Kasimir, with his long mantle, swept out of the apartment,
+attended by Master Gottfried.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Burgomaster Sorel,&rdquo; said the boy, standing in the
+middle of the floor as his uncle returned, &ldquo;let me hear
+whether I am a person of any consideration in this family or
+not?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nephew baron,&rdquo; quietly replied Master Gottfried,
+&ldquo;it is not the use of us Germans to be dictated to by
+youths not yet arrived at years of discretion.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then, mother,&rdquo; said Ebbo, &ldquo;we leave this
+place to-morrow morn.&rdquo;&nbsp; And at her nod of assent the
+house-father looked deeply grieved, the house-mother began to
+clamour about ingratitude.&nbsp; &ldquo;Not so,&rdquo; answered
+Ebbo, fiercely.&nbsp; &ldquo;We quit the house as poor as we
+came, in homespun and with the old mare.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Peace, Ebbo!&rdquo; said his mother, rising;
+&ldquo;peace, I entreat, house-mother! pardon, uncle, I pray
+thee.&nbsp; O, why will not all who love me let me follow that
+which I believe to be best!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Child,&rdquo; said her uncle, &ldquo;I cannot see thee
+domineered over by a youth whose whole conduct shows his need of
+restraint.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nor am I,&rdquo; said Christina.&nbsp; &ldquo;It is I
+who am utterly averse to this offer.&nbsp; My sons and I are one
+in that; and, uncle, if I pray of you to consent to let us return
+to our castle, it is that I would not see the visit that has made
+us so happy stained with strife and dissension!&nbsp; Sure, sure,
+you cannot be angered with my son for his love for me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For the self-seeking of his love,&rdquo; said Master
+Gottfried.&nbsp; &ldquo;It is to gratify his own pride that he
+first would prevent thee from being enriched and ennobled, and
+now would bear thee away to the scant&mdash;Nay, Freiherr, I will
+not seem to insult you, but resentment would make you cruel to
+your mother.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not cruel!&rdquo; said Friedel, hastily.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;My mother is willing.&nbsp; And verily, good uncle,
+methinks that we all were best at home.&nbsp; We have benefited
+much and greatly by our stay; we have learnt to love and
+reverence you; but we are wild mountaineers at the best; and,
+while our hearts are fretted by the fear of losing our sweet
+mother, we can scarce be as patient or submissive as if we had
+been bred up by a stern father.&nbsp; We have ever judged and
+acted for ourselves, and it is hard to us not to do so still,
+when our minds are chafed.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Friedel,&rdquo; said Ebbo, sternly, &ldquo;I will have
+no pardon asked for maintaining my mother&rsquo;s cause.&nbsp; Do
+not thou learn to be smooth-tongued.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;O thou wrong-headed boy!&rdquo; half groaned Master
+Gottfried.&nbsp; &ldquo;Why did not all this fall out ten years
+sooner, when thou wouldst have been amenable?&nbsp; Yet, after
+all, I do not know that any noble training has produced a more
+high-minded loving youth,&rdquo; he added, half relenting as he
+looked at the gallant, earnest face, full of defiance indeed, but
+with a certain wistful appealing glance at &ldquo;the
+motherling,&rdquo; softening the liquid lustrous dark eye.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Get thee gone, boy, I would not quarrel with you; and it
+may be, as Friedel says, that we are best out of one
+another&rsquo;s way.&nbsp; You are used to lord it, and I can
+scarce make excuses for you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Ebbo, scarce appeased, &ldquo;I take
+home my mother, and you, sir, cease to favour Kasimir&rsquo;s
+suit.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, Sir Baron.&nbsp; I cease not to think that nothing
+would be so much for your good.&nbsp; It is because I believe
+that a return to your own old castle will best convince you all
+that I will not vex your mother by further opposing your
+departure.&nbsp; When you perceive your error may it only not be
+too late!&nbsp; Such a protector is not to be found every
+day.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My mother shall never need any protector save
+myself,&rdquo; said Ebbo; &ldquo;but, sir, she loves you, and
+owes all to you.&nbsp; Therefore I will not be at strife with
+you, and there is my hand.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He said it as if he had been the Emperor reconciling himself
+to all the Hanse towns in one.&nbsp; Master Gottfried could
+scarce refrain from shrugging his shoulders, and Hausfrau Johanna
+was exceedingly angry with the petulant pride and insolence of
+the young noble; but, in effect, all were too much relieved to
+avoid an absolute quarrel with the fiery lad to take exception at
+minor matters.&nbsp; The old burgher was forbearing; Christina,
+who knew how much her son must have swallowed to bring him to
+this concession for love of her, thought him a hero worthy of all
+sacrifices; and peace-making Friedel, by his aunt&rsquo;s side,
+soon softened even her, by some of the persuasive arguments that
+old dames love from gracious, graceful, great-nephews.</p>
+<p>And when, by and by, Master Gottfried went out to call on Sir
+Kasimir, and explain how he had thought it best to yield to the
+hot-tempered lad, and let the family learn how to be thankful for
+the goods they had rejected, he found affairs in a state that
+made him doubly anxious that the young barons should be safe on
+their mountain without knowing of them.&nbsp; The Trautbach
+family had heard of Wildschloss&rsquo;s designs, and they had set
+abroad such injurious reports respecting the Lady of Adlerstein,
+that Sir Kasimir was in the act of inditing a cartel to be sent
+by Count Kaulwitz, to demand an explanation&mdash;not merely as
+the lady&rsquo;s suitor, but as the only Adlerstein of full
+age.&nbsp; Now, if Ebbo had heard of the rumour, he would
+certainly have given the lie direct, and taken the whole defence
+on himself; and it may be feared that, just as his cause might
+have been, Master Gottfried&rsquo;s faith did not stretch to
+believing that it would make his sixteen-year-old arm equal to
+the brutal might of Lassla of Trautbach.&nbsp; So he heartily
+thanked the Baron of Wildschloss, agreed with him that the young
+knights were not as yet equal to the maintenance of the cause,
+and went home again to watch carefully that no report reached
+either of his nephews.&nbsp; Nor did he breathe freely till he
+had seen the little party ride safe off in the early morning, in
+much more lordly guise than when they had entered the city.</p>
+<p>As to Wildschloss and his nephew of Trautbach, in spite of
+their relationship they had a sharp combat on the borders of
+their own estates, in which both were severely wounded; but Sir
+Kasimir, with the misericorde in his grasp, forced Lassla to
+retract whatever he had said in dispraise of the Lady of
+Adlerstein.&nbsp; Wily old Gottfried took care that the tidings
+should be sent in a form that might at once move Christina with
+pity and gratitude towards her champion, and convince her sons
+that the adversary was too much hurt for them to attempt a fresh
+challenge.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE EAGLE AND THE SNAKE</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> reconciliation made Ebbo
+retract his hasty resolution of relinquishing all the benefits
+resulting from his connection with the Sorel family, and his
+mother&rsquo;s fortune made it possible to carry out many changes
+that rendered the castle and its inmates far more prosperous in
+appearance than had ever been the case before.&nbsp; Christina
+had once again the appliances of a <i>wirthschaft</i>, such as
+she felt to be the suitable and becoming appurtenance of a
+right-minded Frau, gentle or simple, and she felt so much the
+happier and more respectable.</p>
+<p>A chaplain had also been secured.&nbsp; The youths had
+insisted on his being capable of assisting their studies, and, a
+good man had been found who was fearfully learned, having studied
+at all possible universities, but then failing as a teacher,
+because he was so dreamy and absent as to be incapable of keeping
+the unruly students in order.&nbsp; Jobst Sch&ouml;n was his
+proper name, but he was translated into Jodocus Pulcher.&nbsp;
+The chapel was duly adorned, the hall and other chambers were
+fitted up with some degree of comfort; the castle court was
+cleansed, the cattle sheds removed to the rear, and the serfs
+were presented with seed, and offered payment in coin if they
+would give their labour in fencing and clearing the cornfield and
+vineyard which the barons were bent on forming on the sunny slope
+of the ravine.&nbsp; Poverty was over, thanks to the marriage
+portion, and yet Ebbo looked less happy than in the days when
+there was but a bare subsistence; and he seemed to miss the full
+tide of city life more than did his brother, who, though he had
+enjoyed Ulm more heartily at the time, seemed to have returned to
+all his mountain delights with greater zest than ever.&nbsp; At
+his favourite tarn, he revelled in the vast stillness with the
+greater awe for having heard the hum of men, and his minstrel
+dreams had derived fresh vigour from contact with the active
+world.&nbsp; But, as usual, he was his brother&rsquo;s chief stay
+in the vexations of a reformer.&nbsp; The serfs had much rather
+their lord had turned out a freebooter than an improver.&nbsp;
+Why should they sow new seeds, when the old had sufficed their
+fathers?&nbsp; Work, beyond the regulated days when they
+scratched up the soil of his old enclosure, was abhorrent to
+them.&nbsp; As to his offered coin, they needed nothing it would
+buy, and had rather bask in the sun or sleep in the smoke.&nbsp;
+A vineyard had never been heard of on Adlerstein mountain: it was
+clean contrary to his forefathers&rsquo; habits; and all came of
+the bad drop of restless burgher blood, that could not let honest
+folk rest.</p>
+<p>Ebbo stormed, not merely with words, but blows, became ashamed
+of his violence, tried to atone for it by gifts and kind words,
+and in return was sulkily told that he would bring more good to
+the village by rolling the fiery wheel straight down hill at the
+wake, than by all his new-fangled ways.&nbsp; Had not Koppel and
+a few younger men been more open to influence, his agricultural
+schemes could hardly have begun; but Friedel&rsquo;s persuasions
+were not absolutely without success, and every rood that was dug
+was achieved by his patience and perseverance.</p>
+<p>Next came home the Graf von Schlangenwald.&nbsp; He had of
+late inhabited his castle in Styria, but in a fierce quarrel with
+some of his neighbours he had lost his eldest son, and the
+pacification enforced by the King of the Romans had so galled and
+infuriated him that he had deserted that part of the country and
+returned to Swabia more fierce and bitter than ever.&nbsp;
+Thenceforth began a petty border warfare such as had existed when
+Christina first knew Adlerstein, but had of late died out.&nbsp;
+The shepherd lad came home weeping with wrath.&nbsp; Three
+mounted Schlangenwaldern had driven off his four best sheep, and
+beaten himself with their halberds, though he was safe on
+Adlerstein ground.&nbsp; Then a light thrown by a Schlangenwald
+reiter consumed all Jobst&rsquo;s pile of wood.&nbsp; The swine
+did not come home, and were found with spears sticking in them;
+the great broad-horned bull that Ebbo had brought from the
+pastures of Ulm vanished from the Alp below the Gemsbock&rsquo;s
+Pass, and was known to be salted for winter use at
+Schlangenwald.</p>
+<p>Still Christina tried to persuade her sons that this might be
+only the retainers&rsquo; violence, and induced Ebbo to write a
+letter, complaining of the outrages, but not blaming the Count,
+only begging that his followers might be better restrained.&nbsp;
+The letter was conveyed by a lay brother&mdash;no other messenger
+being safe.&nbsp; Ebbo had protested from the first that it would
+be of no use, but he waited anxiously for the answer.</p>
+<p>Thus it stood, when conveyed to him by a tenant of the
+Ruprecht cloister:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Wot you, Eberhard, Freiherr von Adlerstein,
+that your house have injured me by thought, word, and deed.&nbsp;
+Your great-grandfather usurped my lands at the ford.&nbsp; Your
+grandfather stole my cattle and burnt my mills.&nbsp; Then, in
+the war, he slew my brother Johann and lamed for life my cousin
+Matthias.&nbsp; Your father slew eight of my retainers and
+spoiled my crops.&nbsp; You yourself claim my land at the ford,
+and secure the spoil which is justly mine.&nbsp; Therefore do I
+declare war and feud against you.&nbsp; Therefore to you and all
+yours, to your helpers and helpers&rsquo; helpers, am I a
+foe.&nbsp; And thereby shall I have maintained my honour against
+you and yours.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Wolfgang</span>,
+Graf von Schlangenwald.<br />
+<span class="smcap">Hierom</span>, Graf von
+Schlangenwald&mdash;his cousin.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">&amp;c. &amp;c. &amp;c.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>And a long list of names, all connected with Schlangenwald,
+followed; and a large seal, bearing the snake of Schlangenwald,
+was appended thereto.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The old miscreant!&rdquo; burst out Ebbo; &ldquo;it is
+a feud brief.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A feud brief!&rdquo; exclaimed Friedel; &ldquo;they are
+no longer according to the law.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Law?&mdash;what cares he for law or mercy either?&nbsp;
+Is this the way men act by the League?&nbsp; Did we not swear to
+send no more feud letters, nor have recourse to
+fist-right?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We must appeal to the Markgraf of Wurtemburg,&rdquo;
+said Friedel.</p>
+<p>It was the only measure in their power, though Ebbo winced at
+it; but his oaths were recent, and his conscience would not allow
+him to transgress them by doing himself justice.&nbsp; Besides,
+neither party could take the castle of the other, and the only
+reprisals in his power would have been on the defenceless
+peasants of Schlangenwald.&nbsp; He must therefore lay the whole
+matter before the Markgraf, who was the head of the Swabian
+League, and bound to redress his wrongs.&nbsp; He made his
+arrangements without faltering, selecting the escort who were to
+accompany him, and insisting on leaving Friedel to guard his
+mother and the castle.&nbsp; He would not for the world have
+admitted the suggestion that the counsel and introduction of
+Adlerstein Wildschloss would have been exceedingly useful to
+him.</p>
+<p>Poor Christina!&nbsp; It was a great deal too like that former
+departure, and her heart was heavy within her!&nbsp; Friedel was
+equally unhappy at letting his brother go without him, but it was
+quite necessary that he and the few armed men who remained should
+show themselves at all points open to the enemy in the course of
+the day, lest the Freiherr&rsquo;s absence should be
+remarked.&nbsp; He did his best to cheer his mother, by reminding
+her that Ebbo was not likely to be taken at unawares as their
+father had been; and he shared the prayers and chapel services,
+in which she poured out her anxiety.</p>
+<p>The blue banner came safe up the Pass again, but Wurtemburg
+had been formally civil to the young Freiherr; but he had laughed
+at the fend letter as a mere old-fashioned habit of
+Schangenwald&rsquo;s that it was better not to notice, and he
+evidently regarded the stealing of a bull or the misusing of a
+serf as far too petty a matter for his attention.&nbsp; It was as
+if a judge had been called by a crying child to settle a nursery
+quarrel.&nbsp; He told Ebbo that, being a free Baron of the
+empire, he must keep his bounds respected; he was free to take
+and hang any spoiler he could catch, but his bulls were his own
+affair: the League was not for such gear.</p>
+<p>And a knight who had ridden out of Stuttgard with Ebbo had
+told him that it was no wonder that this had been his reception,
+for not only was Schlangenwald an old intimate of the Markgraf,
+but Swabia was claimed as a fief of Wurtemburg, so that
+Ebbo&rsquo;s direct homage to the Emperor, without the
+interposition of the Markgraf, had made him no object of
+favour.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What could be done?&rdquo; asked Ebbo.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Fire some Schlangenwald hamlet, and teach him to
+respect yours,&rdquo; said the knight.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The poor serfs are guiltless.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ha! ha! as if they would not rob any of yours.&nbsp;
+Give and take, that&rsquo;s the way the empire wags, Sir
+Baron.&nbsp; Send him a feud letter in return, with a goodly file
+of names at its foot, and teach him to respect you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I have sworn to abstain from fist-right.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Much you gain by so abstaining.&nbsp; If the League
+will not take the trouble to right you, right
+yourself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I shall appeal to the Emperor, and tell him how his
+League is administered.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Young sir, if the Emperor were to guard every cow in
+his domains he would have enough to do.&nbsp; You will never
+prosper with him without some one to back your cause better than
+that free tongue of yours.&nbsp; Hast no sister that thou couldst
+give in marriage to a stout baron that could aid you with strong
+arm and prudent head?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have only one twin brother.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah! the twins of Adlerstein!&nbsp; I remember me.&nbsp;
+Was not the other Adlerstein seeking an alliance with your lady
+mother?&nbsp; Sure no better aid could be found.&nbsp; He is hand
+and glove with young King Max.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That may never be,&rdquo; said Ebbo, haughtily.&nbsp;
+And, sure that he should receive the same advice, he decided
+against turning aside to consult his uncle at Ulm, and returned
+home in a mood that rejoiced Heinz and Hatto with hopes of the
+old days, while it filled his mother with dreary dismay and
+apprehension.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Schlangenwald should suffer next time he
+transgressed,&rdquo; said Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;It should not again
+be said that he himself was a coward who appealed to the law
+because his hand could not keep his head.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The &ldquo;next time&rdquo; was when the first winter cold was
+setting in.&nbsp; A party of reitern came to harry an outlying
+field, where Ulrich had raised a scanty crop of rye.&nbsp;
+Tidings reached the castle in such good time that the two
+brothers, with Heinz, the two Ulm grooms, Koppel, and a troop of
+serfs, fell on the marauders before they had effected much
+damage, and while some remained to trample out the fire, the rest
+pursued the enemy even to the village of Schlangenwald.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Burn it, Herr Freiherr,&rdquo; cried Heinz, hot with
+victory.&nbsp; &ldquo;Let them learn how to make havoc of our
+corn.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But a host of half-naked beings rushed out shrieking about
+sick children, bed-ridden grandmothers, and crippled fathers, and
+falling on their knees, with their hands stretched out to the
+young barons.&nbsp; Ebbo turned away his head with hot tears in
+his eyes.&nbsp; &ldquo;Friedel, what can we do?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not barbarous murder,&rdquo; said Friedel.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But they brand us for cowards!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The cowardice were in striking here,&rdquo; and Friedel
+sprang to withhold Koppel, who had lighted a bundle of dried fern
+ready to thrust into the thatch.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Peasants!&rdquo; said Ebbo, with the same impulse,
+&ldquo;I spare you.&nbsp; You did not this wrong.&nbsp; But bear
+word to your lord, that if he will meet me with lance and sword,
+he will learn the valour of Adlerstein.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The serfs flung themselves before him in transports of
+gratitude, but he turned hastily away and strode up the mountain,
+his cheek glowing as he remembered, too late, that his defiance
+would be scoffed at, as a boy&rsquo;s vaunt.&nbsp; By and by he
+arrived at the hamlet, where he found a prisoner, a scowling,
+abject fellow, already well beaten, and now held by two
+serfs.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The halter is ready, Herr Freiherr,&rdquo; said old
+Ulrich, &ldquo;and yon rowan stump is still as stout as when your
+Herr grandsire hung three lanzknechts on it in one day.&nbsp; We
+only waited your bidding.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Quick then, and let me hear no more,&rdquo; said Ebbo,
+about to descend the pass, as if hastening from the execution of
+a wolf taken in a gin.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Has he seen the priest?&rdquo; asked Friedel.</p>
+<p>The peasants looked as if this were one of Sir Friedel&rsquo;s
+unaccountable fancies.&nbsp; Ebbo paused, frowned, and muttered,
+but seeing a move as if to drag the wretch towards the stunted
+bush overhanging an abyss, he shouted, &ldquo;Hold, Ulrich!&nbsp;
+Little Hans, do thou run down to the castle, and bring Father
+Jodocus to do his office!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The serfs were much disgusted.&nbsp; &ldquo;It never was so
+seen before, Herr Freiherr,&rdquo; remonstrated Heinz;
+&ldquo;fang and hang was ever the word.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What shrift had my lord&rsquo;s father, or mine?&rdquo;
+added Koppel.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Look you!&rdquo; said Ebbo, turning sharply.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;If Schlangenwald be a godless ruffian, pitiless alike to
+soul and body, is that a cause that I should stain myself
+too?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It were true vengeance,&rdquo; growled Koppel.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And now,&rdquo; grumbled Ulrich, &ldquo;will my lady
+hear, and there will be feeble pleadings for the vermin&rsquo;s
+life.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Like mutterings ensued, the purport of which was caught by
+Friedel, and made him say to Ebbo, who would again have escaped
+the disagreeableness of the scene, &ldquo;We had better tarry at
+hand.&nbsp; Unless we hold the folk in some check there will be
+no right execution.&nbsp; They will torture him to death ere the
+priest comes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ebbo yielded, and began to pace the scanty area of the flat
+rock where the need-fire was wont to blaze.&nbsp; After a time he
+exclaimed: &ldquo;Friedel, how couldst ask me?&nbsp; Knowst not
+that it sickens me to see a mountain cat killed, save in full
+chase.&nbsp; And thou&mdash;why, thou art white as the snow
+crags!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Better conquer the folly than that he there should be
+put to needless pain,&rdquo; said Friedel, but with labouring
+breath that showed how terrible was the prospect to his
+imaginative soul not inured to death-scenes like those of his
+fellows.</p>
+<p>Just then a mocking laugh broke forth.&nbsp; &ldquo;Ha!&rdquo;
+cried Ebbo, looking keenly down, &ldquo;what do ye there?&nbsp;
+Fang and hang may be fair; fang and torment is base!&nbsp; What
+was it, Lieschen?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Only, Herr Freiherr, the caitiff craved drink, and the
+fleischerinn gave him a cup from the stream behind the
+slaughter-house, where we killed the swine.&nbsp; Fit for the
+like of him!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By heavens, when I forbade torture!&rdquo; cried Ebbo,
+leaping from the rock in time to see the disgusting draught held
+to the lips of the captive, whose hands were twisted back and
+bound with cruel tightness; for the German boor, once roused from
+his lazy good-nature, was doubly savage from stolidity.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Wretches!&rdquo; cried Ebbo, striking right and left
+with the back of his sword, among the serfs, and then cutting the
+thong that was eating into the prisoner&rsquo;s flesh, while
+Friedel caught up a wooden bowl, filled it with pure water, and
+offered it to the captive, who drank deeply.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said Ebbo, &ldquo;hast ought to say for
+thyself?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A low curse against things in general was the only answer.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What brought thee here?&rdquo; continued Ebbo, in hopes
+of extracting some excuse for pardon; but the prisoner only hung
+his head as one stupefied, brutally indifferent and hardened
+against the mere trouble of answering.&nbsp; Not another word
+could be extracted, and Ebbo&rsquo;s position was very
+uncomfortable, keeping guard over his condemned felon, with the
+sulky peasants herding round, in fear of being balked of their
+prey; and the reluctance growing on him every moment to taking
+life in cold blood.&nbsp; Right of life and death was a heavy
+burden to a youth under seventeen, unless he had been thoughtless
+and reckless, and from this Ebbo had been prevented by his
+peculiar life.&nbsp; The lion cub had never tasted blood.</p>
+<p>The situation was prolonged beyond expectation.</p>
+<p>Many a time had the brothers paced their platform of rock, the
+criminal had fallen into a dose, and women and boys were
+murmuring that they must call home their kine and goats, and it
+was a shame to debar them of the sight of the hanging, long
+before Hans came back between crying and stammering, to say that
+Father Jodocus had fallen into so deep a study over his book,
+that he only muttered &ldquo;Coming,&rdquo; then went into
+another musing fit, whence no one could rouse him to do more than
+say &ldquo;Coming!&nbsp; Let him wait.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I must go and bring him, if the thing is to be
+done,&rdquo; said Friedel.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And let it last all night!&rdquo; was the answer.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;No, if the man were to die, it should be at once, not by
+inches.&nbsp; Hark thee, rogue!&rdquo; stirring him with his
+foot.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; said the man, &ldquo;is the hanging
+ready yet?&nbsp; You&rsquo;ve been long enough about it for us to
+have twisted the necks of every Adlerstein of you all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Look thee, caitiff!&rdquo; said Ebbo; &ldquo;thou
+meritest the rope as well as any wolf on the mountain, but we
+have kept thee so long in suspense, that if thou canst say a word
+for thy life, or pledge thyself to meddle no more with my lands,
+I&rsquo;ll consider of thy doom.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You have had plenty of time to consider it,&rdquo;
+growled the fellow.</p>
+<p>A murmur, followed by a wrathful shout, rose among the
+villagers.&nbsp; &ldquo;Letting off the villain!&nbsp; No!&nbsp;
+No!&nbsp; Out upon him!&nbsp; He dares not!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Dare!&rdquo; thundered Ebbo, with flashing eyes.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Rascals as ye are, think ye to hinder me from
+daring?&nbsp; Your will to be mine?&nbsp; There, fellow; away
+with thee!&nbsp; Up to the Gemsbock&rsquo;s Pass!&nbsp; And whoso
+would follow him, let him do so at his peril!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The prisoner was prompt to gather himself up and rush like a
+hunted animal to the path, at the entrance of which stood both
+twins, with drawn swords, to defend the escape.&nbsp; Of course
+no one ventured to follow; and surly discontented murmurs were
+the sole result as the peasants dispersed.&nbsp; Ebbo, sheathing
+his sword, and putting his arm into his brother&rsquo;s, said:
+&ldquo;What, Friedel, turned stony-hearted?&nbsp; Hadst never a
+word for the poor caitiff?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I knew thou wouldst never do the deed,&rdquo; said
+Friedel, smiling.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was such wretched prey,&rdquo; said Ebbo.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Yet shall I be despised for this!&nbsp; Would that thou
+hadst let me string him up shriftless, as any other man had done,
+and there would have been an end of it!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And even his mother&rsquo;s satisfaction did not greatly
+comfort Ebbo, for he was of the age to feel more ashamed of a
+solecism than a crime.&nbsp; Christina perceived that this was
+one of his most critical periods of life, baited as he was by the
+enemy of his race, and feeling all the disadvantages which heart
+and conscience gave him in dealing with a man who had neither, at
+a time when public opinion was always with the most
+masterful.&nbsp; The necessity of arming his retainers and having
+fighting men as a guard were additional temptations to hereditary
+habits of violence; and that so proud and fiery a nature as his
+should never become involved in them was almost beyond
+hope.&nbsp; Even present danger seemed more around than ever
+before.&nbsp; The estate was almost in a state of siege, and
+Christina never saw her sons quit the castle without thinking of
+their father&rsquo;s fate, and passing into the chapel to entreat
+for their return unscathed in body or soul.&nbsp; The snow, which
+she had so often hailed as a friend, was never more welcome than
+this winter; not merely as shutting the enemy out, and her sons
+in, but as cutting off all danger of a visit from her suitor, who
+would now come armed with his late sufferings in her behalf; and,
+moreover, with all the urgent need of a wise and respected head
+and protector for her sons.&nbsp; Yet the more evident the
+expediency became, the greater grew her distaste.</p>
+<p>Still the lonely life weighed heavily on Ebbo.&nbsp;
+Light-hearted Friedel was ever busy and happy, were he chasing
+the grim winter game&mdash;the bear and wolf&mdash;with his
+brother, fencing in the hall, learning Greek with the chaplain,
+reading or singing to his mother, or carving graceful angel forms
+to adorn the chapel.&nbsp; Or he could at all times soar into a
+minstrel dream of pure chivalrous semi-allegorical romance,
+sometimes told over the glowing embers to his mother and
+brother.&nbsp; All that came to Friedel was joy, from battling
+with the bear on a frozen rock, to persuading rude little Hans to
+come to the Frau Freiherrinn to learn his Paternoster.&nbsp; But
+the elder twin might hunt, might fence, might smile or kindle at
+his brother&rsquo;s lay, but ever with a restless gloom on him, a
+doubt of the future which made him impatient of the present, and
+led to a sharpness and hastiness of manner that broke forth in
+anger at slight offences.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The matron&rsquo;s coif succeeding the widow&rsquo;s
+veil,&rdquo; Friedel heard him muttering even in sleep, and more
+than once listened to it as Ebbo leant over the
+battlements&mdash;as he looked over the white world to the gray
+mist above the city of Ulm.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thou, who mockest my forebodings and fancies, to dwell
+on that gipsy augury!&rdquo; argued Friedel.&nbsp; &ldquo;As thou
+saidst at the time, Wildschloss&rsquo;s looks gave shrewd cause
+for it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The answer is in mine own heart,&rdquo; answered
+Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;Since our stay at Ulm, I have ever felt as
+though the sweet motherling were less my own!&nbsp; And the same
+with my house and lands.&nbsp; Rule as I will, a mocking laugh
+comes back to me, saying: &lsquo;Thou art but a boy, Sir Baron,
+thou dost but play at lords and knights.&rsquo;&nbsp; If I had
+hung yon rogue of a reiter, I wonder if I had felt my grasp more
+real?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; said Friedel, glancing from the sparkling
+white slopes to the pure blue above, &ldquo;our whole life is but
+a play at lords and knights, with the blessed saints as witnesses
+of our sport in the tilt-yard.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Were it merely that,&rdquo; said Ebbo, impatiently,
+&ldquo;I were not so galled.&nbsp; Something hangs over us,
+Friedel!&nbsp; I long that these snows would melt, that I might
+at least know what it is!&rdquo;</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">BRIDGING THE FORD</span></h2>
+<p>The snow melted, the torrent became a flood, then contracted
+itself, but was still a broad stream, when one spring afternoon
+Ebbo showed his brother some wains making for the ford, adding,
+&ldquo;It cannot be rightly passable.&nbsp; They will come to
+loss.&nbsp; I shall get the men together to aid them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He blew a blast on his horn, and added, &ldquo;The knaves will
+be alert enough if they hope to meddle with honest men&rsquo;s
+luggage.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;See,&rdquo; and Friedel pointed to the thicket to the
+westward of the meadow around the stream, where the beech trees
+were budding, but not yet forming a full mass of verdure,
+&ldquo;is not the Snake in the wood?&nbsp; Methinks I spy the
+glitter of his scales.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By heavens, the villains are lying in wait for the
+travellers at our landing-place,&rdquo; cried Ebbo, and again
+raising the bugle to his lips, he sent forth three notes well
+known as a call to arms.&nbsp; Their echoes came back from the
+rocks, followed instantly by lusty jodels, and the brothers
+rushed into the hall to take down their light head-pieces and
+corslets, answering in haste their mother&rsquo;s startled
+questions, by telling of the endangered travellers, and the
+Schlangenwald ambush.&nbsp; She looked white and trembled, but
+said no word to hinder them; only as she clasped Friedel&rsquo;s
+corslet, she entreated them to take fuller armour.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We must speed the short way down the rock,&rdquo; said
+Ebbo, &ldquo;and cannot be cumbered with heavy harness.&nbsp;
+Sweet motherling, fear not; but let a meal be spread for our
+rescued captives.&nbsp; Ho, Heinz, &rsquo;tis against the
+Schlangenwald rascals.&nbsp; Art too stiff to go down the rock
+path?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No; nor down the abyss, could I strike a good stroke
+against Schlangenwald at the bottom of it,&rdquo; quoth
+Heinz.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nor see vermin set free by the Freiherr,&rdquo; growled
+Koppel; but the words were lost in Ebbo&rsquo;s loud commands to
+the men, as Friedel and Hatto handed down the weapons to
+them.</p>
+<p>The convoy had by this time halted, evidently to try the
+ford.&nbsp; A horseman crossed, and found it practicable, for a
+waggon proceeded to make the attempt.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now is our time,&rdquo; said Ebbo, who was standing on
+the narrow ledge between the castle and the precipitous path
+leading to the meadow.&nbsp; &ldquo;One waggon may get over, but
+the second or third will stick in the ruts that it leaves.&nbsp;
+Now we will drop from our crag, and if the Snake falls on them,
+why, then for a pounce of the Eagle.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The two young knights, so goodly in their bright steel, knelt
+for their mother&rsquo;s blessing, and then sprang like chamois
+down the ivy-twined steep, followed by their men, and were lost
+to sight among the bushes and rocks.&nbsp; Yet even while her
+frame quivered with fear, her heart swelled at the thought what a
+gulf there was between these days and those when she had hidden
+her face in despair, while Ermentrude watched the Debateable
+Ford.</p>
+<p>She watched now in suspense, indeed, but with exultation
+instead of shame, as two waggons safely crossed; but the third
+stuck fast, and presently turned over in the stream, impelled
+sideways by the efforts of the struggling horses.&nbsp; Then,
+amid endeavours to disentangle the animals and succour the
+driver, the travellers were attacked by a party of armed men, who
+dashed out of the beechwood, and fell on the main body of the
+waggons, which were waiting on the bit of bare shingly soil that
+lay between the new and old channels.&nbsp; A wild
+m&ecirc;l&eacute;e was all that Christina could see&mdash;weapons
+raised, horses starting, men rushing from the river, while the
+clang and the shout rose even to the castle.</p>
+<p>Hark!&nbsp; Out rings the clear call, &ldquo;The Eagle to the
+rescue!&rdquo;&nbsp; There they speed over the meadow, the two
+slender forms with glancing helms!&nbsp; O overrun not the
+followers, rush not into needless danger!&nbsp; There is Koppel
+almost up with them with his big axe&mdash;Heinz&rsquo;s broad
+shoulders near.&nbsp; Heaven strike with them!&nbsp; Visit not
+their forefathers&rsquo; sin on those pure spirits.&nbsp; Some
+are flying.&nbsp; Some one has fallen!&nbsp; O heavens! on which
+side?&nbsp; Ah! it is into the Schlangenwald woods that the
+fugitives direct their flight.&nbsp; Three&mdash;four&mdash;the
+whole troop pursued!&nbsp; Go not too far!&nbsp; Run not into
+needless risk!&nbsp; Your work is done, and gallantly.&nbsp; Well
+done, young knights of Adlerstein!&nbsp; Which of you is it that
+stands pointing out safe standing-ground for the men that are
+raising the waggon?&nbsp; Which of you is it who stands in
+converse with a burgher form?&nbsp; Thanks and blessings! the
+lads are safe, and full knightly hath been their first
+emprise.</p>
+<p>A quarter of an hour later, a gay step mounted the ascent, and
+Friedel&rsquo;s bright face laughed from his helmet:
+&ldquo;There, mother, will you crown your knights?&nbsp; Could
+you see Ebbo bear down the chief squire? for the old Snake was
+not there himself.&nbsp; And whom do you think we rescued,
+besides a whole band of Venetian traders to whom he had joined
+himself?&nbsp; Why, my uncle&rsquo;s friend, the architect, of
+whom he used to speak&mdash;Master Moritz
+Schleiermacher.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Moritz Schleiermacher!&nbsp; I knew him as a
+boy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He had been laying out a Lustgarten for the Romish king
+at Innspruck, and he is a stout man of his hands, and attempted
+defence; but he had such a shrewd blow before we came up, that he
+lay like one dead; and when he was lifted up, he gazed at us like
+one moon-struck, and said, &lsquo;Are my eyes dazed, or are these
+the twins of Adlerstein, that are as like as face to
+mirror?&nbsp; Lads, lads, your uncle looked not to hear of you
+acting in this sort.&rsquo;&nbsp; But soon we and his people let
+him know how it was, and that eagles do not have the manner of
+snakes.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Poor Master Moritz!&nbsp; Is he much hurt?&nbsp; Is
+Ebbo bringing him up hither?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, mother, he is but giddied and stunned, and now must
+you send down store of sausage, sourkraut, meat, wine, and beer;
+for the wains cannot all cross till daylight, and we must keep
+ward all night lest the Schlangenwalden should fall on them
+again.&nbsp; Plenty of good cheer, mother, to make a right merry
+watch.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Take heed, Friedel mine; a merry watch is scarce a safe
+one.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Even so, sweet motherling, and therefore must Ebbo and
+I share it.&nbsp; You must mete out your liquor wisely, you see,
+enough for the credit of Adlerstein, and enough to keep out the
+marsh fog, yet not enough to make us snore too soundly.&nbsp; I
+am going to take my lute; it would be using it ill not to let it
+enjoy such a chance as a midnight watch.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So away went the light-hearted boy, and by and by Christina
+saw the red watch-fire as she gazed from her turret window.&nbsp;
+She would have been pleased to see how, marshalled by a merchant
+who had crossed the desert from Egypt to Palestine, the waggons
+were ranged in a circle, and the watches told off, while the food
+and drink were carefully portioned out.</p>
+<p>Freiherr Ebbo, on his own ground, as champion and host, was
+far more at ease than in the city, and became very friendly with
+the merchants and architect as they sat round the bright fire,
+conversing, or at times challenging the mountain echoes by songs
+to the sound of Friedel&rsquo;s lute.&nbsp; When the stars grew
+bright, most lay down to sleep in the waggons, while others
+watched, pacing up and down till Karl&rsquo;s waggon should be
+over the mountain, and the vigil was relieved.</p>
+<p>No disturbance took place, and at sunrise a hasty meal was
+partaken of, and the work of crossing the river was set in
+hand.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pity,&rdquo; said Moritz, the architect, &ldquo;that
+this ford were not spanned by a bridge, to the avoiding of danger
+and spoil.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who could build such a bridge?&rdquo; asked Ebbo.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yourself, Herr Freiherr, in union with us burghers of
+Ulm.&nbsp; It were well worth your while to give land and stone,
+and ours to give labour and skill, provided we fixed a toll on
+the passage, which would be willingly paid to save peril and
+delay.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The brothers caught at the idea, and the merchants agreed that
+such a bridge would be an inestimable boon to all traffickers
+between Constance, Ulm, and Augsburg, and would attract many
+travellers who were scared away by the evil fame of the
+Debateable Ford.&nbsp; Master Moritz looked at the stone of the
+mountain, pronounced it excellent material, and already sketched
+the span of the arches with a view to winter torrents.&nbsp; As
+to the site, the best was on the firm ground above the ford; but
+here only one side was Adlerstein, while on the other Ebbo
+claimed both banks, and it was probable that an equally sound
+foundation could be obtained, only with more cost and delay.</p>
+<p>After this survey, the travellers took leave of the barons,
+promising to write when their fellow-citizens should have been
+sounded as to the bridge; and Ebbo remained in high spirits, with
+such brilliant purposes that he had quite forgotten his gloomy
+forebodings.&nbsp; &ldquo;Peace instead of war at home,&rdquo; he
+said; &ldquo;with the revenue it will bring, I will build a mill,
+and set our lads to work, so that they may become less dull and
+doltish than their parents.&nbsp; Then will we follow the Emperor
+with a train that none need despise!&nbsp; No one will talk now
+of Adlerstein not being able to take care of himself!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Letters came from Ulm, saying that the guilds of mercers and
+wine merchants were delighted with the project, and invited the
+Baron of Adlerstein to a council at the Rathhaus.&nbsp; Master
+Sorel begged the mother to come with her sons to be his guest;
+but fearing the neighbourhood of Sir Kasimir, she remained at
+home, with Heinz for her seneschal while her sons rode to the
+city.&nbsp; There Ebbo found that his late exploit and his future
+plan had made him a person of much greater consideration than on
+his last visit, and he demeaned himself with far more ease and
+affability in consequence.&nbsp; He had affairs on his hands too,
+and felt more than one year older.</p>
+<p>The two guilds agreed to build the bridge, and share the toll
+with the Baron in return for the ground and materials; but they
+preferred the plan that placed one pier on the Schlangenwald
+bank, and proposed to write to the Count an offer to include him
+in the scheme, awarding him a share of the profits in proportion
+to his contribution.&nbsp; However vexed at the turn affairs had
+taken, Ebbo could offer no valid objection, and was obliged to
+affix his signature to the letter in company with the
+guildmasters.</p>
+<p>It was despatched by the city pursuivants&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>The only men who safe might ride;<br />
+Their errands on the border side;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>and a meeting was appointed in the Rathhaus for the day of
+their expected return.&nbsp; The higher burghers sat on their
+carved chairs in the grand old hall, the lesser magnates on
+benches, and Ebbo, in an elbowed seat far too spacious for his
+slender proportions, met a glance from Friedel that told him his
+merry brother was thinking of the frog and the ox.&nbsp; The
+pursuivants entered&mdash;hardy, shrewd-looking men, with the
+city arms decking them wherever there was room for them.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Honour-worthy sirs,&rdquo; they said, &ldquo;no letter
+did the Graf von Schlangenwald return.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sent he no message?&rdquo; demanded Moritz
+Schleiermacher.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yea, worthy sir, but scarce befitting this reverend
+assembly.&rdquo;&nbsp; On being pressed, however, it was
+repeated: &ldquo;The Lord Count was pleased to swear at what he
+termed the insolence of the city in sending him heralds,
+&lsquo;as if,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;the dogs,&rsquo; your
+worships, &lsquo;were his equals.&rsquo;&nbsp; Then having cursed
+your worships, he reviled the crooked writing of Herr Clerk
+Diedrichson, and called his chaplain to read it to him.&nbsp;
+Herr Priest could scarce read three lines for his foul language
+about the ford.&nbsp; &lsquo;Never,&rsquo; said he, &lsquo;would
+he consent to raising a bridge&mdash;a mean trick,&rsquo; so said
+he, &lsquo;for defrauding him of his rights to what the flood
+sent him.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But,&rdquo; asked Ebbo, &ldquo;took he no note of our
+explanation, that if he give not the upper bank, we will build
+lower, where both sides are my own?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He passed it not entirely over,&rdquo; replied the
+messenger.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What said he&mdash;the very words?&rdquo; demanded
+Ebbo, with the paling cheek and low voice that made his passion
+often seem like patience.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He said&mdash;(the Herr Freiherr will pardon me for
+repeating the words)&mdash;he said, &lsquo;Tell the misproud
+mongrel of Adlerstein that he had best sit firm in his own saddle
+ere meddling with his betters, and if he touch one pebble of the
+Braunwasser, he will rue it.&nbsp; And before your city-folk take
+up with him or his, they had best learn whether he have any right
+at all in the case.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;His right is plain,&rdquo; said Master Gottfried;
+&ldquo;full proofs were given in, and his investiture by the
+Kaisar forms a title in itself.&nbsp; It is mere bravado, and an
+endeavour to make mischief between the Baron and the
+city.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Even so did I explain, Herr Guildmaster,&rdquo; said
+the pursuivant; &ldquo;but, pardon me, the Count laughed me to
+scorn, and quoth he, &lsquo;asked the Kaisar for proof of his
+father&rsquo;s death!&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mere mischief-making, as before,&rdquo; said Master
+Gottfried, while his nephews started with amaze.&nbsp; &ldquo;His
+father&rsquo;s death was proved by an eye-witness, whom you still
+have in your train, have you not, Herr Freiherr?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yea,&rdquo; replied Ebbo, &ldquo;he is at Adlerstein
+now, Heinrich Bauermann, called the Schneiderlein, a lanzknecht,
+who alone escaped the slaughter, and from whom we have often
+heard how my father died, choked in his own blood, from a deep
+breast-wound, immediately after he had sent home his last
+greetings to my lady mother.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Was the corpse restored?&rdquo; asked the able
+Rathsherr Ulrich.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;Almost all our
+retainers had perished, and when a friar was sent to the hostel
+to bring home the remains, it appeared that the treacherous foe
+had borne them off&mdash;nay, my grandfather&rsquo;s head was
+sent to the Diet!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The whole assembly agreed that the Count could only mean to
+make the absence of direct evidence about a murder committed
+eighteen years ago tell in sowing distrust between the
+allies.&nbsp; The suggestion was not worth a thought, and it was
+plain that no site would be available except the Debateable
+Strand.&nbsp; To this, however, Ebbo&rsquo;s title was
+assailable, both on account of his minority, as well as his
+father&rsquo;s unproved death, and of the disputed claim to the
+ground.&nbsp; The Rathsherr, Master Gottfried, and others,
+therefore recommended deferring the work till the Baron should be
+of age, when, on again tendering his allegiance, he might obtain
+a distinct recognition of his marches.&nbsp; But this policy did
+not consort with the quick spirit of Moritz Schleiermacher, nor
+with the convenience of the mercers and wine-merchants, who were
+constant sufferers by the want of a bridge, and afraid of waiting
+four years, in which a lad like the Baron might return to the
+nominal instincts of his class, or the Braunwasser might take
+back the land it had given; whilst Ebbo himself was urgent, with
+all the defiant fire of youth, to begin building at once in spite
+of all gainsayers.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Strife and blood will it cost,&rdquo; said Master
+Sorel, gravely.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What can be had worth the having save at cost of strife
+and blood?&rdquo; said Ebbo, with a glance of fire.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Youth speaks of counting the cost.&nbsp; Little knows
+it what it saith,&rdquo; sighed Master Gottfried.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; returned the Rathsherr, &ldquo;were it
+otherwise, who would have the heart for enterprise?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So the young knights mounted, and had ridden about half the
+way in silence, when Ebbo exclaimed,
+&ldquo;Friedel&rdquo;&mdash;and as his brother started,
+&ldquo;What art musing on?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What thou art thinking of,&rdquo; said Friedel, turning
+on him an eye that had not only something of the brightness but
+of the penetration of a sunbeam.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I do not think thereon at all,&rdquo; said Ebbo,
+gloomily.&nbsp; &ldquo;It is a figment of the old serpent to
+hinder us from snatching his prey from him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nevertheless,&rdquo; said Friedel, &ldquo;I cannot but
+remember that the Genoese merchant of old told us of a German
+noble sold by his foes to the Moors.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Folly!&nbsp; That tale was too recent to concern my
+father.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I did not think it did,&rdquo; said Friedel; &ldquo;but
+mayhap that noble&rsquo;s family rest equally certain of his
+death.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Pfui!&rdquo; said Ebbo, hotly; &ldquo;hast not heard
+fifty times how he died even in speaking, and how Heinz crossed
+his hands on his breast?&nbsp; What wouldst have more?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hardly even that,&rdquo; said Friedel, slightly
+smiling.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Tush!&rdquo; hastily returned his brother, &ldquo;I
+meant only by way of proof.&nbsp; Would an honest old fellow like
+Heinz be a deceiver?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not wittingly.&nbsp; Yet I would fain ride to that
+hostel and make inquiries!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The traitor host met his deserts, and was broken on the
+wheel for murdering a pedlar a year ago,&rdquo; said Ebbo.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I would I knew where my father was buried, for then would
+I bring his corpse honourably back; but as to his being a living
+man, I will not have it spoken of to trouble my
+mother.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To trouble her?&rdquo; exclaimed Friedel.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To trouble her,&rdquo; repeated Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;Long
+since hath passed the pang of his loss, and there is reason in
+what old Sorel says, that he must have been a rugged, untaught
+savage, with little in common with the gentle one, and that
+tender memory hath decked him out as he never could have
+been.&nbsp; Nay, Friedel, it is but sense.&nbsp; What could a man
+have been under the granddame&rsquo;s breeding?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It becomes not thee to say so!&rdquo; returned
+Friedel.&nbsp; &ldquo;Nay, he could learn to love our
+mother.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;One sign of grace, but doubtless she loved him the
+better for their having been so little together.&nbsp; Her heart
+is at peace, believing him in his grave; but let her imagine him
+in Schlangenwald&rsquo;s dungeon, or some Moorish galley, if thou
+likest it better, and how will her mild spirit be
+rent!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It might be so,&rdquo; said Friedel,
+thoughtfully.&nbsp; &ldquo;It may be best to keep this secret
+from her till we have fuller certainty.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Agreed then,&rdquo; said Ebbo, &ldquo;unless the
+Wildschloss fellow should again molest us, when his answer is
+ready.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is this just towards my mother?&rdquo; said
+Friedel.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Just!&nbsp; What mean&rsquo;st thou?&nbsp; Is it not
+our office and our dearest right to shield our mother from
+care?&nbsp; And is not her chief wish to be rid of the
+Wildschloss suit?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Nevertheless Ebbo was moody all the way home, but when there
+he devoted himself in his most eager and winning way to his
+mother, telling her of Master Gottfried&rsquo;s woodcuts, and
+Hausfrau Johanna&rsquo;s rheumatism, and of all the news of the
+country, in especial that the Kaisar was at Lintz, very ill with
+a gangrene in his leg, said to have been caused by his habit of
+always kicking doors open, and that his doctors thought of
+amputation, a horrible idea in the fifteenth century.&nbsp; The
+young baron was evidently bent on proving that no one could make
+his mother so happy as he could; and he was not far wrong
+there.</p>
+<p>Friedel, however, could not rest till he had followed Heinz to
+the stable, and speaking over the back of the old white mare, the
+only other survivor of the massacre, had asked him once more for
+the particulars, a tale he was never loth to tell; but when
+Friedel further demanded whether he was certain of having seen
+the death of his younger lord, he replied, as if hurt:
+&ldquo;What, think you I would have quitted him while life was
+yet in him?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, certainly, good Heinz; yet I would fain know by
+what tokens thou knewest his death.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah!&nbsp; Sir Friedel; when you have seen a stricken
+field or two, you will not ask how I know death from
+life.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is a swoon so utterly unlike death?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I say not but that an inexperienced youth might be
+mistaken,&rdquo; said Heinz; &ldquo;but for one who had learned
+the bloody trade, it were impossible.&nbsp; Why ask,
+sir?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Because,&rdquo; said Friedel, low and
+mysteriously&mdash;&ldquo;my brother would not have my mother
+know it, but&mdash;Count Schlangenwald demanded whether we could
+prove my father&rsquo;s death.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Prove!&nbsp; He could not choose but die with three
+such wounds, as the old ruffian knows.&nbsp; I shall bless the
+day, Sir Friedmund, when I see you or your brother give back
+those strokes!&nbsp; A heavy reckoning be his.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We all deem that line only meant to cross our
+designs,&rdquo; said Friedel.&nbsp; &ldquo;Yet, Heinz, I would I
+knew how to find out what passed when thou wast gone.&nbsp; Is
+there no servant at the inn&mdash;no retainer of Schlangenwald
+that aught could be learnt from?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By St. Gertrude,&rdquo; roughly answered the
+Schneiderlein, &ldquo;if you cannot be satisfied with the oath of
+a man like me, who would have given his life to save your father,
+I know not what will please you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Friedel, with his wonted good-nature, set himself to pacify
+the warrior with assurances of his trust; yet while Ebbo plunged
+more eagerly into plans for the bridge-building, Friedel drew
+more and more into his old world of musings; and many a summer
+afternoon was spent by him at the Ptarmigan&rsquo;s Mere, in deep
+communings with himself, as one revolving a purpose.</p>
+<p>Christina could not but observe, with a strange sense of
+foreboding, that, while one son was more than ever in the lonely
+mountain heights, the other was far more at the base.&nbsp;
+Master Moritz Schleiermacher was a constant guest at the castle,
+and Ebbo was much taken up with his companionship.&nbsp; He was a
+strong, shrewd man, still young, but with much experience, and he
+knew how to adapt himself to intercourse with the proud nobility,
+preserving an independent bearing, while avoiding all that
+haughtiness could take umbrage at; and thus he was acquiring a
+greater influence over Ebbo than was perceived by any save the
+watchful mother, who began to fear lest her son was acquiring an
+infusion of worldly wisdom and eagerness for gain that would
+indeed be a severance between him and his brother.</p>
+<p>If she had known the real difference that unconsciously kept
+her sons apart, her heart would have ached yet more.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">FRIEDMUND IN THE CLOUDS</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> stone was quarried high on the
+mountain, and a direct road was made for bringing it down to the
+water-side.&nbsp; The castle profited by the road in
+accessibility, but its impregnability was so far lessened.&nbsp;
+However, as Ebbo said, it was to be a friendly harbour, instead
+of a robber crag, and in case of need the communication could
+easily be destroyed.&nbsp; The blocks of stone were brought down,
+and wooden sheds were erected for the workmen in the meadow.</p>
+<p>In August, however, came tidings that, after two amputations
+of his diseased limb, the Kaisar Friedrich III. had died&mdash;it
+was said from over free use of melons in the fever consequent on
+the operation.&nbsp; His death was not likely to make much change
+in the government, which had of late been left to his son.&nbsp;
+At this time the King of the Romans (for the title of Kaisar was
+conferred only by coronation by the Pope, and this Maximilian
+never received) was at Innspruck collecting troops for the
+deliverance of Styria and Carinthia from a horde of invading
+Turks.&nbsp; The Markgraf of Wurtemburg sent an intimation to all
+the Swabian League that the new sovereign would be best pleased
+if their homage were paid to him in his camp at the head of their
+armed retainers.</p>
+<p>Here was the way of enterprise and honour open at last, and
+the young barons of Adlerstein eagerly prepared for it, equipping
+their vassals and sending to Ulm to take three or four
+men-at-arms into their pay, so as to make up twenty lances as the
+contingent of Adlerstein.&nbsp; It was decided that Christina
+should spend the time of their absence at Ulm, whither her sons
+would escort her on their way to the camp.&nbsp; The last busy
+day was over, and in the summer evening Christina was sitting on
+the castle steps listening to Ebbo&rsquo;s eager talk of his
+plans of interesting his hero, the King of the Romans, in his
+bridge, and obtaining full recognition of his claim to the
+Debateable Strand, where the busy workmen could be seen far
+below.</p>
+<p>Presently Ebbo, as usual when left to himself, grew restless
+for want of Friedel, and exclaiming, &ldquo;The musing fit is on
+him!&mdash;he will stay all night at the tarn if I fetch him
+not,&rdquo; he set off in quest of him, passing through the
+hamlet to look for him in the chapel on his way.</p>
+<p>Not finding Friedel there, he was, however, some way up
+towards the tarn, when he met his brother wearing the beamy yet
+awestruck look that he often brought from the mountain height,
+yet with a steadfast expression of resolute purpose on his
+face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, dreamer!&rdquo; said Ebbo, &ldquo;I knew where to
+seek thee!&nbsp; Ever in the clouds!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I have been to the tarn,&rdquo; said Friedel,
+throwing his arm round his brother&rsquo;s neck in their boyish
+fashion.&nbsp; &ldquo;It has been very dear to me, and I longed
+to see its gray depths once more.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Once!&nbsp; Yea manifold times shalt thou see
+them,&rdquo; said Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;Schleiermacher tells me that
+these are no Janissaries, but a mere miscreant horde, even by
+whom glory can scarce be gained, and no peril at all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know not,&rdquo; said Friedel, &ldquo;but it is to me
+as if I were taking my leave of all these purple hollows and
+heaven-lighted peaks cleaving the sky.&nbsp; All the more, Ebbo,
+since I have made up my mind to a resolution.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, none of the old monkish fancies,&rdquo; cried
+Ebbo, &ldquo;against them thou art sworn, so long as I am true
+knight.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, it is not the monkish fancy, but I am convinced
+that it is my duty to strive to ascertain my father&rsquo;s
+fate.&nbsp; Hold, I say not that it is thine.&nbsp; Thou hast thy
+charge here&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Looking for a dead man,&rdquo; growled Ebbo; &ldquo;a
+proper quest!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not so,&rdquo; returned Friedel.&nbsp; &ldquo;At the
+camp it will surely be possible to learn, through either
+Schlangenwald or his men, how it went with my father.&nbsp; Men
+say that his surviving son, the Teutonic knight, is of very
+different mould.&nbsp; He might bring something to light.&nbsp;
+Were it proved to be as the Schneiderlein avers, then would our
+conscience be at rest; but, if he were in Schlangenwald&rsquo;s
+dungeon&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Folly!&nbsp; Impossible!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yet men have pined eighteen years in dark
+vaults,&rdquo; said Friedel; &ldquo;and, when I think that so may
+he have wasted for the whole of our lives that have been so free
+and joyous on his own mountain, it irks me to bound on the
+heather or gaze at the stars.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If the serpent hath dared,&rdquo; cried Ebbo,
+&ldquo;though it is mere folly to think of it, we would summon
+the League and have his castle about his ears!&nbsp; Not that I
+believe it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Scarce do I,&rdquo; said Friedel; &ldquo;but there
+haunts me evermore the description of the kindly German chained
+between the decks of the Corsair&rsquo;s galley.&nbsp; Once and
+again have I dreamt thereof.&nbsp; And, Ebbo, recollect the
+prediction that so fretted thee.&nbsp; Might not yon dark-cheeked
+woman have had some knowledge of the East and its
+captives?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ebbo started, but resumed his former tone.&nbsp; &ldquo;So
+thou wouldst begin thine errantry like Sir Hildebert and Sir
+Hildebrand in the &lsquo;Rose garden&rsquo;?&nbsp; Have a
+care.&nbsp; Such quests end in mortal conflict between the
+unknown father and son.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I should know him,&rdquo; said Friedel,
+enthusiastically, &ldquo;or, at least, he would know my
+mother&rsquo;s son in me; and, could I no otherwise ransom him, I
+would ply the oar in his stead.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A fine exchange for my mother and me,&rdquo; gloomily
+laughed Ebbo, &ldquo;to lose thee, my sublimated self, for a
+rude, savage lord, who would straightway undo all our work, and
+rate and misuse our sweet mother for being more civilized than
+himself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Shame, Ebbo!&rdquo; cried Friedel, &ldquo;or art thou
+but in jest?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So far in jest that thou wilt never go, puissant Sir
+Hildebert,&rdquo; returned Ebbo, drawing him closer.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Thou wilt learn&mdash;as I also trust to do&mdash;in what
+nameless hole the serpent hid his remains.&nbsp; Then shall they
+be duly coffined and blazoned.&nbsp; All the monks in the
+cloisters for twenty miles round shall sing requiems, and thou
+and I will walk bareheaded, with candles in our hands, by the
+bier, till we rest him in the Blessed Friedmund&rsquo;s chapel;
+and there Lucas Handlein shall carve his tomb, and thou shalt sit
+for the likeness.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So may it end,&rdquo; said Friedel, &ldquo;but either I
+will know him dead, or endeavour somewhat in his behalf.&nbsp;
+And that the need is real, as well as the purpose blessed, I have
+become the more certain, for, Ebbo, as I rose to descend the
+hill, I saw on the cloud our patron&rsquo;s very form&mdash;I saw
+myself kneel before him and receive his blessing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ebbo burst out laughing.&nbsp; &ldquo;Now know I that it is
+indeed as saith Schleiermacher,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and that
+these phantoms of the Blessed Friedmund are but shadows cast by
+the sun on the vapours of the ravine.&nbsp; See, Friedel, I had
+gone to seek thee at the chapel, and meeting Father Norbert, I
+bent my knee, that I might take his farewell blessing.&nbsp; I
+had the substance, thou the shadow, thou dreamer!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Friedel was as much mortified for the moment as his gentle
+nature could be.&nbsp; Then he resumed his sweet smile, saying,
+&ldquo;Be it so!&nbsp; I have oft read that men are too prone to
+take visions and special providences to themselves, and now I
+have proved the truth of the saying.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And,&rdquo; said Ebbo, &ldquo;thou seest thy purpose is
+as baseless as thy vision?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, Ebbo.&nbsp; It grieves me to differ from thee, but
+my resolve is older than the fancy, and may not be shaken because
+I was vain enough to believe that the Blessed Friedmund could
+stoop to bless me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ha!&rdquo; shouted Ebbo, glad to see an object on which
+to vent his secret annoyance.&nbsp; &ldquo;Who goes there,
+skulking round the rocks?&nbsp; Here, rogue, what art after
+here?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No harm,&rdquo; sullenly replied a half-clad boy.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Whence art thou?&nbsp; From Schlangenwald, to spy what
+more we can be robbed of?&nbsp; The lash&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hold,&rdquo; interposed Friedel.&nbsp; &ldquo;Perchance
+the poor lad had no evil purposes.&nbsp; Didst lose thy
+way?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, sir, my mother sent me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I thought so,&rdquo; cried Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;This
+comes of sparing the nest of thankless adders!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; said Friedel, &ldquo;mayhap it is because
+they are not thankless that the poor fellow is here.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; said the boy, coming nearer, &ldquo;I will
+tell <i>you</i>&mdash;<i>you</i> I will tell&mdash;not him who
+threatens.&nbsp; Mother said you spared our huts, and the lady
+gave us bread when we came to the castle gate in winter, and she
+would not see the reiters lay waste your folk&rsquo;s doings down
+there without warning you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My good lad!&nbsp; What saidst thou?&rdquo; cried Ebbo,
+but the boy seemed dumb before him, and Friedel repeated the
+question ere he answered: &ldquo;All the lanzknechts and reiters
+are at the castle, and the Herr Graf has taken all my
+father&rsquo;s young sheep for them, a plague upon him.&nbsp; And
+our folk are warned to be at the muster rock to-morrow morn, each
+with a bundle of straw and a pine brand; and Black Berend heard
+the body squire say the Herr Graf had sworn not to go to the wars
+till every stick at the ford be burnt, every stone drowned, every
+workman hung.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ebbo, in a transport of indignation and gratitude, thrust his
+hand into his pouch, and threw the boy a handful of groschen,
+while Friedel gave warm thanks, in the utmost haste, ere both
+brothers sprang with headlong speed down the wild path, to take
+advantage of the timely intelligence.</p>
+<p>The little council of war was speedily assembled, consisting
+of the barons, their mother, Master Moritz Schleiermacher, Heinz,
+and Hatto.&nbsp; To bring up to the castle the workmen, their
+families, and the more valuable implements, was at once decided;
+and Christina asked whether there would be anything left worth
+defending, and whether the Schlangenwalden might not expend their
+fury on the scaffold, which could be newly supplied from the
+forest, the huts, which could be quickly restored, and the
+stones, which could hardly be damaged.&nbsp; The enemy must
+proceed to the camp in a day or two, and the building would be
+less assailable by their return; and, besides, it was scarcely
+lawful to enter on a private war when the imperial banner was in
+the field.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Craving your pardon, gracious lady,&rdquo; said the
+architect, &ldquo;that blame rests with him who provokes the
+war.&nbsp; See, lord baron, there is time to send to Ulm, where
+the two guilds, our allies, will at once equip their trained
+bands and despatch them.&nbsp; We meanwhile will hold the knaves
+in check, and, by the time our burghers come up, the snake brood
+will have had such a lesson as they will not soon forget.&nbsp;
+Said I well, Herr Freiherr?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Right bravely,&rdquo; said Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;It
+consorts not with our honour or rights, with my pledges to Ulm,
+or the fame of my house, to shut ourselves up and see the rogues
+work their will scatheless.&nbsp; My own score of men, besides
+the stouter masons, carpenters, and serfs, will be fully enough
+to make the old serpent of the wood rue the day, even without the
+aid of the burghers.&nbsp; Not a word against it, dearest
+mother.&nbsp; None is so wise as thou in matters of peace, but
+honour is here concerned.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My question is,&rdquo; persevered the mother,
+&ldquo;whether honour be not better served by obeying the summons
+of the king against the infidel, with the men thou hast called
+together at his behest?&nbsp; Let the count do his worst; he
+gives thee legal ground of complaint to lay before the king and
+the League, and all may there be more firmly
+established.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That were admirable counsel, lady,&rdquo; said
+Schleiermacher, &ldquo;well suited to the honour-worthy
+guildmaster Sorel, and to our justice-loving city; but, in
+matters of baronial rights and aggressions, king and League are
+wont to help those that help themselves, and those that are over
+nice as to law and justice come by the worst.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not the worst in the long run,&rdquo; said Friedel.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thine unearthly code will not serve us here, Friedel
+mine,&rdquo; returned his brother.&nbsp; &ldquo;Did I not defend
+the work I have begun, I should be branded as a weak fool.&nbsp;
+Nor will I see the foes of my house insult me without striking a
+fair stroke.&nbsp; Hap what hap, the Debateable Ford shall be
+debated!&nbsp; Call in the serfs, Hatto, and arm them.&nbsp;
+Mother, order a good supper for them.&nbsp; Master Moritz, let us
+summon thy masons and carpenters, and see who is a good man with
+his hands among them.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Christina saw that remonstrance was vain.&nbsp; The days of
+peril and violence were coming back again; and all she could take
+comfort in was, that, if not wholly right, her son was far from
+wholly wrong, and that with a free heart she could pray for a
+blessing on him and on his arms.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE FIGHT AT THE FORD</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">By</span> the early September sunrise the
+thicket beneath the pass was sheltering the twenty well-appointed
+reiters of Adlerstein, each standing, holding his horse by the
+bridle, ready to mount at the instant.&nbsp; In their rear were
+the serfs and artisans, some with axes, scythes, or ploughshares,
+a few with cross-bows, and Jobst and his sons with the long
+blackened poles used for stirring their charcoal fires.&nbsp; In
+advance were Master Moritz and the two barons, the former in a
+stout plain steel helmet, cuirass, and gauntlets, a sword, and
+those new-fashioned weapons, pistols; the latter in full knightly
+armour, exactly alike, from the gilt-spurred heel to the
+eagle-crested helm, and often moving restlessly forward to watch
+for the enemy, though taking care not to be betrayed by the
+glitter of their mail.&nbsp; So long did they wait that there was
+even a doubt whether it might not have been a false alarm; the
+boy was vituperated, and it was proposed to despatch a spy to see
+whether anything were doing at Schlangenwald.</p>
+<p>At length a rustling and rushing were heard; then a clank of
+armour.&nbsp; Ebbo vaulted into the saddle, and gave the word to
+mount; Schleiermacher, who always fought on foot, stepped up to
+him.&nbsp; &ldquo;Keep back your men, Herr Freiherr.&nbsp; Let
+his design be manifest.&nbsp; We must not be said to have fallen
+on him on his way to the muster.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It would be but as he served my father!&rdquo; muttered
+Ebbo, forced, however, to restrain himself, though with boiling
+blood, as the tramp of horses shook the ground, and bright armour
+became visible on the further side of the stream.</p>
+<p>For the first time, the brothers beheld the foe of their
+line.&nbsp; He was seated on a clumsy black horse, and sheathed
+in full armour, and was apparently a large heavy man, whose
+powerful proportions were becoming unwieldy as he advanced in
+life.&nbsp; The dragon on his crest and shield would have made
+him known to the twins, even without the deadly curse that passed
+the Schneiderlein&rsquo;s lips at the sight.&nbsp; As the armed
+troop, out-numbering the Adlersteiners by about a dozen, and
+followed by a rabble with straw and pine brands, came forth on
+the meadow, the count halted and appeared to be giving
+orders.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The ruffian!&nbsp; He is calling them on!&nbsp;
+Now&mdash;&rdquo; began Ebbo.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, there is no sign yet that he is not peacefully on
+his journey to the camp,&rdquo; responded Moritz; and, chafing
+with impatient fury, the knight waited while Schlangenwald rode
+towards the old channel of the Braunwasser, and there, drawing
+his rein, and sitting like a statue in his stirrups, he could
+hear him shout: &ldquo;The lazy dogs are not astir yet.&nbsp; We
+will give them a r&eacute;veille.&nbsp; Forward with your
+brands!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Now!&rdquo; and Ebbo&rsquo;s cream-coloured horse leapt
+forth, as the whole band flashed into the sunshine from the
+greenwood covert.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who troubles the workmen on my land?&rdquo; shouted
+Ebbo.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who you may be I care not,&rdquo; replied the count,
+&ldquo;but when I find strangers unlicensed on my lands, I burn
+down their huts.&nbsp; On, fellows!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Back, fellows!&rdquo; called Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;Whoso
+touches a stick on Adlerstein ground shall suffer.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So!&rdquo; said the count, &ldquo;this is the
+burgher-bred, burgher-fed varlet, that calls himself of
+Adlerstein!&nbsp; Boy, thou had best be warned.&nbsp; Wert thou
+true-blooded, it were worth my while to maintain my rights
+against thee.&nbsp; Craven as thou art, not even with spirit to
+accept my feud, I would fain not have the trouble of sweeping
+thee from my path.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Herr Graf, as true Freiherr and belted knight, I defy
+thee!&nbsp; I proclaim my right to this ground, and whoso damages
+those I place there must do battle with me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thou wilt have it then,&rdquo; said the count, taking
+his heavy lance from his squire, closing his visor, and wheeling
+back his horse, so as to give space for his career.</p>
+<p>Ebbo did the like, while Friedel on one side, and Hierom von
+Schlangenwald on the other, kept their men in array, awaiting the
+issue of the strife between their leaders&mdash;the fire of
+seventeen against the force of fifty-six.</p>
+<p>They closed in full shock, with shivered lances and rearing,
+pawing horses, but without damage to either.&nbsp; Each drew his
+sword, and they were pressing together, when Heinz, seeing a
+Schlangenwalder aiming with his cross-bow, rode at him furiously,
+and the m&ecirc;l&eacute;e became general; shots were fired, not
+only from cross-bows, but from arquebuses, and in the throng
+Friedel lost sight of the main combat between his brother and the
+count.</p>
+<p>Suddenly however there was a crash, as of falling men and
+horses, with a shout of victory strangely mingled with a cry of
+agony, and both sides became aware that their leaders had
+fallen.&nbsp; Each party rushed to its fallen head.&nbsp; Friedel
+beheld Ebbo under his struggling horse, and an enemy dashing at
+his throat, and, flying to the rescue, he rode down the
+assailant, striking him with his sword; and, with the instinct of
+driving the foe as far as possible from his brother, he struck
+with a sort of frenzy, shouting fiercely to his men, and leaping
+over the dry bed of the river, rushing onward with an
+intoxication of ardour that would have seemed foreign to his
+gentle nature, but for the impetuous desire to protect his
+brother.&nbsp; Their leaders down, the enemy had no one to rally
+them, and, in spite of their superiority in number, gave way in
+confusion before the furious onset of Adlerstein.&nbsp; So soon,
+however, as Friedel perceived that he had forced the enemy far
+back from the scene of conflict, his anxiety for his brother
+returned, and, leaving the retainers to continue the pursuit, he
+turned his horse.&nbsp; There, on the green meadow, lay on the
+one hand Ebbo&rsquo;s cream-coloured charger, with his master
+under him, on the other the large figure of the count; and
+several other prostrate forms likewise struggled on the sand and
+pebbles of the strand, or on the turf.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ay,&rdquo; said the architect, who had turned with
+Friedel, &ldquo;&rsquo;twas a gallant feat, Sir Friedel, and I
+trust there is no great harm done.&nbsp; Were it the mere dint of
+the count&rsquo;s sword, your brother will be little the
+worse.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ebbo!&nbsp; Ebbo mine, look up!&rdquo; cried Friedel,
+leaping from his horse, and unclasping his brother&rsquo;s
+helmet.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Friedel!&rdquo; groaned a half-suffocated voice.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;O take away the horse.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>One or two of the artisans were at hand, and with their help
+the dying steed was disengaged from the rider, who could not
+restrain his moans, though Friedel held him in his arms, and
+endeavoured to move him as gently as possible.&nbsp; It was then
+seen that the deep gash from the count&rsquo;s sword in the chest
+was not the most serious injury, but that an arquebus ball had
+pierced his thigh, before burying itself in the body of his
+horse; and that the limb had been further crushed and wrenched by
+the animal&rsquo;s struggles.&nbsp; He was nearly unconscious,
+and gasped with anguish, but, after Moritz had bathed his face
+and moistened his lips, as he lay in his brother&rsquo;s arms, he
+looked up with clearer eyes, and said: &ldquo;Have I slain
+him?&nbsp; It was the shot, not he, that sent me down.&nbsp;
+Lives he?&nbsp; See&mdash;thou, Friedel&mdash;thou.&nbsp; Make
+him yield.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Transferring Ebbo to the arms of Schleiermacher, Friedel
+obeyed, and stepped towards the fallen foe.&nbsp; The wrongs of
+Adlerstein were indeed avenged, for the blood was welling fast
+from a deep thrust above the collar-bone, and the failing, feeble
+hand was wandering uncertainly among the clasps of the
+gorget.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Let me aid,&rdquo; said Friedel, kneeling down, and in
+his pity for the dying man omitting the summons to yield, he
+threw back the helmet, and beheld a grizzled head and stern hard
+features, so embrowned by weather and inflamed by intemperance,
+that even approaching death failed to blanch them.&nbsp; A scowl
+of malignant hate was in the eyes, and there was a thrill of
+angry wonder as they fell on the lad&rsquo;s face.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Thou again,&mdash;thou whelp!&nbsp; I thought at least I
+had made an end of thee,&rdquo; he muttered, unheard by Friedel,
+who, intent on the thought that had recurred to him with greater
+vividness than ever, was again filling Ebbo&rsquo;s helmet with
+water.&nbsp; He refreshed the dying man&rsquo;s face with it,
+held it to his lips, and said: &ldquo;Herr Graf, variance and
+strife are ended now.&nbsp; For heaven&rsquo;s sake, say where I
+may find my father!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So!&nbsp; Wouldst find him?&rdquo; replied
+Schlangenwald, fixing his look on the eager countenance of the
+youth, while his hand, with a dying man&rsquo;s nervous
+agitation, was fumbling at his belt.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I would bless you for ever, could I but free
+him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Know then,&rdquo; said the count, speaking very slowly,
+and still holding the young knight&rsquo;s gaze with a sort of
+intent fascination, by the stony glare of his light gray eyes,
+&ldquo;know that thy villain father is a Turkish slave, unless he
+be&mdash;as I hope&mdash;where his mongrel son may find
+him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Therewith came a flash, a report; Friedel leaped back,
+staggered, fell; Ebbo started to a sitting posture, with
+horrified eyes, and a loud shriek, calling on his brother; Moritz
+sprang to his feet, shouting, &ldquo;Shame! treason!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I call you to witness that I had not yielded,&rdquo;
+said the count.&nbsp; &ldquo;There&rsquo;s an end of the
+brood!&rdquo; and with a grim smile, he straightened his limbs,
+and closed his eyes as a dead man, ere the indignant artisans
+fell on him in savage vengeance.</p>
+<p>All this had passed like a flash of lightning, and Friedel had
+almost at the instant of his fall flung himself towards his
+brother, and raising himself on one hand, with the other clasped
+Ebbo&rsquo;s, saying, &ldquo;Fear not; it is nothing,&rdquo; and
+he was bending to take Ebbo&rsquo;s head again on his knee, when
+a gush of dark blood, from his left side, caused Moritz to
+exclaim, &ldquo;Ah!&nbsp; Sir Friedel, the traitor did his
+work!&nbsp; That is no slight hurt.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where?&nbsp; How?&nbsp; The ruffian!&rdquo; cried Ebbo,
+supporting himself on his elbow, so as to see his brother, who
+rather dreamily put his hand to his side, and, looking at the
+fresh blood that immediately dyed it, said, &ldquo;I do not feel
+it.&nbsp; This is more numb dulness than pain.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A bad sign that,&rdquo; said Moritz, apart to one of
+the workmen, with whom he held counsel how to carry back to the
+castle the two young knights, who remained on the bank, Ebbo
+partly extended on the ground, partly supported on the knee and
+arm of Friedel, who sat with his head drooping over him, their
+looks fixed on one another, as if conscious of nothing else on
+earth.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Herr Freiherr,&rdquo; said Moritz, presently,
+&ldquo;have you breath to wind your bugle to call the men back
+from the pursuit?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ebbo essayed, but was too faint, and Friedel, rousing himself
+from the stupor, took the horn from him, and made the mountain
+echoes ring again, but at the expense of a great effusion of
+blood.</p>
+<p>By this time, however, Heinz was riding back, and a moment his
+exultation changed to rage and despair, when he saw the condition
+of his young lords.&nbsp; Master Schleiermacher proposed to lay
+them on some of the planks prepared for the building, and carry
+them up the new road.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Methinks,&rdquo; said Friedel, &ldquo;that I could ride
+if I were lifted on horseback, and thus would our mother be less
+shocked.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well thought,&rdquo; said Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;Go on and
+cheer her.&nbsp; Show her thou canst keep the saddle, however it
+may be with me,&rdquo; he added, with a groan of anguish.</p>
+<p>Friedel made the sign of the cross over him.&nbsp; &ldquo;The
+holy cross keep us and her, Ebbo,&rdquo; he said, as he bent to
+assist in laying his brother on the boards, where a mantle had
+been spread; then kissed his brow, saying, &ldquo;We shall be
+together again soon.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ebbo was lifted on the shoulders of his bearers, and Friedel
+strove to rise, with the aid of Heinz, but sank back, unable to
+use his limbs; and Schleiermacher was the more concerned.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;It goes so with the backbone,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Sir Friedmund, you had best be carried.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, for my mother&rsquo;s sake!&nbsp; And I would fain
+be on my good steed&rsquo;s back once again!&rdquo; he
+entreated.&nbsp; And when with much difficulty he had been lifted
+to the back of his cream-colour, who stood as gently and
+patiently as if he understood the exigency of the moment, he sat
+upright, and waved his hand as he passed the litter, while Ebbo,
+on his side, signed to him to speed on and prepare their
+mother.&nbsp; Long, however, before the castle was reached, dizzy
+confusion and leaden helplessness, when no longer stimulated by
+his brother&rsquo;s presence, so grew on him that it was with
+much ado that Heinz could keep him in his saddle; but, when he
+saw his mother in the castle gateway, he again collected his
+forces, bade Heinz withdraw his supporting arm, and,
+straightening himself, waved a greeting to her, as he called
+cheerily; &ldquo;Victory, dear mother.&nbsp; Ebbo has overthrown
+the count, and you must not be grieved if it be at some cost of
+blood.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Alas, my son!&rdquo; was all Christina could say, for
+his effort at gaiety formed a ghastly contrast with the gray,
+livid hue that overspread his fair young face, his bloody armour,
+and damp disordered hair, and even his stiff unearthly smile.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, motherling,&rdquo; he added, as she came so near
+that he could put his arm round her neck, &ldquo;sorrow not, for
+Ebbo will need thee much.&nbsp; And, mother,&rdquo; as his face
+lighted up, &ldquo;there is joy coming to you.&nbsp; Only I would
+that I could have brought him.&nbsp; Mother, he died not under
+the Schlangenwald swords.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who?&nbsp; Not Ebbo?&rdquo; cried the bewildered
+mother.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Your own Eberhard, our father,&rdquo; said Friedel,
+raising her face to him with his hand, and adding, as he met a
+startled look, &ldquo;The cruel count owned it with his last
+breath.&nbsp; He is a Turkish slave, and surely heaven will give
+him back to comfort you, even though we may not work his
+freedom!&nbsp; O mother, I had so longed for it, but God be
+thanked that at least certainty was bought by my
+life.&rdquo;&nbsp; The last words were uttered almost
+unconsciously, and he had nearly fallen, as the excitement faded;
+but, as they were lifting him down, he bent once more and kissed
+the glossy neck of his horse.&nbsp; &ldquo;Ah! poor fellow, thou
+too wilt be lonely.&nbsp; May Ebbo yet ride thee!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The mother had no time for grief.&nbsp; Alas!&nbsp; She might
+have full time for that by and by!&nbsp; The one wish of the
+twins was to be together, and presently both were laid on the
+great bed in the upper chamber, Ebbo in a swoon from the pain of
+the transport, and Friedel lying so as to meet the first look of
+recovery.&nbsp; And, after Ebbo&rsquo;s eyes had re-opened, they
+watched one another in silence for a short space, till Ebbo said:
+&ldquo;Is that the hue of death on thy face, brother?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I well believe so,&rdquo; said Friedel.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ever together,&rdquo; said Ebbo, holding his
+hand.&nbsp; &ldquo;But alas!&nbsp; My mother!&nbsp; Would I had
+never sent thee to the traitor.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah!&nbsp; So comes her comfort,&rdquo; said
+Friedel.&nbsp; &ldquo;Heard you not?&nbsp; He owned that my
+father was among the Turks.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And I,&rdquo; cried Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;I have withheld
+thee!&nbsp; O Friedel, had I listened to thee, thou hadst not
+been in this fatal broil!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, ever together,&rdquo; repeated Friedel.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Through Ulm merchants will my mother be able to ransom
+him.&nbsp; I know she will, so oft have I dreamt of his
+return.&nbsp; Then, mother, you will give him our duteous
+greetings;&rdquo; and he smiled again.</p>
+<p>Like one in a dream Christina returned his smile, because she
+saw he wished it, just as the moment before she had been trying
+to staunch his wound.</p>
+<p>It was plain that the injuries, except Ebbo&rsquo;s sword-cut,
+were far beyond her skill, and she could only endeavour to check
+the bleeding till better aid could be obtained from Ulm.&nbsp;
+Thither Moritz Schleiermacher had already sent, and he assured
+her that he was far from despairing of the elder baron, but she
+derived little hope from his words, for gunshot wounds were then
+so ill understood as generally to prove fatal.</p>
+<p>Moreover, there was an undefined impression that the two lives
+must end in the same hour, even as they had begun.&nbsp; Indeed,
+Ebbo was suffering so terribly, and was so much spent with pain
+and loss of blood, that he seemed sinking much faster than
+Friedel, whose wound bled less freely, and who only seemed
+benumbed and torpid, except when he roused himself to speak, or
+was distressed by the writhings and moans which, however, for his
+sake, Ebbo restrained as much as he could.</p>
+<p>To be together seemed an all-sufficient consolation, and, when
+the chaplain came sorrowfully to give them the last rites of the
+Church, Ebbo implored him to pray that he might not be left
+behind long in purgatory.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Friedel,&rdquo; he said, clasping his brother&rsquo;s
+hand, &ldquo;is even like the holy Sebastian or Maurice; but
+I&mdash;I was never such as he.&nbsp; O father, will it be my
+penance to be left alone when he is in paradise?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is that?&rdquo; said Friedel, partially roused by
+the sound of his name, and the involuntary pressure of his
+hand.&nbsp; &ldquo;Nay, Ebbo; one repentance, one cross, one
+hope,&rdquo; and he relapsed into a doze, while Ebbo murmured
+over a broken, brief confession&mdash;exhausting by its vehemence
+of self-accusation for his proud spirit, his wilful neglect of
+his lost father, his hot contempt of prudent counsel.</p>
+<p>Then, when the priest came round to Friedel&rsquo;s side, and
+the boy was wakened to make his shrift, the words were contrite
+and humble, but calm and full of trust.&nbsp; They were like two
+of their own mountain streams, the waters almost equally
+undefiled by external stain&mdash;yet one struggling, agitated,
+whirling giddily round; the other still, transparent, and the
+light of heaven smiling in its clearness.</p>
+<p>The farewell greetings of the Church on earth breathed soft
+and sweet in their loftiness, and Friedel, though lying
+motionless, and with closed eyes, never failed in the murmured
+response, whether fully conscious or not, while his brother only
+attended by fits and starts, and was evidently often in too much
+pain to know what was passing.</p>
+<p>Help was nearer than had been hoped.&nbsp; The summons
+despatched the night before had been responded to by the vintners
+and mercers; their train bands had set forth, and their captain,
+a cautious man, never rode into the way of blows without his
+surgeon at hand.&nbsp; And so it came to pass that, before the
+sun was low on that long and grievous day, Doctor Johannes
+Butteman was led into the upper chamber, where the mother looked
+up to him with a kind of hopeless gratitude on her face, which
+was nearly as white as those of her sons.&nbsp; The doctor soon
+saw that Friedel was past human aid; but, when he declared that
+there was fair hope for the other youth, Friedel, whose torpor
+had been dispelled by the examination, looked up with his beaming
+smile, saying, &ldquo;There, motherling.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The doctor then declared that he could not deal with the
+Baron&rsquo;s wound unless he were the sole occupant of the bed,
+and this sentence brought the first cloud of grief or dread to
+Friedel&rsquo;s brow, but only for a moment.&nbsp; He looked at
+his brother, who had again fainted at the first touch of his
+wounded limb, and said, &ldquo;It is well.&nbsp; Tell the dear
+Ebbo that I cannot help it if after all I go to the praying, and
+leave him the fighting.&nbsp; Dear, dear Ebbo!&nbsp; One day
+together again and for ever!&nbsp; I leave thee for thine own
+sake.&rdquo;&nbsp; With much effort he signed the cross again on
+his brother&rsquo;s brow, and kissed it long and fervently.&nbsp;
+Then, as all stood round, reluctant to effect this severance, or
+disturb one on whom death was visibly fast approaching, he
+struggled up on his elbow, and held out the other hand, saying,
+&ldquo;Take me now, Heinz, ere Ebbo revive to be grieved.&nbsp;
+The last sacrifice,&rdquo; he further whispered, whilst almost
+giving himself to Heinz and Moritz to be carried to his own bed
+in the turret chamber.</p>
+<p>There, even as they laid him down, began what seemed to be the
+mortal agony, and, though he was scarcely sensible, his mother
+felt that her prime call was to him, while his brother was in
+other hands.&nbsp; Perhaps it was well for her.&nbsp; Surgical
+practice was rough, and wounds made by fire-arms were thought to
+have imbibed a poison that made treatment be supposed efficacious
+in proportion to the pain inflicted.&nbsp; When Ebbo was recalled
+by the torture to see no white reflection of his own face on the
+pillow beside him, and to feel in vain for the grasp of the cold
+damp hand, a delirious frenzy seized him, and his struggles were
+frustrating the doctor&rsquo;s attempts, when a low soft sweet
+song stole through the open door.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Friedel!&rdquo; he murmured, and held his breath to
+listen.&nbsp; All through the declining day did the gentle sound
+continue; now of grand chants or hymns caught from the cathedral
+choir, now of songs of chivalry or saintly legend so often sung
+over the evening fire; the one flowing into the other in the
+wandering of failing powers, but never failing in the tender
+sweetness that had distinguished Friedel through life.&nbsp; And,
+whenever that voice was heard, let them do to him what they
+would, Ebbo was still absorbed in intense listening so as not to
+lose a note, and lulled almost out of sense of suffering by that
+swan-like music.&nbsp; If his attendants made such noise as to
+break in on it, or if it ceased for a moment, the anguish
+returned, but was charmed away by the weakest, faintest
+resumption of the song.&nbsp; Probably Friedel knew not, with any
+earthly sense, what he was doing, but to the very last he was
+serving his twin brother as none other could have aided him in
+his need.</p>
+<p>The September sun had set, twilight was coming on, the doctor
+had worked his stern will, and Ebbo, quivering in every fibre,
+lay spent on his pillow, when his mother glided in, and took her
+seat near him, though where she hoped he would not notice her
+presence.&nbsp; But he raised his eyelids, and said, &ldquo;He is
+not singing now.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Singing indeed, but where we cannot hear him,&rdquo;
+she answered.&nbsp; &ldquo;&lsquo;Whiter than the snow, clearer
+than the ice-cave, more solemn than the choir.&nbsp; They will
+come at last.&rsquo;&nbsp; That was what he said, even as he
+entered there.&rdquo;&nbsp; And the low dove-like tone and tender
+calm face continued upon Ebbo the spell that the chant had
+left.&nbsp; He dozed as though still lulled by its echo.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XX<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE WOUNDED EAGLE</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> star and the spark in the
+stubble!&nbsp; Often did the presage of her dream occur to
+Christina, and assist in sustaining her hopes during the days
+that Ebbo&rsquo;s life hung in the balance, and he himself had
+hardly consciousness to realize either his brother&rsquo;s death
+or his own state, save as much as was shown by the words,
+&ldquo;Let him not be taken away, mother; let him wait for
+me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Friedmund did wait, in his coffin before the altar in the
+castle chapel, covered with a pall of blue velvet, and great
+white cross, mournfully sent by Hausfrau Johanna; his sword,
+shield, helmet, and spurs laid on it, and wax tapers burning at
+the head and feet.&nbsp; And, when Christina could leave the one
+son on his couch of suffering, it was to kneel beside the other
+son on his narrow bed of rest, and recall, like a breath of
+solace, the heavenly loveliness and peace that rested on his
+features when she had taken her last long look at them.</p>
+<p>Moritz Schleiermacher assisted at Sir Friedmund&rsquo;s first
+solemn requiem, and then made a journey to Ulm, whence he
+returned to find the Baron&rsquo;s danger so much abated that he
+ventured on begging for an interview with the lady, in which he
+explained his purpose of repairing at once to the imperial camp,
+taking with him a letter from the guilds concerned in the bridge,
+and using his personal influence with Maximilian to obtain not
+only pardon for the combat, but authoritative sanction to the
+erection.&nbsp; Dankwart of Schlangenwald, the Teutonic knight,
+and only heir of old Wolfgang, was supposed to be with the
+Emperor, and it might be possible to come to terms with him,
+since his breeding in the Prussian commanderies had kept him
+aloof from the feuds of his father and brother.&nbsp; This
+mournful fight had to a certain extent equalized the injuries on
+either side, since the man whom Friedel had cut down was Hierom,
+one of the few remaining scions of Schlangenwald, and there was
+thus no dishonour in trying to close the deadly feud, and coming
+to an amicable arrangement about the Debateable Strand, the cause
+of so much bloodshed.&nbsp; What was now wanted was Freiherr
+Eberhard&rsquo;s signature to the letter to the Emperor, and his
+authority for making terms with the new count; and haste was
+needed, lest the Markgraf of Wurtemburg should represent the
+affray in the light of an outrage against a member of the
+League.</p>
+<p>Christina saw the necessity, and undertook if possible to
+obtain her son&rsquo;s signature, but, at the first mention of
+Master Moritz and the bridge, Ebbo turned away his head, groaned,
+and begged to hear no more of either.&nbsp; He thought of his
+bold declaration that the bridge must be built, even at the cost
+of blood!&nbsp; Little did he then guess of whose blood!&nbsp;
+And in his bitterness of spirit he felt a jealousy of that
+influence of Schleiermacher, which had of late come between him
+and his brother.&nbsp; He hated the very name, he said, and hid
+his face with a shudder.&nbsp; He hoped the torrent would sweep
+away every fragment of the bridge.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, Ebbo mine, wherefore wish ill to a good work that
+our blessed one loved?&nbsp; Listen, and let me tell you my dream
+for making yonder strand a peaceful memorial of our peaceful
+boy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To honour Friedel?&rdquo; and he gazed on her with
+something like interest in his eyes.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, Ebbo, and as he would best brook honour.&nbsp; Let
+us seek for ever to end the rival claims to yon piece of meadow
+by praying this knight of a religious order, the new count, to
+unite with us in building there&mdash;or as near as may be
+safe&mdash;a church of holy peace, and a cell for a priest, who
+may watch over the bridge ward, and offer the holy sacrifice for
+the departed of either house.&nbsp; There will we place our
+gentle Friedel to be the first to guard the peace of the ford,
+and there will we sleep ourselves when our time shall come, and
+so may the cruel feud of many generations be slaked for
+ever.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In his blood!&rdquo; sighed Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;Ah!
+would that it had been mine, mother.&nbsp; It is well, as well as
+anything can be again.&nbsp; So shall the spot where he fell be
+made sacred, and fenced from rude feet, and we shall see his fair
+effigy keeping his armed watch there.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And Christina was thankful to see his look of gratification,
+sad though it was.&nbsp; She sat down near his bed, and began to
+write a letter in their joint names to Graf Dankwart von
+Schlangenwald, proposing that thus, after the even balance of the
+wrongs of the two houses, their mutual hostility might be laid to
+rest for ever by the consecration of the cause of their long
+contention.&nbsp; It was a stiff and formal letter, full of the
+set pious formularies of the age, scarcely revealing the deep
+heart-feeling within; but it was to the purpose, and Ebbo, after
+hearing it read, heartily approved, and consented to sign both it
+and those that Schleiermacher had brought.&nbsp; Christina held
+the scroll, and placed the pen in the fingers that had lately so
+easily wielded the heavy sword, but now felt it a far greater
+effort to guide the slender quill.</p>
+<p>Moritz Schleiermacher went his way in search of the King of
+the Romans, far off in Carinthia.&nbsp; A full reply could not be
+expected till the campaign was over, and all that was known for
+some time was through a messenger sent back to Ulm by
+Schleiermacher with the intelligence that Maximilian would
+examine into the matter after his return, and that Count Dankwart
+would reply when he should come to perform his father&rsquo;s
+obsequies after the army was dispersed.&nbsp; There was also a
+letter of kind though courtly condolence from Kasimir of
+Wildschloss, much grieving for gallant young Sir Friedmund,
+proffering all the advocacy he could give the cause of
+Adlerstein, and covertly proffering the protection that she and
+her remaining son might now be more disposed to accept.&nbsp;
+Christina suppressed this letter, knowing it would only pain and
+irritate Ebbo, and that she had her answer ready.&nbsp; Indeed,
+in her grief for one son, and her anxiety for the other, perhaps
+it was this letter that first made her fully realize the drift of
+those earnest words of Friedel&rsquo;s respecting his father.</p>
+<p>Meantime the mother and son were alone together, with much of
+suffering and of sorrow, yet with a certain tender comfort in the
+being all in all to one another, with none to intermeddle with
+their mutual love and grief.&nbsp; It was to Christina as if
+something of Friedel&rsquo;s sweetness had passed to his brother
+in his patient helplessness, and that, while thus fully engrossed
+with him, she had both her sons in one.&nbsp; Nay, in spite of
+all the pain, grief, and weariness, these were times when both
+dreaded any change, and the full recovery, when not only would
+the loss of Friedel be every moment freshly brought home to his
+brother, but when Ebbo would go in quest of his father.</p>
+<p>For on this the young Baron had fixed his mind as a sacred
+duty, from the moment he had seen that life was to be his
+lot.&nbsp; He looked on his neglect of indications of the
+possibility of his father&rsquo;s life in the light of a sin that
+had led to all his disasters, and not only regarded the intended
+search as a token of repentance, but as a charge bequeathed to
+him by his less selfish brother.&nbsp; He seldom spoke of his
+intention, but his mother was perfectly aware of it, and never
+thought of it without such an agony of foreboding dread as
+eclipsed all the hope that lay beyond.&nbsp; She could only turn
+away her mind from the thought, and be thankful for what was
+still her own from day to day.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Art weary, my son?&rdquo; asked Christina one October
+afternoon, as Ebbo lay on his bed, languidly turning the pages of
+a noble folio of the Legends of the Saints that Master Gottfried
+had sent for his amusement.&nbsp; It was such a book as fixed the
+ardour a few years later of the wounded Navarrese knight, Inigo
+de Loyola, but Ebbo handled it as if each page were lead.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Only thinking how Friedel would have glowed towards
+these as his own kinsmen,&rdquo; said Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;Then
+should I have cared to read of them!&rdquo; and he gave a long
+sigh.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Let me take away the book,&rdquo; she said.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Thou hast read long, and it is dark.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So dark that there must surely be a
+snow-cloud.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Snow is falling in the large flakes that our Friedel
+used to call winter-butterflies.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Butterflies that will swarm and shut us in from the
+weary world,&rdquo; said Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;And alack! when they
+go, what a turmoil it will be!&nbsp; Councils in the Rathhaus,
+appeals to the League, wranglings with the Markgraf, wise saws,
+overweening speeches, all alike dull and dead.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It will scarce be so when strength and spirit have
+returned, mine Ebbo.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Never can life be more to me than the way to
+him,&rdquo; said the lonely boy; &ldquo;and I&mdash;never like
+him&mdash;shall miss the road without him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>While he thus spoke in the listless dejection of sorrow and
+weakness, Hatto&rsquo;s aged step was on the stair.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Gracious lady,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;here is a huntsman
+bewildered in the hills, who has been asking shelter from the
+storm that is drifting up.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;See to his entertainment, then, Hatto,&rdquo; said the
+lady.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My lady&mdash;Sir Baron,&rdquo; added Hatto, &ldquo;I
+had not come up but that this guest seems scarce gear for us
+below.&nbsp; He is none of the foresters of our tract.&nbsp; His
+hair is perfumed, his shirt is fine holland, his buff suit is of
+softest skin, his baldric has a jewelled clasp, and his
+arblast!&nbsp; It would do my lord baron&rsquo;s heart good only
+to cast eyes on the perfect make of that arblast!&nbsp; He has a
+lordly tread, and a stately presence, and, though he has a free
+tongue, and made friends with us as he dried his garments, he
+asked after my lord like his equal.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;O mother, must you play the chatelaine?&rdquo; asked
+Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;Who can the fellow be?&nbsp; Why did none ever
+so come when they would have been more welcome?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Welcomed must he be,&rdquo; said Christina, rising,
+&ldquo;and thy state shall be my excuse for not tarrying longer
+with him than may be needful.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Yet, though shrinking from a stranger&rsquo;s face, she was
+not without hope that the variety might wholesomely rouse her son
+from his depression, and in effect Ebbo, when left with Hatto,
+minutely questioned him on the appearance of the stranger, and
+watched, with much curiosity, for his mother&rsquo;s return.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ebbo mine,&rdquo; she said, entering, after a long
+interval, &ldquo;the knight asks to see thee either after supper,
+or to-morrow morn.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then a knight he is?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yea, truly, a knight truly in every look and gesture,
+bearing his head like the leading stag of the herd, and yet right
+gracious.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Gracious to you, mother, in your own hall?&rdquo; cried
+Ebbo, almost fiercely.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah! jealous champion, thou couldst not take
+offence!&nbsp; It was the manner of one free and courteous to
+every one, and yet with an inherent loftiness that pervades
+all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Gives he no name?&rdquo; said Ebbo.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He calls himself Ritter Theurdank, of the suite of the
+late Kaisar, but I should deem him wont rather to lead than to
+follow.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Theurdank,&rdquo; repeated Eberhard, &ldquo;I know no
+such name!&nbsp; So, motherling, are you going to sup?&nbsp; I
+shall not sleep till I have seen him!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hold, dear son.&rdquo;&nbsp; She leant over him and
+spoke low.&nbsp; &ldquo;See him thou must, but let me first
+station Heinz and Koppel at the door with halberts, not within
+earshot, but thou art so entirely defenceless.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She had the pleasure of seeing him laugh.&nbsp; &ldquo;Less
+defenceless than when the kinsman of Wildschloss here visited us,
+mother?&nbsp; I see for whom thou takest him, but let it be so; a
+spiritual knight would scarce wreak his vengeance on a wounded
+man in his bed.&nbsp; I will not have him insulted with
+precautions.&nbsp; If he has freely risked himself in my hands, I
+will as freely risk myself in his.&nbsp; Moreover, I thought he
+had won thy heart.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Reigned over it, rather,&rdquo; said Christina.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;It is but the disguise that I suspect and mistrust.&nbsp;
+Bid me not leave thee alone with him, my son.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, dear mother,&rdquo; said Ebbo, &ldquo;the matters
+on which he is like to speak will brook no presence save our own,
+and even that will be hard enough to bear.&nbsp; So prop me more
+upright!&nbsp; So!&nbsp; And comb out these locks somewhat
+smoother.&nbsp; Thanks, mother.&nbsp; Now can he see whether he
+will choose Eberhard of Adlerstein for friend or foe.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>By the time supper was ended, the only light in the upper room
+came from the flickering flames of the fire of pine knots on the
+hearth.&nbsp; It glanced on the pale features and dark sad eyes
+of the young Baron, sad in spite of the eager look of scrutiny
+that he turned on the figure that entered at the door, and
+approached so quickly that the partial light only served to show
+the gloss of long fair hair, the glint of a jewelled belt, and
+the outline of a tall, well-knit, agile frame.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Welcome, Herr Ritter,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;I am sorry
+we have been unable to give you a fitter reception.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No host could be more fully excused than you,&rdquo;
+said the stranger, and Ebbo started at his voice.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+fear you have suffered much, and still have much to
+suffer.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My sword wound is healing fast,&rdquo; said Ebbo;
+&ldquo;it is the shot in my broken thigh that is so tedious and
+painful.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And I dare be sworn the leeches made it worse.&nbsp; I
+have hated all leeches ever since they kept me three days a
+prisoner in a &rsquo;pothecary&rsquo;s shop stinking with
+drugs.&nbsp; Why, I have cured myself with one pitcher of water
+of a raging fever, in their very despite!&nbsp; How did they
+serve thee, my poor boy?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They poured hot oil into the wound to remove the venom
+of the lead,&rdquo; said Ebbo.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Had it been my case the lead should have been in their
+own brains first, though that were scarce needed, the
+heavy-witted Hans Sausages.&nbsp; Why should there be more poison
+in lead than in steel?&nbsp; I have asked all my surgeons that
+question, nor ever had a reasonable answer.&nbsp; Greater havoc
+of warriors do they make than ever with the arquebus&mdash;ay,
+even when every lanzknecht bears one.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Alack!&rdquo; Ebbo could not help exclaiming,
+&ldquo;where will be room for chivalry?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Talk not old world nonsense,&rdquo; said Theurdank;
+&ldquo;chivalry is in the heart, not in the weapon.&nbsp; A youth
+beforehand enough with the world to be building bridges should
+know that, when all our troops are provided with such an arm,
+then will their platoons in serried ranks be as a solid wall
+breathing fire, and as impregnable as the lines of English
+archers with long bows, or the phalanx of Macedon.&nbsp; And,
+when each man bears a pistol instead of the misericorde, his life
+will be far more his own.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ebbo&rsquo;s face was in full light, and his visitor marked
+his contracted brow and trembling lip.&nbsp; &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he
+said, &ldquo;thou hast had foul experience of these
+weapons.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not mine own hurt,&rdquo; said Ebbo; &ldquo;that was
+but fair chance of war.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I understand,&rdquo; said the knight; &ldquo;it was the
+shot that severed the goodly bond that was so fair to see.&nbsp;
+Young man, none has grieved more truly than King Max.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And well he may,&rdquo; said Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;He has
+not lost merely one of his best servants, but all the better half
+of another.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There is still stuff enough left to make that
+<i>one</i> well worth having,&rdquo; said Theurdank, kindly
+grasping his hand, &ldquo;though I would it were more
+substantial!&nbsp; How didst get old Wolfgang down, boy?&nbsp; He
+must have been a tough morsel for slight bones like these, even
+when better covered than now.&nbsp; Come, tell me all.&nbsp; I
+promised the Markgraf of Wurtemburg to look into the matter when
+I came to be guest at St. Ruprecht&rsquo;s cloister, and I have
+some small interest too with King Max.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>His kindliness and sympathy were more effectual with Ebbo than
+the desire to represent his case favourably, for he was still too
+wretched to care for policy; but he answered Theurdank&rsquo;s
+questions readily, and explained how the idea of the bridge had
+originated in the vigil beside the broken waggons.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I hope,&rdquo; said Theurdank, &ldquo;the merchants
+made up thy share?&nbsp; These overthrown goods are a seignorial
+right of one or other of you lords of the bank.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;True, Herr Ritter; but we deemed it unknightly to
+snatch at what travellers lost by misfortune.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Freiherr Eberhard, take my word for it, while thou thus
+holdest, all the arquebuses yet to be cut out of the Black Forest
+will not mar thy chivalry.&nbsp; Where didst get these ways of
+thinking?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My brother was a very St. Sebastian!&nbsp; My
+mother&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah! her sweet wise face would have shown it, even had
+not poor Kasimir of Adlerstein raved of her.&nbsp; Ah! lad, thou
+hast crossed a case of true love there!&nbsp; Canst not brook
+even such a gallant stepfather?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I may not,&rdquo; said Ebbo, with spirit; &ldquo;for
+with his last breath Schlangenwald owned that my own father died
+not at the hostel, but may now be alive as a Turkish
+slave.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The devil!&rdquo; burst out Theurdank.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Well! that might have been a pretty mess!&nbsp; A Turkish
+slave, saidst thou!&nbsp; What year chanced all this
+matter&mdash;thy grandfather&rsquo;s murder and all the
+rest?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The year before my birth,&rdquo; said Ebbo.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;It was in the September of 1475.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ha!&rdquo; muttered Theurdank, musing to himself;
+&ldquo;that was the year the dotard Schenk got his overthrow at
+the fight of Rain on Sare from the Moslem.&nbsp; Some composition
+was made by them, and old Wolfgang was not unlikely to have been
+the go-between.&nbsp; So!&nbsp; Say on, young knight,&rdquo; he
+added, &ldquo;let us to the matter in hand.&nbsp; How rose the
+strife that kept back two troops from our&mdash;from the banner
+of the empire?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ebbo proceeded with the narration, and concluded it just as
+the bell now belonging to the chapel began to toll for compline,
+and Theurdank prepared to obey its summons, first, however,
+asking if he should send any one to the patient.&nbsp; Ebbo
+thanked him, but said he needed no one till his mother should
+come after prayers.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, I told thee I had some leechcraft.&nbsp; Thou art
+weary, and must rest more entirely;&rdquo;&mdash;and, giving him
+little choice, Theurdank supported him with one arm while
+removing the pillows that propped him, then laid him tenderly
+down, saying, &ldquo;Good night, and the saints bless thee, brave
+young knight.&nbsp; Sleep well, and recover in spite of the
+leeches.&nbsp; I cannot afford to lose both of you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ebbo strove to follow mentally the services that were being
+performed in the chapel, and whose &ldquo;Amens&rdquo; and louder
+notes pealed up to him, devoid of the clear young tones that had
+sung their last here below, but swelled by grand bass notes that
+as much distracted Ebbo&rsquo;s attention as the memory of his
+guest&rsquo;s conversation; and he impatiently awaited his
+mother&rsquo;s arrival.</p>
+<p>At length, lamp in hand, she appeared with tears shining in
+her eyes, and bending over him said,</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He hath done honour to our blessed one, my Ebbo; he
+knelt by him, and crossed him with holy water, and when he led me
+from the chapel he told me any mother in Germany might envy me my
+two sons even now.&nbsp; Thou must love him now, Ebbo.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Love him as one loves one&rsquo;s loftiest
+model,&rdquo; said Ebbo&mdash;&ldquo;value the old castle the
+more for sheltering him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hath he made himself known to thee?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not openly, but there is only one that he can
+be.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Christina smiled, thankful that the work of pardon and
+reconciliation had been thus softened by the personal qualities
+of the enemy, whose conduct in the chapel had deeply moved
+her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then all will be well, blessedly well,&rdquo; she
+said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So I trust,&rdquo; said Ebbo, &ldquo;but the bell broke
+our converse, and he laid me down as tenderly as&mdash;O mother,
+if a father&rsquo;s kindness be like his, I have truly somewhat
+to regain.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Knew he aught of the fell bargain?&rdquo; whispered
+Christina.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not he, of course, save that it was a year of Turkish
+inroads.&nbsp; He will speak more perchance to-morrow.&nbsp;
+Mother, not a word to any one, nor let us betray our recognition
+unless it be his pleasure to make himself known.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Certainly not,&rdquo; said Christina, remembering the
+danger that the household might revenge Friedel&rsquo;s death if
+they knew the foe to be in their power.&nbsp; Knowing as she did
+that Ebbo&rsquo;s admiration was apt to be enthusiastic, and
+might now be rendered the more fervent by fever and solitude, she
+was still at a loss to understand his dazzled, fascinated
+state.</p>
+<p>When Heinz entered, bringing the castle key, which was always
+laid under the Baron&rsquo;s pillow, Ebbo made a movement with
+his hand that surprised them both, as if to send it
+elsewhere&mdash;then muttered, &ldquo;No, no, not till he reveals
+himself,&rdquo; and asked, &ldquo;Where sleeps the
+guest?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In the grandmother&rsquo;s room, which we fitted for a
+guest-chamber, little thinking who our first would be,&rdquo;
+said his mother.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Never fear, lady; we will have a care to him,&rdquo;
+said Heinz, somewhat grimly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, have a care,&rdquo; said Ebbo, wearily; &ldquo;and
+take care all due honour is shown to him!&nbsp; Good night,
+Heinz.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Gracious lady,&rdquo; said Heinz, when by a sign he had
+intimated to her his desire of speaking with her unobserved by
+the Baron, &ldquo;never fear; I know who the fellow is as well as
+you do.&nbsp; I shall be at the foot of the stairs, and woe to
+whoever tries to step up them past me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There is no reason to apprehend treason, Heinz, yet to
+be on our guard can do no harm.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, lady, I could look to the gear for the oubliette
+if you would speak the word.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;For heaven&rsquo;s sake, no, Heinz.&nbsp; This man has
+come hither trusting to our honour, and you could not do your
+lord a greater wrong, nor one that he could less pardon, than by
+any attempt on our guest.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Would that he had never eaten our bread!&rdquo;
+muttered Heinz.&nbsp; &ldquo;Vipers be they all, and who knows
+what may come next?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Watch, watch, Heinz; that is all,&rdquo; implored
+Christina, &ldquo;and, above all, not a word to any one
+else.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And Christina dismissed the man-at-arms gruff and sullen, and
+herself retired ill at ease between fears of, and for, the
+unwelcome guest whose strange powers of fascination had rendered
+her, in his absence, doubly distrustful.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXI<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">RITTER THEURDANK</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> snow fell all night without
+ceasing, and was still falling on the morrow, when the guest
+explained his desire of paying a short visit to the young Baron,
+and then taking his departure.&nbsp; Christina would gladly have
+been quit of him, but she felt bound to remonstrate, for their
+mountain was absolutely impassable during a fall of snow, above
+all when accompanied by wind, since the drifts concealed fearful
+abysses, and the shifting masses insured destruction to the
+unwary wayfarer; nay, natives themselves had perished between the
+hamlet and the castle.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not the hardiest cragsman, not my son himself,&rdquo;
+she said, &ldquo;could venture on such a morning to guide you
+to&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Whither, gracious dame?&rdquo; asked Theurdank, half
+smiling.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, sir, I would not utter what you would not make
+known.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You know me then?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Surely, sir, for our noble foe, whose generous trust in
+our honour must win my son&rsquo;s heart.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So!&rdquo; he said, with a peculiar smile,
+&ldquo;Theurdank&mdash;Dankwart&mdash;I see!&nbsp; May I ask if
+your son likewise smelt out the Schlangenwald?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Verily, Sir Count, my Ebbo is not easily
+deceived.&nbsp; He said our guest could be but one man in all the
+empire.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Theurdank smiled again, saying, &ldquo;Then, lady, you shudder
+not at a man whose kin and yours have shed so much of one
+another&rsquo;s blood?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, ghostly knight, I regard you as no more stained
+therewith than are my sons by the deeds of their
+grandfather.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If there were more like you, lady,&rdquo; returned
+Theurdank, &ldquo;deadly feuds would soon be starved out.&nbsp;
+May I to your son?&nbsp; I have more to say to him, and I would
+fain hear his views of the storm.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Christina could not be quite at ease with Theurdank in her
+son&rsquo;s room, but she had no choice, and she knew that Heinz
+was watching on the turret stair, out of hearing indeed, but as
+ready to spring as a cat who sees her young ones in the hand of a
+child that she only half trusts.</p>
+<p>Ebbo lay eagerly watching for his visitor, who greeted him
+with the same almost paternal kindness he had evinced the night
+before, but consulted him upon the way from the castle.&nbsp;
+Ebbo confirmed his mother&rsquo;s opinion that the path was
+impracticable so long as the snow fell, and the wind tossed it in
+wild drifts.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We have been caught in snow,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and
+hard work have we had to get home!&nbsp; Once indeed, after a
+bear hunt, we fully thought the castle stood before us, and lo!
+it was all a cruel snow mist in that mocking shape.&nbsp; I was
+even about to climb our last Eagle&rsquo;s Step, as I thought,
+when behold, it proved to be the very brink of the
+abyss.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah! these ravines are well-nigh as bad as those of the
+Inn.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve known what it was to be caught on the ledge
+of a precipice by a sharp wind, changing its course,
+mark&rsquo;st thou, so swiftly that it verily tore my hold from
+the rock, and had well-nigh swept me into a chasm of mighty
+depth.&nbsp; There was nothing for it but to make the best spring
+I might towards the crag on the other side, and grip for my life
+at my alpenstock, which by Our Lady&rsquo;s grace was firmly
+planted, and I held on till I got breath again, and felt for my
+footing on the ice-glazed rock.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Eberhard with a long breath, after
+having listened with a hunter&rsquo;s keen interest to this
+hair&rsquo;s-breadth escape, &ldquo;it sounds like a gust of my
+mountain air thus let in on me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Truly it is dismal work for a lusty hunter to lie
+here,&rdquo; said Theurdank, &ldquo;but soon shalt thou take thy
+crags again in full vigour, I hope.&nbsp; How call&rsquo;st thou
+the deep gray lonely pool under a steep frowning crag sharpened
+well-nigh to a spear point, that I passed yester
+afternoon?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The Ptarmigan&rsquo;s Mere, the Red Eyrie,&rdquo;
+murmured Ebbo, scarcely able to utter the words as he thought of
+Friedel&rsquo;s delight in the pool, his exploit at the eyrie,
+and the gay bargain made in the streets of Ulm, that he should
+show the scaler of the Dom steeple the way to the eagle&rsquo;s
+nest.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I remember,&rdquo; said his guest gravely, coming to
+his side.&nbsp; &ldquo;Ah, boy! thy brother&rsquo;s flight has
+been higher yet.&nbsp; Weep freely; fear me not.&nbsp; Do I not
+know what it is, when those who were over-good for earth have
+found their eagle&rsquo;s wings, and left us here?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ebbo gazed up through his tears into the noble, mournful face
+that was bent kindly over him.&nbsp; &ldquo;I will not seek to
+comfort thee by counselling thee to forget,&rdquo; said
+Theurdank.&nbsp; &ldquo;I was scarce thine elder when my life was
+thus rent asunder, and to hoar hairs, nay, to the grave itself,
+will she be my glory and my sorrow.&nbsp; Never owned I brother,
+but I trow ye two were one in no common sort.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Such brothers as we saw at Ulm were little like
+us,&rdquo; returned Ebbo, from the bottom of his heart.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;We were knit together so that all will begin with me as if
+it were the left hand remaining alone to do it!&nbsp; I am glad
+that my old life may not even in shadow be renewed till after I
+have gone in quest of my father.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Be not over hasty in that quest,&rdquo; said the guest,
+&ldquo;or the infidels may chance to gain two Freiherren instead
+of one.&nbsp; Hast any designs?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ebbo explained that he thought of making his way to Genoa to
+consult the merchant Gian Battista dei Battiste, whose
+description of the captive German noble had so strongly impressed
+Friedel.&nbsp; Ebbo knew the difference between Turks and Moors,
+but Friedel&rsquo;s impulse guided him, and he further thought
+that at Genoa he should learn the way to deal with either variety
+of infidel.&nbsp; Theurdank thought this a prudent course, since
+the Genoese had dealings both at Tripoli and Constantinople; and,
+moreover, the transfer was not impossible, since the two
+different hordes of Moslems trafficked among themselves when
+either had made an unusually successful razzia.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Shame,&rdquo; he broke out, &ldquo;that these Eastern
+locusts, these ravening hounds, should prey unmolested on the
+fairest lands of the earth, and our German nobles lie here like
+swine, grunting and squealing over the plunder they grub up from
+one another, deaf to any summons from heaven or earth!&nbsp; Did
+not Heaven&rsquo;s own voice speak in thunder this last year,
+even in November, hurling the mighty thunderbolt of Alsace, an
+ell long, weighing two hundred and fifteen pounds?&nbsp; Did I
+not cause it to be hung up in the church of Encisheim, as a
+witness and warning of the plagues that hang over us?&nbsp; But
+no, nothing will quicken them from their sloth and drunkenness
+till the foe are at their doors; and, if a man arise of different
+mould, with some heart for the knightly, the good, and the true,
+then they kill him for me!&nbsp; But thou, Adlerstein, this pious
+quest over, thou wilt return to me.&nbsp; Thou hast head to think
+and heart to feel for the shame and woe of this misguided
+land.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I trust so, my lord,&rdquo; said Ebbo.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Truly, I have suffered bitterly for pursuing my own
+quarrel rather than the crusade.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I meant not thee,&rdquo; said Theurdank, kindly.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Thy bridge is a benefit to me, as much as, or more than,
+ever it can be to thee.&nbsp; Dost know Italian?&nbsp; There is
+something of Italy in thine eye.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My mother&rsquo;s mother was Italian, my lord; but she
+died so early that her language has not descended to my mother or
+myself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thou shouldst learn it.&nbsp; It will be pastime while
+thou art bed-fast, and serve thee well in dealing with the
+Moslem.&nbsp; Moreover, I may have work for thee in
+Welschland.&nbsp; Books?&nbsp; I will send thee books.&nbsp;
+There is the whole chronicle of Karl the Great, and all his
+Palsgrafen, by Pulci and Boiardo, a brave Count and gentleman
+himself, governor of Reggio, and worthy to sing of deeds of arms;
+so choice, too, as to the names of his heroes, that they say he
+caused his church bells to be rung when he had found one for
+Rodomonte, his infidel Hector.&nbsp; He has shown up Roland as a
+love-sick knight, though, which is out of all accord with
+Archbishop Turpin.&nbsp; Wilt have him?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;When we were together, we used to love tales of
+chivalry.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah!&nbsp; Or wilt have the stern old Ghibelline
+Florentine, who explored the three realms of the departed?&nbsp;
+Deep lore, and well-nigh unsearchable, is his; but I love him for
+the sake of his Beatrice, who guided him.&nbsp; May we find such
+guides in our day!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have heard of him,&rdquo; said Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;If
+he will tell me where my Friedel walks in light, then, my lord, I
+would read him with all my heart.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Or wouldst thou have rare Franciscus Petrarca?&nbsp; I
+wot thou art too young as yet for the yearnings of his sonnets,
+but their voice is sweet to the bereft heart.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And he murmured over, in their melodious Italian flow, the
+lines on Laura&rsquo;s death:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Not pallid, but yet whiter than the snow<br
+/>
+By wind unstirred that on a hillside lies;<br />
+Rest seemed as on a weary frame to grow,<br />
+A gentle slumber pressed her lovely eyes.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; he added aloud to himself, &ldquo;it is ever
+to me as though the poet had watched in that chamber at
+Ghent.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Such were the discourses of that morning, now on poetry and
+book lore; now admiration of the carvings that decked the room;
+now talk on grand architectural designs, or improvements in
+fire-arms, or the discussion of hunting adventures.&nbsp; There
+seemed nothing in art, life, or learning in which the versatile
+mind of Theurdank was not at home, or that did not end in some
+strange personal reminiscence of his own.&nbsp; All was so kind,
+so gracious, and brilliant, that at first the interview was full
+of wondering delight to Ebbo, but latterly it became very
+fatiguing from the strain of attention, above all towards a guest
+who evidently knew that he was known, while not permitting such
+recognition to be avowed.&nbsp; Ebbo began to long for an
+interruption, but, though he could see by the lightened sky that
+the weather had cleared up, it would have been impossible to have
+suggested to any guest that the way might now probably be open,
+and more especially to such a guest as this.&nbsp; Considerate as
+his visitor had been the night before, the pleasure of talk
+seemed to have done away with the remembrance of his host&rsquo;s
+weakness, till Ebbo so flagged that at last he was scarcely alive
+to more than the continued sound of the voice, and all the pain
+that for a while had been in abeyance seemed to have mastered
+him; but his guest, half reading his books, half discoursing,
+seemed too much immersed in his own plans, theories, and
+adventures, to mark the condition of his auditor.</p>
+<p>Interruption came at last, however.&nbsp; There was a sudden
+knock at the door at noon, and with scant ceremony Heinz entered,
+followed by three other of the men-at-arms, fully equipped.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ha! what means this?&rdquo; demanded Ebbo.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Peace, Sir Baron,&rdquo; said Heinz, advancing so as to
+place his large person between Ebbo&rsquo;s bed and the strange
+hunter.&nbsp; &ldquo;You know nothing of it.&nbsp; We are not
+going to lose you as well as your brother, and we mean to see how
+this knight likes to serve as a hostage instead of opening the
+gates as a traitor spy.&nbsp; On him, Koppel! it is thy
+right.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hands off! at your peril, villains!&rdquo; exclaimed
+Ebbo, sitting up, and speaking in the steady resolute voice that
+had so early rendered him thoroughly their master, but much
+perplexed and dismayed, and entirely unassisted by Theurdank, who
+stood looking on with almost a smile, as if diverted by his
+predicament.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By your leave, Herr Freiherr,&rdquo; said Heinz,
+putting his hand on his shoulder, &ldquo;this is no concern of
+yours.&nbsp; While you cannot guard yourself or my lady, it is
+our part to do so.&nbsp; I tell you his minions are on their way
+to surprise the castle.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Even as Heinz spoke, Christina came panting into the room,
+and, hurrying to her son&rsquo;s side, said, &ldquo;Sir Count, is
+this just, is this honourable, thus to return my son&rsquo;s
+welcome, in his helpless condition?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mother, are you likewise distracted?&rdquo; exclaimed
+Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;What is all this madness?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Alas, my son, it is no frenzy!&nbsp; There are armed
+men coming up the Eagle&rsquo;s Stairs on the one hand and by the
+Gemsbock&rsquo;s Pass on the other!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But not a hair of your head shall they hurt,
+lady,&rdquo; said Heinz.&nbsp; &ldquo;This fellow&rsquo;s limbs
+shall be thrown to them over the battlements.&nbsp; On,
+Koppel!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Off, Koppel!&rdquo; thundered Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;Would
+you brand me with shame for ever?&nbsp; Were he all the
+Schlangenwalds in one, he should go as freely as he came; but he
+is no more Schlangenwald than I am.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He has deceived you, my lord,&rdquo; said Heinz.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;My lady&rsquo;s own letter to Schlangenwald was in his
+chamber.&nbsp; &rsquo;Tis a treacherous disguise.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Fool that thou art!&rdquo; said Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+know this gentleman well.&nbsp; I knew him at Ulm.&nbsp; Those
+who meet him here mean me no ill.&nbsp; Open the gates and
+receive them honourably!&nbsp; Mother, mother, trust me, all is
+well.&nbsp; I know what I am saying.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The men looked one upon another.&nbsp; Christina wrung her
+hands, uncertain whether her son were not under some strange
+fatal deception.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My lord has his fancies,&rdquo; growled Koppel.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll not be balked of my right of vengeance for his
+scruples!&nbsp; Will he swear that this fellow is what he calls
+himself?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I swear,&rdquo; said Ebbo, slowly, &ldquo;that he is a
+true loyal knight, well known to me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Swear it distinctly, Sir Baron,&rdquo; said
+Heinz.&nbsp; &ldquo;We have all too deep a debt of vengeance to
+let off any one who comes here lurking in the interest of our
+foe.&nbsp; Swear that this is Theurdank, or we send his head to
+greet his friends.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Drops stood on Ebbo&rsquo;s brow, and his breath laboured as
+he felt his senses reeling, and his powers of defence for his
+guest failing him.&nbsp; Even should the stranger confess his
+name, the people of the castle might not believe him; and here he
+stood like one indifferent, evidently measuring how far his young
+host would go in his cause.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I cannot swear that his real name is Theurdank,&rdquo;
+said Ebbo, rallying his forces, &ldquo;but this I swear, that he
+is neither friend nor fosterer of Schlangenwald, that I know him,
+and I had rather die than that the slightest indignity were
+offered him.&rdquo;&nbsp; Here, and with a great effort that
+terribly wrenched his wounded leg, he reached past Heinz, and
+grasped his guest&rsquo;s hand, pulling him as near as he
+could.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;if they try to lay hands on
+you, strike my death-blow!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A bugle-horn was wound outside.&nbsp; The men stood
+daunted&mdash;Christina in extreme terror for her son, who lay
+gasping, breathless, but still clutching the stranger&rsquo;s
+hand, and with eyes of fire glaring on the mutinous
+warriors.&nbsp; Another bugle-blast!&nbsp; Heinz was almost in
+the act of grappling with the silent foe, and Koppel cried as he
+raised his halbert, &ldquo;Now or never!&rdquo; but paused.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Never, so please you,&rdquo; said the strange
+guest.&nbsp; &ldquo;What if your young lord could not forswear
+himself that my name is Theurdank!&nbsp; Are you foes to all the
+world save Theurdank?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No masking,&rdquo; said Heinz, sternly.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Tell your true name as an honest man, and we will judge
+whether you be friend or foe.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My name is a mouthful, as your master knows,&rdquo;
+said the guest, slowly, looking with strangely amused eyes on the
+confused lanzknechts, who were trying to devour their rage.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I was baptized Maximilianus; Archduke of Austria, by
+birth; by choice of the Germans, King of the Romans.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The Kaisar!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Christina dropped on her knee; the men-at-arms tumbled
+backwards; Ebbo pressed the hand he held to his lips, and fainted
+away.&nbsp; The bugle sounded for the third time.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXII<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">PEACE</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Slowly</span> and painfully did Ebbo
+recover from his swoon, feeling as if the means of revival were
+rending him away from his brother.&nbsp; He was so completely
+spent that he was satisfied with a mere assurance that nothing
+was amiss, and presently dropped into a profound slumber, whence
+he awoke to find it still broad daylight, and his mother sitting
+by the side of his bed, all looking so much as it had done for
+the last six weeks, that his first inquiry was if all that had
+happened had been but a strange dream.&nbsp; His mother would
+scarcely answer till she had satisfied herself that his eye was
+clear, his voice steady, his hand cool, and that, as she said,
+&ldquo;That Kaisar had done him no harm.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, then it was true!&nbsp; Where is he?&nbsp;
+Gone?&rdquo; cried Ebbo, eagerly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, in the hall below, busy with letters they have
+brought him.&nbsp; Lie still, my boy; he has done thee quite
+enough damage for one day.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But, mother, what are you saying!&nbsp; Something
+disloyal, was it not?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, Ebbo, I was very angry that he should have half
+killed you when he could so easily have spoken one word.&nbsp;
+Heaven forgive me if I did wrong, but I could not help
+it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did <i>he</i> forgive you, mother?&rdquo; said Ebbo,
+anxiously.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He&mdash;oh yes.&nbsp; To do him justice he was greatly
+concerned; devised ways of restoring thee, and now has promised
+not to come near thee again without my leave,&rdquo; said the
+mother, quite as persuaded of her own rightful sway in her
+son&rsquo;s sick chamber as ever Kunigunde had been of her
+dominion over the castle.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And is he displeased with me?&nbsp; Those cowardly
+vindictive rascals, to fall on him, and set me at nought!&nbsp;
+Before him, too!&rdquo; exclaimed Ebbo, bitterly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, Ebbo, he thought thy part most gallant.&nbsp; I
+heard him say so, not only to me, but below stairs&mdash;both
+wise and true.&nbsp; Thou didst know him then?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;From the first glance of his princely eye&mdash;the
+first of his keen smiles.&nbsp; I had seen him disguised
+before.&nbsp; I thought you knew him too, mother; I never guessed
+that your mind was running on Schlangenwald when we talked at
+cross purposes last night.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Would that I had; but though I breathed no word openly,
+I encouraged Heinz&rsquo;s precautions.&nbsp; My boy, I could not
+help it; my heart would tremble for my only one, and I saw he
+could not be what he seemed.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And what doth he here?&nbsp; Who were the men who were
+advancing?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They were the followers he had left at St.
+Ruprecht&rsquo;s, and likewise Master Schleiermacher and Sir
+Kasimir of Wildschloss.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ha!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What&mdash;he had not told thee?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No.&nbsp; He knew that I knew him, was at no pains to
+disguise himself, yet evidently meant me to treat him as a
+private knight.&nbsp; But what brought Wildschloss
+here?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It seems,&rdquo; said Christina, &ldquo;that, on the
+return from Carinthia, the Kaisar expressed his intention of
+slipping away from his army in his own strange fashion, and
+himself inquiring into the matter of the Ford.&nbsp; So he took
+with him his own personal followers, the new Graf von
+Schlangenwald, Herr Kasimir, and Master Schleiermacher.&nbsp; The
+others he sent to Schlangenwald; he himself lodged at St.
+Ruprecht&rsquo;s, appointing that Sir Kasimir should meet him
+there this morning.&nbsp; From the convent he started on a
+chamois hunt, and made his way hither; but, when the snow came
+on, and he returned not, his followers became uneasy, and came in
+search of him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Ebbo, &ldquo;he meant to intercede for
+Wildschloss&mdash;it might be he would have tried his
+power.&nbsp; No, for that he is too generous.&nbsp; How looked
+Wildschloss, mother?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;How could I tell how any one looked save thee, my poor
+wan boy?&nbsp; Thou art paler than ever!&nbsp; I cannot have any
+king or kaisar of them all come to trouble thee.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, motherling, there is much more trouble and unrest
+to me in not knowing how my king will treat us after such a
+requital!&nbsp; Prithee let him know that I am at his
+service.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And, after having fed and refreshed her patient, the gentle
+potentate of his chamber consented to intimate her consent to
+admit the invader.&nbsp; But not till after delay enough to fret
+the impatient nerves of illness did Maximilian appear, handing
+her in, and saying, in the cheery voice that was one of his chief
+fascinations,</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yea, truly, fair dame, I know thou wouldst sooner trust
+Schlangenwald himself than me alone with thy charge.&nbsp; How
+goes it, my true knight?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, right well, my liege,&rdquo; said Ebbo,
+&ldquo;save for my shame and grief.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thou art the last to be ashamed for that,&rdquo; said
+the good-natured prince.&nbsp; &ldquo;Have I never seen my
+faithful vassals more bent on their own feuds than on my
+word?&mdash;I who reign over a set of kings, who brook no will
+but their own.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And may we ask your pardon,&rdquo; said Ebbo,
+&ldquo;not only for ourselves, but for the misguided
+men-at-arms?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What! the grewsome giant that was prepared with the
+axe, and the honest lad that wanted to do his duty by his
+father?&nbsp; I honour that lad, Freiherr; I would enrol him in
+my guard, but that probably he is better off here than with
+<i>Massimiliano pochi danari</i>, as the Italians call me.&nbsp;
+But what I came hither to say was this,&rdquo; and he spoke
+gravely: &ldquo;thou art sincere in desiring reconciliation with
+the house of Schlangenwald?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;With all my heart,&rdquo; said Ebbo, &ldquo;do I loathe
+the miserable debt of blood for blood!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And,&rdquo; said Maximilian, &ldquo;Graf Dankwart is of
+like mind.&nbsp; Bred from pagedom in his Prussian commandery, he
+has never been exposed to the irritations that have fed the
+spirit of strife, and he will be thankful to lay it aside.&nbsp;
+The question next is how to solemnize this reconciliation, ere
+your retainers on one side or the other do something to set you
+by the ears together again, which, judging by this
+morning&rsquo;s work, is not improbable.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Alas! no,&rdquo; said Ebbo, &ldquo;while I am laid
+by.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Had you both been in our camp, you should have sworn
+friendship in my chapel.&nbsp; Now must Dankwart come hither to
+thee, as I trow he had best do, while I am here to keep the
+peace.&nbsp; See, friend Ebbo, we will have him here to-morrow;
+thy chaplain shall deck the altar here, the Father Abbot shall
+say mass, and ye shall swear peace and brotherhood before
+me.&nbsp; And,&rdquo; he added, taking Ebbo&rsquo;s hand,
+&ldquo;I shall know how to trust thine oaths as of one who sets
+the fear of God above that of his king.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This was truly the only chance of impressing on the wild
+vassals of the two houses an obligation that perhaps might
+override their ancient hatred; and the Baron and his mother
+gladly submitted to the arrangement.&nbsp; Maximilian withdrew to
+give directions for summoning the persons required and Christina
+was soon obliged to leave her son, while she provided for her
+influx of guests.</p>
+<p>Ebbo was alone till nearly the end of the supper below
+stairs.&nbsp; He had been dozing, when a cautious tread came up
+the turret steps, and he started, and called out, &ldquo;Who goes
+there?&nbsp; I am not asleep.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is your kinsman, Freiherr,&rdquo; said a well-known
+voice; &ldquo;I come by your mother&rsquo;s leave.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Welcome, Sir Cousin,&rdquo; said Ebbo, holding out his
+hand.&nbsp; &ldquo;You come to find everything
+changed.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have knelt in the chapel,&rdquo; said Wildschloss,
+gravely.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And he loved you better than I!&rdquo; said Ebbo.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Your jealousy of me was a providential thing, for which
+all may be thankful,&rdquo; said Wildschloss gravely; &ldquo;yet
+it is no small thing to lose the hope of so many years!&nbsp;
+However, young Baron, I have grave matter for your
+consideration.&nbsp; Know you the service on which I am to be
+sent?&nbsp; The Kaisar deems that the Armenians or some of the
+Christian nations on the skirts of the Ottoman empire might be
+made our allies, and attack the Turk in his rear.&nbsp; I am
+chosen as his envoy, and shall sail so soon as I can make my way
+to Venice.&nbsp; I only knew of the appointment since I came
+hither, he having been led thereto by letters brought him this
+day; and mayhap by the downfall of my hopes.&nbsp; He was
+peremptory, as his mood is, and seemed to think it no small
+favour,&rdquo; added Wildschloss, with some annoyance.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;And meantime, what of my poor child?&nbsp; There she is in
+the cloister at Ulm, but an inheritance is a very mill-stone
+round the neck of an orphan maid.&nbsp; That insolent fellow,
+Lassla von Trautbach, hath already demanded to espouse the poor
+babe; he&mdash;a blood-stained, dicing, drunken rover, with whom
+I would not trust a dog that I loved!&nbsp; Yet my death would
+place her at the disposal of his father, who would give her at
+once to him.&nbsp; Nay, even his aunt, the abbess, will believe
+nothing against him, and hath even striven with me to have her
+betrothed at once.&nbsp; On the barest rumour of my death will
+they wed the poor little thing, and then woe to her, and woe to
+my vassals!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The King,&rdquo; suggested Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;Surely
+she might be made his ward.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Young man,&rdquo; said Sir Kasimir, bending over him,
+and speaking in an undertone, &ldquo;he may well have won your
+heart.&nbsp; As friend, when one is at his side, none can be so
+winning, or so sincere as he; but with all his brilliant gifts,
+he says truly of himself that he is a mere reckless
+huntsman.&nbsp; To-day, while I am with him, he would give me
+half Austria, or fight single-handed in my cause or
+Thekla&rsquo;s.&nbsp; Next month, when I am out of sight, comes
+Trautbach, just when his head is full of keeping the French out
+of Italy, or reforming the Church, or beating the Turk, or
+parcelling the empire into circles, or, maybe, of a new
+touch-hole for a cannon&mdash;nay, of a flower-garden, or of
+walking into a lion&rsquo;s den.&nbsp; He just says, &lsquo;Yea,
+well,&rsquo; to be rid of the importunity, and all is over with
+my poor little maiden.&nbsp; Hare-brained and bewildered with
+schemes has he been as Romish King&mdash;how will it be with him
+as Kaisar?&nbsp; It is but of his wonted madness that he is here
+at all, when his Austrian states must be all astray for want of
+him.&nbsp; No, no; I would rather make a weathercock guardian to
+my daughter.&nbsp; You yourself are the only guard to whom I can
+safely intrust her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My sword as knight and kinsman&mdash;&rdquo; began
+Ebbo.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, no; &rsquo;tis no matter of errant knight or
+distressed damsel.&nbsp; That is King Max&rsquo;s own
+line!&rdquo; said Wildschloss, with a little of the irony that
+used to nettle Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;There is only one way in which
+you can save her, and that is as her husband.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ebbo started, as well he might, but Sir Kasimir laid his hand
+on him with a gesture that bade him listen ere he spoke.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;My first wish for my child,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;was to
+see her brought up by that peerless lady below stairs.&nbsp; The
+saints&mdash;in pity to one so like themselves&mdash;spared her
+the distress our union would have brought her.&nbsp; Now, it
+would be vain to place my little Thekla in her care, for
+Trautbach would easily feign my death, and claim his niece, nor
+are you of age to be made her guardian as head of our
+house.&nbsp; But, if this marriage rite were solemnized, then
+would her person and lands alike be yours, and I could leave her
+with an easy heart.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But,&rdquo; said the confused, surprised Ebbo,
+&ldquo;what can I do?&nbsp; They say I shall not walk for many
+weeks to come.&nbsp; And, even if I could, I am so young&mdash;I
+have so blundered in my dealings with my own mountaineers, and
+with this fatal bridge&mdash;how should I manage such estates as
+yours?&nbsp; Some better&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Look you, Ebbo,&rdquo; said Wildschloss; &ldquo;you
+have erred&mdash;you have been hasty; but tell me where to find
+another youth, whose strongest purpose was as wise as your
+errors, or who cared for others&rsquo; good more than for his own
+violence and vainglory?&nbsp; Brief as your time has been, one
+knows when one is on your bounds by the aspect of your serfs, the
+soundness of their dwellings, the prosperity of their crops and
+cattle above all, by their face and tone if one asks for their
+lord.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah! it was Friedel they loved.&nbsp; They scarce knew
+me from Friedel.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Such as you are, with all the blunders you have made
+and will make, you are the only youth I know to whom I could
+intrust my child or my lands.&nbsp; The old Wildschloss castle is
+a male fief, and would return to you, but there are domains since
+granted that will cause intolerable trouble and strife, unless
+you and my poor little heiress are united.&nbsp; As for age, you
+are&mdash;?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Eighteen next Easter.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then there are scarce eleven years between you.&nbsp;
+You will find the little one a blooming bride when your first
+deeds in arms have been fought out.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And, if my mother trains her up,&rdquo; said Ebbo,
+thoughtfully, &ldquo;she will be all the better daughter to
+her.&nbsp; But, Sir Cousin, you know I too must be going.&nbsp;
+So soon as I can brook the saddle, I must seek out and ransom my
+father.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That is like to be a far shorter and safer journey than
+mine.&nbsp; The Genoese and Venetians understand traffic with the
+infidels for their captives, and only by your own fault could you
+get into danger.&nbsp; Even at the worst, should mishap befall
+you, you could so order matters as to leave your girl-widow in
+your mother&rsquo;s charge.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then,&rdquo; added Ebbo, &ldquo;she would still have
+one left to love and cherish her.&nbsp; Sir Kasimir, it is well;
+though, if you knew me without my Friedel, you would repent of
+your bargain.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thanks from my heart,&rdquo; said Wildschloss,
+&ldquo;but you need not be concerned.&nbsp; You have never been
+over-friendly with me even with Friedel at your side.&nbsp; But
+to business, my son.&nbsp; You will endure that title from me
+now?&nbsp; My time is short.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What would you have me do?&nbsp; Shall I send the
+little one a betrothal ring, and ride to Ulm to wed and fetch her
+home in spring?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That may hardly serve.&nbsp; These kinsmen would have
+seized on her and the castle long ere that time.&nbsp; The only
+safety is the making wedlock as fast as it can be made with a
+child of such tender years.&nbsp; Mine is the only power that can
+make the abbess give her up, and therefore will I ride this
+moonlight night to Ulm, bring the little one back with me by the
+time the reconciliation be concluded, and then shall ye be wed by
+the Abbot of St. Ruprecht&rsquo;s, with the Kaisar for a witness,
+and thus will the knot be too strong for the Trautbachs to
+untie.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ebbo looked disconcerted, and gasped, as if this were
+over-quick work.&mdash;&ldquo;To-morrow!&rdquo; he said.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Knows my mother?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I go to speak with her at once.&nbsp; The
+Kaisar&rsquo;s consent I have, as he says, &lsquo;If we have one
+vassal who has common sense and honesty, let us make the most of
+him.&rsquo;&nbsp; Ah! my son, I shall return to see you his
+counsellor and friend.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Those days had no delicacies as to the lady&rsquo;s side
+taking the initiative: and, in effect, the wealth and power of
+Wildschloss so much exceeded those of the elder branch that it
+would have been presumptuous on Eberhard&rsquo;s part to have
+made the proposal.&nbsp; It was more a treaty than an affair of
+hearts, and Sir Kasimir had not even gone through the form of
+inquiring if Ebbo were fancy-free.&nbsp; It was true, indeed,
+that he was still a boy, with no passion for any one but his
+mother; but had he even formed a dream of a ladye love, it would
+scarcely have been deemed a rational objection.&nbsp; The days of
+romance were no days of romance in marriage.</p>
+<p>Yet Christina, wedded herself for pure love, felt this
+obstacle strongly.&nbsp; The scheme was propounded to her over
+the hall fire by no less a person than Maximilian himself, and
+he, whose perceptions were extremely keen when he was not too
+much engrossed to use them, observed her reluctance through all
+her timid deference, and probed her reasons so successfully that
+she owned at last that, though it might sound like folly, she
+could scarce endure to see her son so bind himself that the
+romance of his life could hardly be innocent.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, lady,&rdquo; was the answer, in a tone of deep
+feeling.&nbsp; &ldquo;Neither lands nor honours can weigh down
+the up-springing of true love;&rdquo; and he bowed his head
+between his hands.</p>
+<p>Verily, all the Low Countries had not impeded the true-hearted
+affection of Maximilian and Mary; and, though since her death his
+want of self-restraint had marred his personal character and
+morals, and though he was now on the point of concluding a most
+loveless political marriage, yet still Mary was&mdash;as he shows
+her as the Beatrice of both his strange autobiographical
+allegories&mdash;the guiding star of his fitful life; and in
+heart his fidelity was so unbroken that, when after a long pause
+he again looked up to Christina, he spoke as well understanding
+her feelings.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know what you would say, lady; your son hardly knows
+as yet how much is asked of him, and the little maid, to whom he
+vows his heart, is over-young to secure it.&nbsp; But, lady, I
+have often observed that men, whose family affections are as deep
+and fervent as your son&rsquo;s are for you and his brother,
+seldom have wandering passions, but that their love flows deep
+and steady in the channels prepared for it.&nbsp; Let your young
+Freiherr regard this damsel as his own, and you will see he will
+love her as such.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I trust so, my liege.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Moreover, if she turn out like the spiteful Trautbach
+folk,&rdquo; said Maximilian, rather wickedly, &ldquo;plenty of
+holes can be picked in a baby-wedding.&nbsp; No fear of its
+over-firmness.&nbsp; I never saw one come to good; only he must
+keep firm hold on the lands.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This was not easy to answer, coming from a prince who had no
+small experience in premature bridals coming to nothing, and
+Christina felt that the matter was taken out of her hands, and
+that she had no more to do but to enjoy the warm-hearted
+Kaisar&rsquo;s praises of her son.</p>
+<p>In fact, the general run of nobles were then so boorish and
+violent compared with the citizens, that a nobleman who possessed
+intellect, loyalty, and conscience was so valuable to the
+sovereign that Maximilian was rejoiced to do all that either
+could bind him to his service or increase his power.&nbsp; The
+true history of this expedition on the Emperor&rsquo;s part was
+this&mdash;that he had consulted Kasimir upon the question of the
+Debateable Ford and the feud of Adlerstein and Schlangenwald,
+asking further how his friend had sped in the wooing of the fair
+widow, to which he remembered having given his consent at
+Ulm.</p>
+<p>Wildschloss replied that, though backed up by her kindred at
+Ulm, he had made no progress in consequence of the determined
+opposition of her two sons, and he had therefore resolved to wait
+a while, and let her and the young Baron feel their inability to
+extricate themselves from the difficulties that were sure to
+beset them, without his authority, influence, and
+experience&mdash;fully believing that some predicament might
+arise that would bring the mother to terms, if not the sons.</p>
+<p>This disaster did seem to have fallen out, and he had meant at
+once to offer himself to the lady as her supporter and advocate,
+able to bring about all her son could desire; though he owned
+that his hopes would have been higher if the survivor had been
+the gentle, friendly Friedmund, rather than the hot and imperious
+Eberhard, who he knew must be brought very low ere his objections
+would be withdrawn.</p>
+<p>The touch of romance had quite fascinated Maximilian.&nbsp; He
+would see the lady and her son.&nbsp; He would make all things
+easy by the personal influence that he so well knew how to exert,
+backed by his imperial authority; and both should see cause to be
+thankful to purchase consent to the bridge-building, and pardon
+for the fray, by the marriage between the widow and Sir
+Kasimir.</p>
+<p>But the Last of the Knights was a gentleman, and the meek
+dignity of his hostess had hindered him from pressing on her any
+distasteful subject until her son&rsquo;s explanation of the
+uncertainty of her husband&rsquo;s death had precluded all
+mention of this intention.&nbsp; Besides, Maximilian was himself
+greatly charmed by Ebbo&rsquo;s own qualities&mdash;partly
+perhaps as an intelligent auditor, but also by his good sense,
+high spirit, and, above all, by the ready and delicate tact that
+had both penetrated and respected the disguise.&nbsp; Moreover,
+Maximilian, though a faulty, was a devout man, and could
+appreciate the youth&rsquo;s unswerving truth, under
+circumstances that did, in effect, imperil him more really than
+his guest.&nbsp; In this mood, Maximilian felt disposed to be rid
+to the very utmost of poor Sir Kasimir&rsquo;s unlucky attachment
+to a wedded lady; and receiving letters suggestive of the Eastern
+mission, instantly decided that it would only be doing as he
+would be done by instantly to order the disappointed suitor off
+to the utmost parts of the earth, where he would much have liked
+to go himself, save for the unlucky clog of all the realm of
+Germany.&nbsp; That Sir Kasimir had any tie to home he had for
+the moment entirely forgotten; and, had he remembered it, the
+knight was so eminently fitted to fulfil his purpose, that it
+could hardly have been regarded.&nbsp; But, when Wildschloss
+himself devised his little heiress&rsquo;s union with the head of
+the direct line, it was a most acceptable proposal to the
+Emperor, who set himself to forward it at once, out of policy,
+and as compensation to all parties.</p>
+<p>And so Christina&rsquo;s gentle remonstrance was passed
+by.&nbsp; Yet, with all her sense of the venture, it was
+thankworthy to look back on the trembling anxiety with which she
+had watched her boy&rsquo;s childhood, and all his temptations
+and perils, and compare her fears with his present position: his
+alliance courted, his wisdom honoured, the child of the proud,
+contemned outlaw received as the favourite of the Emperor, and
+the valued ally of her own honoured burgher world.&nbsp; Yet he
+was still a mere lad.&nbsp; How would it be for the future?</p>
+<p>Would he be unspoiled?&nbsp; Yes, even as she already viewed
+one of her twins as the star on high&mdash;nay, when kneeling in
+the chapel, her dazzling tears made stars of the glint of the
+light reflected in his bright helmet&mdash;might she not trust
+that the other would yet run his course to and fro, as the spark
+in the stubble?</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIII<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE ALTAR OF PEACE</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">No</span> one could bear to waken the
+young Baron till the sun had risen high enough to fall on his
+face and unclose his eyes.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mother&rdquo; (ever his first word), &ldquo;you have
+let me sleep too long.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thou didst wake too long, I fear me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I hoped you knew it not.&nbsp; Yes, my wound throbbed
+sore, and the wonders of the day whirled round my brain like the
+wild huntsman&rsquo;s chase.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And, cruel boy, thou didst not call to me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What, with such a yesterday, and such a morrow for you?
+while, chance what may, I can but lie still.&nbsp; I thought I
+must call, if I were still so wretched, when the last moonbeam
+faded; but, behold, sleep came, and therewith my Friedel sat by
+me, and has sung songs of peace ever since.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And hath lulled thee to content, dear son?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Content as the echo of his voice and the fulfilment of
+his hope can make me,&rdquo; said Ebbo.</p>
+<p>And so Christina made her son ready for the day&rsquo;s
+solemnities, arraying him in a fine holland shirt with exquisite
+broidery of her own on the collar and sleeves, and carefully
+disposing his long glossy, dark brown hair so as to fall on his
+shoulders as he lay propped up by cushions.&nbsp; She would have
+thrown his crimson mantle round him, but he repelled it
+indignantly.&nbsp; &ldquo;Gay braveries for me, while my Friedel
+is not yet in his resting-place?&nbsp; Here&mdash;the black
+velvet cloak.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Alas, Ebbo! it makes thee look more of a corpse than a
+bridegroom.&nbsp; Thou wilt scare thy poor little spouse.&nbsp;
+Ah! it was not thus I had fancied myself decking thee for thy
+wedding.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Poor little one!&rdquo; said Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;If, as
+your uncle says, mourning is the seed of joy, this bridal should
+prove a gladsome one!&nbsp; But let her prove a loving child to
+you, and honour my Friedel&rsquo;s memory, then shall I love her
+well.&nbsp; Do not fear, motherling; with the roots of hatred and
+jealousy taken out of the heart, even sorrow is such peace that
+it is almost joy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was over early for pain and sorrow to have taught that
+lesson, thought the mother, as with tender tears she gave place
+to the priest, who was to begin the solemnities of the day by
+shriving the young Baron.&nbsp; It was Father Norbert, who had in
+this very chamber baptized the brothers, while their grandmother
+was plotting the destruction of their godfather, even while he
+gave Friedmund his name of peace,&mdash;Father Norbert, who had
+from the very first encouraged the drooping, heart-stricken,
+solitary Christina not to be overcome of evil, but to overcome
+evil with good.</p>
+<p>A temporary altar was erected between the windows, and hung
+with the silk and embroidery belonging to that in the chapel: a
+crucifix was placed on it, with the shrine of the stone of
+Nic&aelig;a, one or two other relics brought on St.
+Ruprecht&rsquo;s cloister, and a beautiful mother-of-pearl and
+gold pyx also from the abbey, containing the host.&nbsp; These
+were arranged by the chaplain, Father Norbert, and three of his
+brethren from the abbey.&nbsp; And then the Father Abbot, a
+kindly, dignified old man, who had long been on friendly terms
+with the young Baron, entered; and after a few kind though
+serious words to him, assumed a gorgeous cope stiff with gold
+embroidery, and, standing by the altar, awaited the arrival of
+the other assistants at the ceremony.</p>
+<p>The slender, youthful-looking, pensive lady of the castle, in
+her wonted mourning dress, was courteously handed to her
+son&rsquo;s bedside by the Emperor.&nbsp; He was in his plain
+buff leathern hunting garb, unornamented, save by the rich clasp
+of his sword-belt and his gold chain, and his head was only
+covered by the long silken locks of fair hair that hung round his
+shoulders; but, now that his large keen dark blue eyes were
+gravely restrained, and his eager face composed, his countenance
+was so majestic, his bearing so lofty, that not all his crowns
+could have better marked his dignity.</p>
+<p>Behind him came a sunburnt, hardy man, wearing the white
+mantle and black fleur-de-lis-pointed cross of the Teutonic
+Order.&nbsp; A thrill passed through Ebbo&rsquo;s veins as he
+beheld the man who to him represented the murderer of his brother
+and both his grandfathers, the cruel oppressor of his father, and
+the perpetrator of many a more remote, but equally unforgotten,
+injury.&nbsp; And in like manner Sir Dankwart beheld the actual
+slayer of his father, and the heir of a long score of deadly
+retribution.&nbsp; No wonder then that, while the Emperor spoke a
+few words of salutation and inquiry, gracious though not
+familiar, the two foes scanned one another with a shiver of
+mutual repulsing, and a sense that they would fain have fought it
+out as in the good old times.</p>
+<p>However, Ebbo only beheld a somewhat dull, heavy,
+honest-looking visage of about thirty years old, good-nature
+written in all its flat German features, and a sort of puzzled
+wonder in the wide light eyes that stared fixedly at him, no
+doubt in amazement that the mighty huge-limbed Wolfgang could
+have been actually slain by the delicately-framed youth, now more
+colourless than ever in consequence of the morning&rsquo;s
+fast.&nbsp; Schleiermacher was also present, and the chief
+followers on either hand had come into the lower part of the
+room&mdash;Hatto, Heinz, and Koppel, looking far from contented;
+some of the Emperor&rsquo;s suite; and a few attendants of
+Schlangenwald, like himself connected with the Teutonic
+Order.</p>
+<p>The Emperor spoke: &ldquo;We have brought you together, Herr
+Graff von Schlangenwald, and Herr Freiherr von Adlerstein,
+because ye have given us reason to believe you willing to lay
+aside the remembrance of the foul and deadly strifes of your
+forefathers, and to live as good Christians in friendship and
+brotherhood.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sire, it is true,&rdquo; said Schlangenwald; and
+&ldquo;It is true,&rdquo; said Ebbo.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That is well,&rdquo; replied Maximilian.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Nor can our reign better begin than by the closing of a
+breach that has cost the land some of its bravest sons.&nbsp;
+Dankwart von Schlangenwald, art thou willing to pardon the heir
+of Adlerstein for having slain thy father in free and honourable
+combat, as well as, doubtless, for other deeds of his ancestors,
+more than I know or can specify?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yea, truly; I pardon him, my liege, as befits my
+vow.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And thou, Eberhard von Adlerstein, dost thou put from
+thee vengeance for thy twin brother&rsquo;s death, and all the
+other wrongs that thine house has suffered?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I put revenge from me for ever.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ye agree, further, then, instead of striving as to your
+rights to the piece of meadow called the Debateable Strand, and
+to the wrecks of burthens there cast up by the stream, ye will
+unite with the citizens of Ulm in building a bridge over the
+Braunwasser, where, your mutual portions thereof being decided by
+the Swabian League, toll may be taken from all vehicles and
+beasts passing there over?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We agree,&rdquo; said both knights.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And I, also, on behalf of the two guilds of Ulm,&rdquo;
+added Moritz Schleiermacher.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Likewise,&rdquo; continued the Emperor, &ldquo;for
+avoidance of debate, and to consecrate the spot that has caused
+so much contention, ye will jointly erect a church, where may be
+buried both the relatives who fell in the late unhappy skirmish,
+and where ye will endow a perpetual mass for their souls, and
+those of others of your two races.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thereto I willingly agree,&rdquo; said the Teutonic
+knight.&nbsp; But to Ebbo it was a shock that the pure, gentle
+Friedmund should thus be classed with his treacherous assassin;
+and he had almost declared that it would be sacrilege, when he
+received from the Emperor a look of stern, surprised command,
+which reminded him that concession must not be all on one side,
+and that he could not do Friedel a greater wrong than to make him
+a cause of strife.&nbsp; So, though they half choked him, he
+contrived to utter the words, &ldquo;I consent.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And in token of amity I here tear up and burn all the
+feuds of Adlerstein,&rdquo; said Schlangenwald, producing from
+his pouch a collection of hostile literature, beginning from a
+crumpled strip of yellow parchment and ending with a coarse paper
+missive in the clerkly hand of burgher-bred Hugh Sorel, and
+bearing the crooked signatures of the last two Eberhards of
+Adlerstein&mdash;all with great seals of the eagle shield
+appended to them.&nbsp; A similar collection&mdash;which, with
+one or two other family defiances, and the letters of investiture
+recently obtained at Ulm, formed the whole archives of
+Adlerstein&mdash;had been prepared within Ebbo&rsquo;s reach; and
+each of the two, taking up a dagger, made extensive gashes in
+these documents, and then&mdash;with no mercy to the future
+antiquaries, who would have gloated over them&mdash;the whole
+were hurled into the flames on the hearth, where the odour they
+emitted, if not grateful to the physical sense, should have been
+highly agreeable to the moral.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then, holy Father Abbot,&rdquo; said Maximilian,
+&ldquo;let us ratify this happy and Christian reconciliation by
+the blessed sacrifice of peace, over which these two faithful
+knights shall unite in swearing good-will and
+brotherhood.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Such solemn reconciliations were frequent, but, alas were too
+often a mockery.&nbsp; Here, however, both parties were men who
+felt the awe of the promise made before the Pardon-winner of all
+mankind.&nbsp; Ebbo, bred up by his mother in the true life of
+the Church, and comparatively apart from practical superstitions,
+felt the import to the depths of his inmost soul, with a force
+heightened by his bodily state of nervous impressibility; and his
+wan, wasted features and dark shining eyes had a strange
+spiritual beam, &ldquo;half passion and half awe,&rdquo; as he
+followed the words of universal forgiveness and lofty praise that
+he had heard last in his anguished trance, when his brother lay
+dying beside him, and leaving him behind.&nbsp; He knew now that
+it was for this.</p>
+<p>His deep repressed ardour and excitement were no small
+contrast to the sober, matter-of-fact demeanour of the Teutonic
+knight, who comported himself with the mechanical decorum of an
+ecclesiastic, but quite as one who meant to keep his word.&nbsp;
+Maximilian served the mass in his royal character as
+sub-deacon.&nbsp; He was fond of so doing, either from humility,
+or love of incongruity, or both.&nbsp; No one, however,
+communicated except the clergy and the parties
+concerned&mdash;Dankwart first, as being monk as well as knight,
+then Eberhard and his mother; and then followed, interposed into
+the rite, the oath of pardon, friendship, and brotherhood
+administered by the abbot, and followed by the solemn kiss of
+peace.&nbsp; There was now no recoil; Eberhard raised himself to
+meet the lips of his foe, and his heart went with the
+embrace.&nbsp; Nay, his inward ear dwelt on Friedmund&rsquo;s
+song mingling with the concluding chants of praise.</p>
+<p>The service ended, it was part of the pledge of amity that the
+reconciled enemies should break their fast together, and a
+collation of white bread and wine was provided for the
+purpose.&nbsp; The Emperor tried to promote free and friendly
+talk between the two adversaries, but not with great success; for
+Dankwart, though honest and sincere, seemed extremely dull.&nbsp;
+He appeared to have few ideas beyond his Prussian commandery and
+its routine discipline, and to be lost in a castle where all was
+at his sole will and disposal, and he caught eagerly at all
+proposals made to him as if they were new lights.&nbsp; As, for
+instance, that some impartial arbitrator should be demanded from
+the Swabian League to define the boundary; and that next
+Rogation-tide the two knights should ride or climb it in company,
+while meantime the serfs should be strictly charged not to
+trespass, and any transgressor should be immediately escorted to
+his own lord.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But,&rdquo; quoth Sir Dankwart, in a most serious tone,
+&ldquo;I am told that a she-bear wons in a den on yonder crag,
+between the pass you call the Gemsbock&rsquo;s and the
+Schlangenwald valley.&nbsp; They told me the right in it had
+never been decided, and I have not been up myself.&nbsp; To say
+truth, I have lived so long in the sand plains as to have lost my
+mountain legs, and I hesitated to see if a hunter could mount
+thither for fear of fresh offence; but, if she bide there till
+Rogation-tide, it will be ill for the lambs.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo; cried Maximilian.&nbsp; &ldquo;Then
+will I, a neutral, kill your bear for you, gentlemen, so that
+neither need transgress this new crag of debate.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll
+go down and look at your bear spears, friend Ebbo, and be ready
+so soon as Kasimir has done with his bridal.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That crag!&rdquo; cried Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;Little good
+will it do either of us.&nbsp; Sire, it is a mere wall of sloping
+rock, slippery as ice, and with only a stone or matting of ivy
+here and there to serve as foothold.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where bear can go, man can go,&rdquo; replied the
+Kaisar.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, yes!&nbsp; We have been there, craving your pardon,
+Herr Graf,&rdquo; said Ebbo, &ldquo;after a dead chamois that
+rolled into a cleft, but it is the worst crag on all the hill,
+and the frost will make it slippery.&nbsp; Sire, if you do
+venture it, I conjure you to take Koppel, and climb by the rocks
+from the left, not the right, which looks easiest.&nbsp; The
+yellow rock, with a face like a man&rsquo;s, is the safer; but
+ach, it is fearful for one who knows not the rocks.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If I know not the rocks, all true German rocks know
+me,&rdquo; smiled Maximilian, to whom the danger seemed to be
+such a stimulus that he began to propose the bear-hunt
+immediately, as an interlude while waiting for the bride.</p>
+<p>However, at that moment, half-a-dozen horsemen were seen
+coming up from the ford, by the nearer path, and a forerunner
+arrived with the tidings that the Baron of Adlerstein Wildschloss
+was close behind with the little Baroness Thekla.</p>
+<p>Half the moonlight night had Sir Kasimir and his escort
+ridden; and, after a brief sleep at the nearest inn outside Ulm,
+he had entered in early morning, demanded admittance at the
+convent, made short work with the Abbess Ludmilla&rsquo;s
+arguments, claimed his daughter, and placing her on a cushion
+before him on his saddle, had borne her away, telling her of
+freedom, of the kind lady, and the young knight who had dazzled
+her childish fancy.</p>
+<p>Christina went down to receive her.&nbsp; There was no time to
+lose, for the huntsman Kaisar was bent on the slaughter of his
+bear before dark, and, if he were to be witness of the wedding,
+it must be immediate.&nbsp; He was in a state of much impatience,
+which he beguiled by teasing his friend Wildschloss by reminding
+him how often he himself had been betrothed, and had managed to
+slip his neck out of the noose.&nbsp; &ldquo;And, if my Margot be
+not soon back on my hands, I shall give the French credit,&rdquo;
+he said, tossing his bear-spear in the air, and catching it
+again.&nbsp; &ldquo;Why, this bride is as long of busking her as
+if she were a beauty of seventeen!&nbsp; I must be off to my Lady
+Bearess.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Thus nothing could be done to prepare the little maiden but to
+divest her of her mufflings, and comb out her flaxen hair,
+crowning it with a wreath which Christina had already woven from
+the myrtle of her own girlhood, scarcely waiting to answer the
+bewildered queries and entreaties save by caresses and
+admonitions to her to be very good.</p>
+<p>Poor little thing!&nbsp; She was tired, frightened, and
+confused; and, when she had been brought upstairs, she answered
+the half smiling, half shy greeting of her bridegroom with a
+shudder of alarm, and the exclamation, &ldquo;Where is the
+beautiful young knight?&nbsp; That&rsquo;s a lady going to take
+the veil lying under the pall.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You look rather like a little nun yourself,&rdquo; said
+Ebbo, for she wore a little conventual dress, &ldquo;but we must
+take each other for such as we are;&rdquo; and, as she hid her
+face and clung to his mother, he added in a more cheerful,
+coaxing tone, &ldquo;You once said you would be my
+wife.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, but then there were two of you, and you were all
+shining bright.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Before she could be answered, the impatient Emperor returned,
+and brought with him the abbot, who proceeded to find the place
+in his book, and to ask the bridegroom for the rings.&nbsp; Ebbo
+looked at Sir Kasimir, who owned that he should have brought them
+from Ulm, but that he had forgotten.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Jewels are not plenty with us,&rdquo; said Ebbo, with a
+glow of amusement and confusion dawning on his cheek, such as
+reassured the little maid that she beheld one of the two
+beautiful young knights.&nbsp; &ldquo;Must we borrow?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Christina looked at the ring she had first seen lying on her
+own Eberhard&rsquo;s palm, and felt as if to let it be used would
+sever the renewed hope she scarcely yet durst entertain; and at
+the same moment Maximilian glanced at his own fingers, and
+muttered, &ldquo;None but this!&nbsp; Unlucky!&rdquo;&nbsp; For
+it was the very diamond which Mary of Burgundy had sent to assure
+him of her faith, and summon him to her aid after her
+father&rsquo;s death.&nbsp; Sir Kasimir had not retained the
+pledge of his own ill-omened wedlock; but, in the midst of the
+dilemma, the Emperor, producing his dagger, began to detach some
+of the massive gold links of the chain that supported his
+hunting-horn.&nbsp; &ldquo;There,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;the
+little elf of a bride can get her finger into this lesser one and
+you&mdash;verily this largest will fit, and the goldsmith can
+beat it out when needed.&nbsp; So on with you in St.
+Hubert&rsquo;s name, Father Abbot!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Slender-boned and thin as was Ebbo&rsquo;s hand, it was a very
+tight fit, but the purpose was served.&nbsp; The service
+commenced; and fortunately, thanks to Thekla&rsquo;s conventual
+education, she was awed into silence and decorum by the sound of
+Latin and the sight of an abbot.&nbsp; It was a strange marriage,
+if only in the contrast between the pale, expressive face and
+sad, dark eyes of the prostrate youth, and the frightened,
+bewildered little girl, standing upon a stool to reach up to him,
+with her blue eyes stretched with wonder, and her cheeks flushed
+and pouting with unshed tears, her rosy plump hand enclosed in
+the long white wasted one that was thus for ever united to it by
+the broken fragments of Kaisar Max&rsquo;s chain.</p>
+<p>The rite over, two attestations of the marriage of Eberhard,
+Freiherr von Adlerstein, and Thekla, Freiherrinn von Adlerstein
+Wildschloss and Felsenbach, were drawn up and signed by the
+abbot, the Emperor, Count Dankwart, and the father and mother of
+the two contracting parties; one to be committed to the care of
+the abbot, the other to be preserved by the house of
+Adlerstein.</p>
+<p>Then the Emperor, as the concluding grace of the ceremonial,
+bent to kiss the bride; but, tired, terrified, and cross, Thekla,
+as if quite relieved to have some object for her resentment,
+returned his attempt with a vehement buffet, struck with all the
+force of her small arm, crying out, &ldquo;Go away with
+you!&nbsp; I know I&rsquo;ve never married <i>you</i>!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The better for my eyes!&rdquo; said the good-natured
+Emperor, laughing heartily.&nbsp; &ldquo;My Lady Bearess is like
+to prove the more courteous bride!&nbsp; Fare thee well, Sir
+Bridegroom,&rdquo; he added, stooping over Ebbo, and kissing his
+brow; &ldquo;Heaven give thee joy of this day&rsquo;s work, and
+of thy faithful little fury.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll send her the
+bearskin as her meetest wedding-gift.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And the next that was heard from the Kaisar was the arrival of
+a parcel of Italian books for the Freiherr Eberhard, and for the
+little Freiherrinn a large bundle, which proved to contain a
+softly-dressed bearskin, with the head on, the eyes being made of
+rubies, a gold muzzle and chain on the nose, and the claws tipped
+with gold.&nbsp; The Emperor had made a point that it should be
+conveyed to the castle, snow or no snow, for a yule gift.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIV<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">OLD IRON AND NEW STEEL</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> clear sunshine of early summer
+was becoming low on the hillsides.&nbsp; Sparkling and dimpling,
+the clear amber-coloured stream of the Braunwasser rippled along
+its stony bed, winding in and out among the rocks so humbly that
+it seemed to be mocked by the wide span of the arch that crossed
+it in all the might of massive bulwarks, and dignified masonry of
+huge stones.</p>
+<p>Some way above, a clearing of the wood below the mountain
+showed huts, and labourers apparently constructing a mill so as
+to take advantage of the leap of the water from the height above;
+and, on the left bank, an enclosure was traced out, within which
+were rising the walls of a small church, while the noise of the
+mallet and chisel echoed back from the mountain side, and masons,
+white with stone-dust, swarmed around.</p>
+<p>Across the bridge came a pilgrim, marked out as such by hat,
+wallet, and long staff, on which he leant heavily, stumbling
+along as if both halting and footsore, and bending as one bowed
+down by past toil and present fatigue.&nbsp; Pausing in the
+centre, he gazed round with a strange disconcerted air&mdash;at
+the castle on the terraced hillside, looking down with bright
+eyes of glass glittering in the sunshine, and lighting up even
+that grim old pile; at the banner hanging so lazily that the
+tinctures and bearings were hidden in the folds; then at the
+crags, rosy purple in evening glow, rising in broad step above
+step up to the Red Eyrie, bathed in sunset majesty of dark
+crimson; and above it the sweep of the descending eagle,
+discernible for a moment in the pearly light of the sky.&nbsp;
+The pilgrim&rsquo;s eye lighted up as he watched it; but then,
+looking down at bridge, and church, and trodden wheel-tracked
+path, he frowned with perplexity, and each painful step grew
+heavier and more uncertain.</p>
+<p>Near the opposite side of the enclosure there waited a tall,
+rugged-looking, elderly man with two horses&mdash;one an aged
+mare, mane, tail, and all of the snowiest silvery white; the
+other a little shaggy dark mountain pony, with a
+pad-saddle.&nbsp; And close to the bank of the stream might be
+seen its owner, a little girl of some seven years, whose tight
+round lace cap had slipped back, as well as her blue silk hood,
+and exposed a profusion of loose flaxen hair, and a plump,
+innocent face, intent upon some private little bit of building of
+her own with some pebbles from the brook, and some mortar filched
+from the operations above, to the great detriment of her soft
+pinky fingers.</p>
+<p>The pilgrim looked at her unperceived, and for a moment was
+about to address her; but then, with a strange air of repulsion,
+dragged himself on to the porch of the rising church, where,
+seated on a block of stone, he could look into the
+interior.&nbsp; All was unfinished, but the portion which had
+made the most progress was a chantry-chapel opposite to the
+porch, and containing what were evidently designed to be two
+monuments.&nbsp; One was merely blocked out, but it showed the
+outline of a warrior, bearing a shield on which a coiled serpent
+was rudely sketched in red chalk.&nbsp; The other, in a much more
+forward state, was actually under the hands of the sculptor, and
+represented a slender youth, almost a boy, though in the full
+armour of a knight, his hands clasped on his breast over a lute,
+an eagle on his shield, an eagle-crest on his helmet, and, under
+the arcade supporting the altar-tomb, shields alternately of
+eagles and doves.</p>
+<p>But the strangest thing was that this young knight seemed to
+be sitting for his own effigy.&nbsp; The very same face, under
+the very same helmet, only with the varied, warm hues of life,
+instead of in cold white marble, was to be seen on the shoulders
+of a young man in a gray cloth dress, with a black scarf passing
+from shoulder to waist, crossed by a sword-belt.&nbsp; The hair
+was hidden by the helmet, whose raised visor showed keen,
+finely-cut features, and a pair of dark brown eyes, of somewhat
+grave and sad expression.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Have a care, Lucas,&rdquo; he presently said; &ldquo;I
+fear me you are chiselling away too much.&nbsp; It must be a
+softer, more rounded face than mine has become; and, above all,
+let it not catch any saddened look.&nbsp; Keep that air of solemn
+waiting in glad hope, as though he saw the dawn through his
+closed eyelids, and were about to take up his song
+again!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Verily, Herr Freiherr, now the likeness is so far
+forward, the actual sight of you may lead me to mar it rather
+than mend.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So is it well that this should be the last
+sitting.&nbsp; I am to set forth for Genoa in another week.&nbsp;
+If I cannot get letters from the Kaisar, I shall go in search of
+him, that he may see that my lameness is no more an
+impediment.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The pilgrim passed his hand over his face, as though to
+dissipate a bewildering dream; and just then the little girl, all
+flushed and dabbled, flew rushing up from the stream, but came to
+a sudden standstill at sight of the stranger, who at length
+addressed her.&nbsp; &ldquo;Little lady,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;is this the Debateable Ford?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No; now it is the Friendly Bridge,&rdquo; said the
+child.</p>
+<p>The pilgrim started, as with a pang of recollection.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;And what is yonder castle?&rdquo; he further asked.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Schloss Adlerstein,&rdquo; she said, proudly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And you are the little lady of Adlerstein
+Wildschloss?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; again she answered; and then, gathering
+courage&mdash;&ldquo;You are a holy pilgrim!&nbsp; Come up to the
+castle for supper and rest.&rdquo;&nbsp; And then, springing past
+him, she flew up to the knight, crying, &ldquo;Herr Freiherr,
+here is a holy pilgrim, weary and hungry.&nbsp; Let us take him
+home to the mother.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Did he take thee for a wild elf?&rdquo; said the young
+man, with an elder-brotherly endeavour to right the little cap
+that had slidden under the chin, and to push back the
+unmanageable wealth of hair under it, ere he rose; and he came
+forward and spoke with kind courtesy, as he observed the
+wanderer&rsquo;s worn air and feeble step.&nbsp; &ldquo;Dost need
+a night&rsquo;s lodging, holy palmer?&nbsp; My mother will make
+thee welcome, if thou canst climb as high as the castle
+yonder.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The pilgrim made an obeisance, but, instead of answering,
+demanded hastily, &ldquo;See I yonder the bearing of
+Schlangenwald?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Even so.&nbsp; Schloss Schlangenwald is about a league
+further on, and thou wilt find a kind reception there, if thither
+thou art bent.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is that Graff Wolfgang&rsquo;s tomb?&rdquo; still
+eagerly pursued the pilgrim; and receiving a sign in the
+affirmative, &ldquo;What was his end?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He fell in a skirmish.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By whose hand?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By mine.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ha!&rdquo; and the pilgrim surveyed him with
+undisguised astonishment; then, without another word, took up his
+staff and limped out of the building, but not on the road to
+Schlangenwald.&nbsp; It was nearly a quarter of an hour
+afterwards that he was overtaken by the young knight and the
+little lady on their horses, just where the new road to the
+castle parted from the old way by the Eagle&rsquo;s Ladder.&nbsp;
+The knight reined up as he saw the poor man&rsquo;s slow, painful
+steps, and said, &ldquo;So thou art not bound for
+Schlangenwald?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I would to the village, so please you&mdash;to the
+shrine of the Blessed Friedmund.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, at this rate thou wilt not be there till
+midnight,&rdquo; said the young knight, springing off his horse;
+&ldquo;thou canst never brook our sharp stones!&nbsp; See,
+Thekla, do thou ride on with Heinz to tell the mother I am
+bringing her a holy pilgrim to tend.&nbsp; And thou, good man,
+mount my old gray.&nbsp; Fear not; she is steady and sure-footed,
+and hath of late been used to a lame rider.&nbsp; Ah! that is
+well.&nbsp; Thou hast been in the saddle before.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>To go afoot for the sake of giving a lift to a holy wayfarer
+was one of the most esteemed acts of piety of the Middle Age, so
+that no one durst object to it, and the palmer did no more than
+utter a suppressed murmur of acknowledgment as he seated himself
+on horseback, the young knight walking by his rein.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;But what is this?&rdquo; he exclaimed, almost with
+dismay.&nbsp; &ldquo;A road to the castle up here!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, we find it a great convenience.&nbsp; Thou art
+surely from these parts?&rdquo; added the knight.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was a man-at-arms in the service of the Baron,&rdquo;
+was the answer, in an odd, muffled tone.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What!&mdash;of my grandfather!&rdquo; was the
+exclamation.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No!&rdquo; gruffly.&nbsp; &ldquo;Of old Freiherr
+Eberhard.&nbsp; Not of any of the Wildschloss crew.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I am not a Wildschloss!&nbsp; I am grandson to
+Freiherr Eberhard!&nbsp; Oh, wast thou with him and my father
+when they were set upon in the hostel?&rdquo; he cried, looking
+eagerly up to the pilgrim; but the man kept his broad-leaved hat
+slouched over his face, and only muttered, &ldquo;The son of
+Christina!&rdquo; the last word so low that Ebbo was not sure
+that he caught it, and the next moment the old warrior exclaimed
+exultingly, &ldquo;And you have had vengeance on them!&nbsp;
+When&mdash;how&mdash;where?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Last harvest-tide&mdash;at the Debateable
+Strand,&rdquo; said Ebbo, never able to speak of the encounter
+without a weight at his heart, but drawn on by the earnestness of
+the old foe of Schlangenwald.&nbsp; &ldquo;It was a meeting in
+full career&mdash;lances broken, sword-stroke on either
+hand.&nbsp; I was sore wounded, but my sword went through his
+collar-bone.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well struck! good stroke!&rdquo; cried the pilgrim, in
+rapture.&nbsp; &ldquo;And with that sword?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;With this sword.&nbsp; Didst know it?&rdquo; said Ebbo,
+drawing the weapon, and giving it to the old man, who held it for
+a few moments, weighed it affectionately, and with a long low
+sigh restored it, saying, &ldquo;It is well.&nbsp; You and that
+blade have paid off the score.&nbsp; I should be content.&nbsp;
+Let me dismount.&nbsp; I know my way to the hermitage.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, what is this?&rdquo; said Ebbo; &ldquo;thou must
+have rest and food.&nbsp; The hermitage is empty, scarce
+habitable.&nbsp; My mother will not be balked of the care of thy
+bleeding feet.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But let me go, ere I bring evil on you all.&nbsp; I can
+pray up there, and save my soul, but I cannot see it
+all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;See what?&rdquo; said Ebbo, again trying to see his
+guest&rsquo;s face.&nbsp; &ldquo;There may be changes, but an old
+faithful follower of my father&rsquo;s must ever be
+welcome.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not when his wife has taken a new lord,&rdquo; growled
+the stranger, bitterly, &ldquo;and he a Wildschloss!&nbsp; Young
+man, I could have pardoned aught else!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know not who you may be who talk of pardoning my
+lady-mother,&rdquo; said Ebbo, &ldquo;but new lord she has
+neither taken nor will take.&nbsp; She has refused every offer;
+and, now that Schlangenwald with his last breath confessed that
+he slew not my father, but sold him to the Turks, I have been
+only awaiting recovery from my wound to go in search of
+him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who then is yonder child, who told me she was
+Wildschloss?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;That child,&rdquo; said Ebbo, with half a smile and
+half a blush, &ldquo;is my wife, the daughter of Wildschloss, who
+prayed me to espouse her thus early, that so my mother might
+bring her up.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>By this time they had reached the castle court, now a
+well-kept, lordly-looking enclosure, where the pilgrim looked
+about him as one bewildered.&nbsp; He was so infirm that Ebbo
+carefully helped him up the stone stairs to the hall, where he
+already saw his mother prepared for the hospitable reception of
+the palmer.&nbsp; Leaving him at the entrance, Ebbo crossed the
+hall to say to her in a low voice, &ldquo;This pilgrim is one of
+the old lanzknechts of my grandfather&rsquo;s time.&nbsp; I
+wonder whether you or Heinz will know him.&nbsp; One of the old
+sort&mdash;supremely discontented at change.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And thou hast walked up, and wearied thyself!&rdquo;
+exclaimed Christina, grieved to see her son&rsquo;s halting
+step.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A rest will soon cure that,&rdquo; said Ebbo, seating
+himself as he spoke on a settle near the hall fire; but the next
+moment a strange wild low shriek from his mother made him start
+up and spring to her side.&nbsp; She stood with hands clasped,
+and wondering eyes.&nbsp; The pilgrim&mdash;his hat on the
+ground, his white head and rugged face displayed&mdash;was gazing
+as though devouring her with his eyes, murmuring,
+&ldquo;Unchanged! unchanged!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is this!&rdquo; thundered the young Baron.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;What are you doing to the lady?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hush! hush, Ebbo!&rdquo; exclaimed Christina.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;It is thy father!&nbsp; On thy knees!&nbsp; Thy father is
+come!&nbsp; It is our son, my own lord.&nbsp; Oh, embrace
+him!&nbsp; Kneel to him, Ebbo!&rdquo; she wildly cried.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hold, mother,&rdquo; said Ebbo, keeping his arm round
+her, though she struggled against him, for he felt some doubts as
+he looked back at his walk with the stranger, and remembered
+Heinz&rsquo;s want of recognition.&nbsp; &ldquo;Is it certain
+that this is indeed my father?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Ebbo,&rdquo; was the cry of poor Christina, almost
+beside herself, &ldquo;how could I not be sure?&nbsp; I know
+him!&nbsp; I feel it!&nbsp; Oh, my lord, bear with him.&nbsp; It
+is his wont to be so loving!&nbsp; Ebbo, cannot you see it is
+himself?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The young fellow is right,&rdquo; said the stranger,
+slowly.&nbsp; &ldquo;I will answer all he may demand.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Forgive me,&rdquo; said Ebbo, abashed, &ldquo;forgive
+me;&rdquo; and, as his mother broke from him, he fell upon his
+knee; but he only heard his father&rsquo;s cry, &ldquo;Ah!&nbsp;
+Stine, Stine, thou alone art the same,&rdquo; and, looking up,
+saw her, with her face hidden in the white beard, quivering with
+a rapture such as he had never seen in her before.&nbsp; It
+seemed long to him ere she looked up again in her husband&rsquo;s
+face to sob on: &ldquo;My son!&nbsp; Oh! my beautiful
+twins!&nbsp; Our son!&nbsp; Oh, see him, dear lord!&rdquo;&nbsp;
+And the pilgrim turned to hear Ebbo&rsquo;s &ldquo;Pardon,
+honoured father, and your blessing.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Almost bashfully the pilgrim laid his hand on the dark head,
+and murmured something; then said, &ldquo;Up, then!&nbsp; The
+slayer of Schlangenwald kneeling!&nbsp; Ah!&nbsp; Stine, I knew
+thy little head was wondrous wise, but I little thought thou
+wouldst breed him up to avenge us on old Wolfgang!&nbsp; So
+slender a lad too!&nbsp; Ha!&nbsp; Schneiderlein, old rogue, I
+knew thee,&rdquo; holding out his hand.&nbsp; &ldquo;So thou
+didst get home safe?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ay, my lord; though, if I left you alive, never more
+will I call a man dead,&rdquo; said Heinz.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Worse luck for me&mdash;till now,&rdquo; said Sir
+Eberhard, whose tones, rather than his looks, carried perfect
+conviction of his identity.&nbsp; It was the old homely accent,
+and gruff good-humoured voice, but with something subdued and
+broken in the tone.&nbsp; His features had grown like his
+father&rsquo;s, but he looked much older than ever the hale old
+mountaineer had done, or than his real age; so worn and lined was
+his face, his skin tanned, his eyelids and temples puckered by
+burning sun, his hair and beard white as the inane of his old
+mare, the proud Adlerstein port entirely gone.&nbsp; He stooped
+even more without his staff than with it; and, when he yielded
+himself with a sigh of repose to his wife&rsquo;s tendance, she
+found that he had not merely the ordinary hurts of travelling,
+but that there were old festering scars on his ankles.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;The gyves,&rdquo; he said, as she looked up at him, with
+startled, pitying eyes.&nbsp; &ldquo;Little deemed I that they
+would ever come under thy tender hands.&rdquo;&nbsp; As he almost
+timidly smoothed the braid of dark hair on her
+brow&mdash;&ldquo;So they never burnt thee for a witch after all,
+little one?&nbsp; I thought my mother would never keep her hands
+off thee, and used to fancy I heard the crackling of the
+flame.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She spared me for my children&rsquo;s sake,&rdquo; said
+Christina; &ldquo;and truly Heaven has been very good to us, but
+never so much as now.&nbsp; My dear lord, will it weary thee too
+much to come to the castle chapel and give thanks?&rdquo; she
+said, timidly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;With all my heart,&rdquo; he answered, earnestly.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I would go even on my knees.&nbsp; We were not without
+masses even in Tunis; but, when Italian and Spaniard would be
+ransomed, and there was no mind of the German, I little thought I
+should ever sing Brother Lambert&rsquo;s psalm about turning our
+captivity as rivers in the south.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ebbo was hovering round, supplying all that was needed for his
+father&rsquo;s comfort; but his parents were so completely
+absorbed in one another that he was scarcely noticed, and, what
+perhaps pained him more, there was no word about Friedel.&nbsp;
+He felt this almost an injustice to the brother who had been
+foremost in embracing the idea of the unknown father, and
+scarcely understood how his parents shrank from any sorrowful
+thought that might break in on their new-found joy, nor that he
+himself was so strange and new a being in his father&rsquo;s
+eyes, that to imagine him doubled was hardly possible to the
+tardy, dulled capacity, which as yet seemed unable to feel
+anything but that here was home, and Christina.</p>
+<p>When the chapel bell rang, and the pair rose to offer their
+thanksgiving, Ebbo dutifully offered his support, but was
+absolutely unseen, so fondly was Sir Eberhard leaning on his
+wife; and her bright exulting smile and shake of the head gave an
+absolute pang to the son who had hitherto been all in all to
+her.</p>
+<p>He followed, and, as they passed Friedmund&rsquo;s coffin, he
+thought his mother pointed to it, but even of this he was
+uncertain.&nbsp; The pair knelt side by side with hands locked
+together, while notes of praise rose from all voices; and
+meantime Ebbo, close to that coffin, strove to share the joy, and
+to lift up a heart that <i>would</i> sink in the midst of
+self-reproach for undutifulness, and would dislike the thought of
+the rude untaught man, holding aloof from him, likely to view him
+with distrust and jealousy, and to undo all he had achieved, and
+further absorbing the mother, the mother who was to him all the
+world, and for whose sake he had given his best years to the
+child-wife, as yet nothing to him.</p>
+<p>It was reversing the natural order of things that, after
+reigning from infancy, he should have to give up at eighteen to
+one of the last generation; and some such thought rankled in his
+mind when the whole household trooped joyfully out of the chapel
+to prepare a banquet for their old new lord, and their young old
+lord was left alone.</p>
+<p>Alone with the coffin where the armour lay upon the white
+cross, Ebbo threw himself on his knees, and laid his head upon
+it, murmuring, &ldquo;Ah, Friedel!&nbsp; Friedel!&nbsp; Would
+that we had changed places!&nbsp; Thou wouldst brook it
+better.&nbsp; At least thou didst never know what it is to be
+lonely.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Herr Baron!&rdquo; said a little voice.</p>
+<p><a name="page269"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 269</span>His
+first movement was impatient.&nbsp; Thekla was apt to pursue him
+wherever he did not want her; but here he had least expected her,
+for she had a great fear of that coffin, and could hardly be
+brought to the chapel at prayer times, when she generally
+occupied herself with fancies that the empty helmet glared at
+her.&nbsp; But now Ebbo saw her standing as near as she durst,
+with a sweet wistfulness in her eyes, such as he had never seen
+there before.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is it, Thekla?&rdquo; he said.&nbsp; &ldquo;Art
+sent to call me?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No; only I saw that you stayed here all alone,&rdquo;
+she said, clasping her hands.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p269b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"&ldquo;&lsquo;No; only I saw that you stayed here all
+alone,&rsquo; she said, clasping her hands.&rdquo;  Page 269"
+title=
+"&ldquo;&lsquo;No; only I saw that you stayed here all
+alone,&rsquo; she said, clasping her hands.&rdquo;  Page 269"
+src="images/p269s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>&ldquo;Must I not be alone, child?&rdquo; he said,
+bitterly.&nbsp; &ldquo;Here lies my brother.&nbsp; My mother has
+her husband again!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you have me!&rdquo; cried Thekla; and, as he looked
+up between amusement and melancholy, he met such a loving eager
+little face, that he could not help holding out his arms, and
+letting her cling to him.&nbsp; &ldquo;Indeed,&rdquo; she said,
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll never be afraid of the helmet again, if only
+you will not lay down your head there, and say you are
+alone.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Never, Thekla! while you are my little wife,&rdquo;
+said he; and, child as she was, there was strange solace to his
+heart in the eyes that, once vacant and wondering, had now gained
+a look of love and intelligence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What are you going to do?&rdquo; she said, shuddering a
+little, as he rose and laid his hand on Friedel&rsquo;s
+sword.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;To make thee gird on thine own knight&rsquo;s
+sword,&rdquo; said Ebbo, unbuckling that which he had so long
+worn.&nbsp; &ldquo;Friedel,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;thou wouldst
+give me thine.&nbsp; Let me take up thy temper with it, thine
+open-hearted love and humility.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He guided Thekla&rsquo;s happy little fingers to the fastening
+of the belt, and then, laying his hand on hers, said gravely,
+&ldquo;Thekla, never speak of what I said just now&mdash;not even
+to the mother.&nbsp; Remember, it is thy husband&rsquo;s first
+secret.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And feeling no longer solitary when his hand was in the clasp
+of hers, he returned to the hall, where his father was installed
+in the baronial chair, in which Ebbo had been at home from
+babyhood.&nbsp; His mother&rsquo;s exclamation showed that her
+son had been wanting to her; and she looked fuller than ever of
+bliss when Ebbo gravely stood before his father, and presented
+him with the good old sword that he had sent to his unborn
+son.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You are like to use it more than I,&mdash;nay, you have
+used it to some purpose,&rdquo; said he.&nbsp; &ldquo;Yet must I
+keep mine old comrade at least a little while.&nbsp; Wife, son,
+sword, should make one feel the same man again, but it is all too
+wonderful!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>All that evening, and long after, his hand from time to time
+sought the hilt of his sword, as if that touch above all proved
+to him that he was again a free noble in his own castle.</p>
+<p>The story he told was thus.&nbsp; The swoon in which Heinz had
+left him had probably saved his life by checking the gush of
+blood, and he had known no more till he found himself in a rough
+cart among the corpses.&nbsp; At Schlangenwald&rsquo;s castle he
+had been found still breathing, and had been flung into a
+dungeon, where he lay unattended, for how long he never knew,
+since all the early part of the time was lost in the clouds of
+fever.&nbsp; On coarse fare and scanty drink, in that dark vault,
+he had struggled by sheer obstinacy of vitality into
+recovery.&nbsp; In the very height of midsummer alone did the sun
+peep through the grating of his cell, and he had newly hailed
+this cheerful visitor when he was roughly summoned, placed on
+horseback with eyes and hands bound, and only allowed sight again
+to find himself among a herd of his fellow Germans in the Turkish
+camp.&nbsp; They were the prisoners of the terrible Turkish raid
+of 1475, when Georg von Schenk and fourteen other noblemen of
+Austria and Styria were all taken in one unhappy fight, and
+dragged away into captivity, with hundreds of lower rank.</p>
+<p>To Sir Eberhard the change had been greatly for the
+better.&nbsp; The Turk had treated him much better than the
+Christian; and walking in the open air, chained to a German
+comrade, was far pleasanter than pining in his lonely
+dungeon.&nbsp; At Adrianople, an offer had been made to each of
+the captives, if they would become Moslems, of entering the
+Ottoman service as Spahis; but with one voice they had refused,
+and had then been draughted into different divisions.&nbsp; The
+fifteen nobles, who had been offered for ransom, were taken to
+Constantinople, to await its arrival, and they had promised Sir
+Eberhard to publish his fate on their return to their homes; and,
+though he knew the family resources too well to have many hopes,
+he was rather hurt to find that their promise had been
+unfulfilled.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Alas! they had no opportunity,&rdquo; said Ebbo.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Gulden were scarce, or were all in Kaisar
+Friedrich&rsquo;s great chest; the ransoms could not be raised,
+and all died in captivity.&nbsp; I heard about it when I was at
+Wurms last month.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The boy at Wurms?&rdquo; almost gasped Sir Eberhard in
+amaze.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I had to be there about matters concerning the
+Wildschloss lands and the bridge,&rdquo; said Ebbo; &ldquo;and
+both Dankwart von Schlangenwald and I made special inquiries
+about that company in case you should have shared their
+fate.&nbsp; I hoped to have set forth at that time, but the
+Kaisar said I was still too lame, and refused me license, or
+letters to the Sultan.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You would not have found me,&rdquo; said his father,
+narrating how he with a large troop of captives had been driven
+down to the coast; where they were transferred to a Moorish
+slave-dealer, who shipped them off for Tunis.&nbsp; Here, after
+their first taste of the miseries of a sea life, the alternative
+of Islam or slavery was again put before them.&nbsp; &ldquo;And,
+by the holy stone of Nic&aelig;a,&rdquo; said Sir Eberhard,
+&ldquo;I thought by that time that the infidels had the advantage
+of us in good-will and friendliness; but, when they told me women
+had no souls at all, no more than a horse or dog, I knew it was
+but an empty dream of a religion; for did I not know that my
+little Ermentrude, and thou, Stine, had finer, clearer, wiser
+souls than ever a man I had known?&nbsp; &lsquo;Nay, nay,&rsquo;
+quoth I, &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll cast in my lot where I may meet my
+wife hereafter, should I never see her here.&rsquo;&rdquo;&nbsp;
+He had then been allotted to a corsair, and had thenceforth been
+chained to the bench of rowers, between the two decks, where, in
+stifling heat and stench, in storm or calm, healthy or diseased,
+the wretched oarsmen were compelled to play the part of machinery
+in propelling the vessel, in order to capture Christian
+ships&mdash;making exertions to which only the perpetual lash of
+the galley-master could have urged their exhausted frames; often
+not desisting for twenty or thirty hours, and rowing still while
+sustenance was put into their mouths by their drivers.&nbsp; Many
+a man drew has last breath with his last stroke, and was at the
+first leisure moment hurled into the waves.&nbsp; It was the
+description that had so deeply moved Friedel long ago, and
+Christina wept over it, as she looked at the bowed form once so
+proud and free, and thought of the unhealed scars.&nbsp; But
+there, her husband added, he had been chained next to a holy
+friar of German blood, like himself a captive of the great
+Styrian raid; and, while some blasphemed in their misery, or
+wildly chid their patron saints, this good man strove to show
+that all was to work out good; he had a pious saying for all that
+befell, and adored the will of God in thus purifying him;
+&ldquo;And, if it were thus with a saint like him, I thought,
+what must it be with a rough freebooting godless sinner such as I
+had been?&nbsp; See&rdquo;&mdash;and he took out a rosary of
+strung bladders of seaweed; &ldquo;that is what he left me when
+he died, and what I meant to have been telling for ever up in the
+hermitage.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He died, then?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ay&mdash;he died on the shore of Corsica, while most of
+the dogs were off harrying a village inland, and we had a sort of
+respite, or I trow he would have rowed till his last gasp.&nbsp;
+How he prayed for the poor wretches they were gone to
+attack!&mdash;ay, and for all of us&mdash;for me
+also&mdash;There&rsquo;s enough of it.&nbsp; Such talk skills not
+now.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was plain that Sir Eberhard had learnt more Christianity in
+the hold of his Moorish pirate ship than ever in the Holy Roman
+Empire, and a weight was lifted off his son&rsquo;s mind by
+finding that he had vowed never to return to a life of violence,
+even though fancying a life of penance in a hermitage the only
+alternative.</p>
+<p>Ebbo asked if the Genoese merchant, Ser Gian Battista dei
+Battiste, had indeed been one of his fellow-captives.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ha!&mdash;what?&rdquo; and on the repetition,
+&ldquo;Truly I knew him, Merchant Gian as we used to call him;
+but you twang off his name as they speak it in his own stately
+city.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Christina smiled.&nbsp; &ldquo;Ebbo learnt the Italian tongue
+this winter from our chaplain, who had studied at Bologna.&nbsp;
+He was told it would aid in his quest of you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Tell me not!&rdquo; said the traveller, holding up his
+hands in deprecation; &ldquo;the Junker is worse than a
+priest!&nbsp; And yet he killed old Wolfgang!&nbsp; But what of
+Gian?&nbsp; Hold,&mdash;did not he, when I was with him at Genoa,
+tell me a story of being put into a dungeon in a mountain
+fortress in Germany, and released by a pair of young lads with
+eyes beaming in the sunrise, who vanished just as they brought
+him to a cloister?&nbsp; Nay, he deemed it a miracle of the
+saints, and hung up a votive picture thereof at the shrine of the
+holy Cosmo and Damian.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He was not so far wrong in deeming <i>one</i> of the
+lads near of kin to the holy ones,&rdquo; said Christina,
+softly.</p>
+<p>And Ebbo briefly narrated the adventure, when it evidently
+appeared that his having led at least one foray gave his father
+for the first time a fellow-feeling for him, and a sense that he
+was one of the true old stock; but, when he heard of the release,
+he growled, &ldquo;So!&nbsp; How would a lad have fared who so
+acted in my time?&nbsp; My poor old mother!&nbsp; She must have
+been changed indeed not to have scourged him till he had no
+strength to cry out.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He was my prisoner!&rdquo; said Ebbo, in his old
+defiant tone; &ldquo;I had the right.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, well! the Junker has always been master here, and I
+never!&rdquo; said the elder knight, looking round rather
+piteously; and Ebbo, with a sudden movement, exclaimed,
+&ldquo;Nay, sir, you are the only lord and master, and I stand
+ready to be the first to obey you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You!&nbsp; A fine young book-learned scholar, already
+knighted, and with all these Wildschloss lands too!&rdquo; said
+Sir Eberhard, gazing with a strange puzzled look at the delicate
+but spirited features of this strange perplexing son.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Reach hither your hand, boy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And as he compared the slender, shapely hand of such
+finely-textured skin with the breadth of his own horny
+giant&rsquo;s paw, he tossed it from him, shaking his head with a
+gesture as if he had no commands for such feminine-looking
+fingers to execute, and mortifying Ebbo not a little.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Christina, apologetically, &ldquo;it
+always grieved your mother that the boys would resemble me and
+mine.&nbsp; But, when daylight comes, Ebbo will show you that he
+has not lost the old German strength.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No doubt&mdash;no doubt,&rdquo; said Sir Eberhard,
+hastily, &ldquo;since he has slain Schlangenwald; and, if the
+former state of things be at an end, the less he takes after the
+ancient stock the better.&nbsp; But I am an old man now, Stine,
+though thou look&rsquo;st fair and fresh as ever, and I do not
+know what to make of these things.&nbsp; White napery on the
+table; glass drinking things;&mdash;nay, were it not for thee and
+the Schneiderlein, I should not know I was at home.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He was led back to his narration, and it appeared that, after
+some years spent at the oar, certain bleedings from the lungs,
+the remains of his wound, had become so much more severe as to
+render him useless for naval purposes; and, as he escaped
+actually dying during a voyage, he was allowed to lie by on
+coming into port till he had in some degree recovered, and then
+had been set to labour at the fortifications, chained to another
+prisoner, and toiling between the burning sand and burning sun,
+but treated with less horrible severity than the necessities of
+the sea had occasioned on board ship, and experiencing the
+benefit of intercourse with the better class of captives, whom
+their miserable fate had thrown into the hands of the Moors.</p>
+<p>It was a favourite almsdeed among the Proven&ccedil;als,
+Spaniards, and Italians to send money for the redemption of
+prisoners to the Moors, and there was a regular agency for
+ransoms through the Jews; but German captives were such an
+exception that no one thought of them, and many a time had the
+summons come for such and such a slave by name, or for five poor
+Sicilians, twenty Genoese, a dozen Marseillais, or the like, but
+still no word for the Swabian; till he had made up his mind that
+he should either leave his bones in the hot mud of the harbour,
+or be only set free by some gallant descent either of the brave
+King of Portugal, or of the Knights of Rhodes, of whom the
+captives were ever dreaming and whispering.</p>
+<p>At length his own slave name was shouted; he was called up by
+the captain of his gang, and, while expecting some fresh
+punishment, or, maybe, to find himself sold into some domestic
+form of slavery, he was set before a Jewish agent, who, after
+examining him on his name, country, and station, and comparing
+his answers with a paper of instructions, informed him that he
+was ransomed, caused his fetters to be struck off, and shipped
+him off at once for Genoa, with orders to the captain to consign
+him to the merchant Signor del Battiste.&nbsp; By him Sir
+Eberhard had been received with the warmest hospitality, and
+treated as befitted his original station, but Battista disclaimed
+the merit of having ransomed him.&nbsp; He had but acted, he
+said, as the agent of an Austrian gentleman, from whom he had
+received orders to inquire after the Swabian baron who had been
+his fellow-captive, and, if he were still living, to pay his
+ransom, and bring him home.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The name&mdash;the name!&rdquo; eagerly asked Ebbo and
+his mother at once.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The name?&nbsp; Gian was wont to make bad work of our
+honest German names, but I tried to learn this&mdash;being so
+beholden to him.&nbsp; I even caused it to be spelt over to me,
+but my letters long ago went from me.&nbsp; It seems to me that
+the man is a knight-errant, like those of thy ballads,
+Stine&mdash;one Ritter Theur&mdash;Theur&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Theurdank!&rdquo; cried Ebbo.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ay, Theurdank.&nbsp; What, you know him?&nbsp; There is
+nothing you and your mother don&rsquo;t know, I
+believe.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Know him!&nbsp; Father, he is our greatest and
+noblest!&nbsp; He has been kind to me beyond description.&nbsp;
+He is the Kaisar!&nbsp; Now I see why he had that strange arch
+look which so vexed me when he forbade me on my allegiance to set
+forth till my lameness should be gone!&nbsp; Long ago had he
+asked me all about Gian Battista.&nbsp; To him he must have
+written.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The Kaisar!&rdquo; said Sir Eberhard.&nbsp; &ldquo;Nay,
+the poor fellows I left in Turkey ever said he was too close of
+fist for them to have hope from him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh! that was old Kaisar Friedrich.&nbsp; This is our
+own gallant Maximilian&mdash;a knight as true and brave as ever
+was paladin,&rdquo; said Christina; &ldquo;and most truly loving
+and prizing our Ebbo.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And yet I wish&mdash;I wish,&rdquo; said Ebbo,
+&ldquo;that he had let me win my father&rsquo;s liberty for
+myself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yea, well,&rdquo; said his father, &ldquo;there spoke
+the Adlerstein.&nbsp; We never were wont to be beholden to king
+or kaisar.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay,&rdquo; say Ebbo, after a moment&rsquo;s
+recollection, colouring as he spoke; &ldquo;it is true that I
+deserved it not.&nbsp; Nay, Sir Father, it is well.&nbsp; You owe
+your freedom in very truth to the son you have not known.&nbsp;
+It was he who treasured up the thought of the captive German
+described by the merchant, and even dreamt of it, while never
+doubting of your death; it was he who caught up
+Schlangenwald&rsquo;s first hint that you lived, while I, in my
+pride, passed it by as merely meant to perplex me; it was he who
+had formed an absolute purpose of obtaining some certainty; and
+at last, when my impetuosity had brought on the fatal battle, it
+was he who bought with his own life the avowal of your
+captivity.&nbsp; I had hoped to have fulfilled Friedel&rsquo;s
+trust, and to have redeemed my own backwardness; but it is not to
+be.&nbsp; While I was yet lying helpless on my bed, the Emperor
+has taken it out of my power.&nbsp; Mother, you receive him from
+Friedel&rsquo;s hands, after all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And well am I thankful that so it should be,&rdquo;
+said Christina.&nbsp; &ldquo;Ah, Ebbo! sorely should I have pined
+with anxiety when thou wast gone.&nbsp; And thy father knows that
+thou hadst the full purpose.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yea, I know it,&rdquo; said the old man; &ldquo;and,
+after all, small blame to him even if he had not.&nbsp; He never
+saw me, and light grieves the heart for what the eye hath not
+seen.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But,&rdquo; added the wife, &ldquo;since the Romish
+king freed you, dear lord, cared he not better for your journey
+than to let you come in this forlorn plight?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>This, it appeared, was far from being his deliverer&rsquo;s
+fault.&nbsp; Money had been supplied, and Sir Eberhard had
+travelled as far as Aosta with a party of Italian merchants; but
+no sooner had he parted with them than he was completely
+astray.&nbsp; His whole experience of life had been as a robber
+baron or as a slave, and he knew not how to take care of himself
+as a peaceful traveller; he suffered fresh extortions at every
+stage, and after a few days was plundered by his guides, beaten,
+and left devoid of all means of continuing the journey to which
+he could hardly hope for a cheerful end.&nbsp; He did not expect
+to find his mother living,&mdash;far less that his unowned wife
+could have survived the perils in which he had involved her; and
+he believed that his ancestral home would, if not a ruin, be held
+by his foes, or at best by the rival branch of the family, whose
+welcome of the outlawed heir would probably be to a dungeon, if
+not a halter.&nbsp; Yet the only magnet on earth for the lonely
+wanderer was his native mountain, where from some old peasant he
+might learn how his fair young bride had perished, and perhaps
+the sins of his youth might be expiated by continual prayer in
+the hermitage chapel where his sister lay buried, and whence he
+could see the crags for which his eye and heart had craved so
+long with the home-sickness of a mountaineer.</p>
+<p>And now, when his own Christina had welcomed him with all the
+overflow of her loving heart, unchanged save that hers had become
+a tenderer yet more dignified loveliness; when his gallant son,
+in all the bloom of young manhood, received him with dutiful
+submission; when the castle, in a state of defence, prosperity,
+and comfort of which he had never dreamt, was again his
+own;&mdash;still the old man was bewildered, and sometimes
+oppressed almost to distress.&nbsp; He had, as it were, fallen
+asleep in one age of the world, and wakened in another, and it
+seemed as if he really wished to defer his wakening, or else that
+repose was an absolute novelty to him; for he sat dozing in his
+chair in the sun the whole of the next day, and scarcely
+spoke.</p>
+<p>Ebbo, who felt it a necessity to come to an understanding of
+the terms on which they were to stand, tried to refer matters to
+him, and to explain the past, but he was met sometimes by a shake
+of the head, sometimes by a nod&mdash;not of assent, but of
+sleep; and his mother advised him not to harass the wearied
+traveller, but to leave him to himself at least for that day, and
+let him take his own time for exertion, letting things meantime
+go on as usual.&nbsp; Ebbo obeyed, but with a load at his heart,
+as he felt that all he was doing was but provisional, and that it
+would be his duty to resign all that he had planned, and partly
+executed, to this incompetent, ignorant rule.&nbsp; He could
+certainly, when not serving the Emperor, go and act for himself
+at Thekla&rsquo;s dower castle of Felsenbach, and his mother
+might save things from going to utter ruin at Adlerstein; but no
+reflection or self-reproach could make it otherwise than a bitter
+pill to any Telemachus to have to resign to one so unlike Ulysses
+in all but the length of his wanderings,&mdash;one, also, who
+seemed only half to like, and not at all to comprehend, his
+Telemachus.</p>
+<p>Meantime Ebbo attended to such matters as were sure to come
+each day before the Herr Freiherr.&nbsp; Now it was a question
+whether the stone for the mill should be quarried where it would
+undermine a bit of grass land, or further on, where the road was
+rougher; now Berend&rsquo;s swine had got into Barthel&rsquo;s
+rye, and Barthel had severely hurt one of them&mdash;the Herr
+Freiherr&rsquo;s interference could alone prevent a hopeless
+quarrel; now a waggon with ironwork for the mill claimed
+exemption from toll as being for the Baron: and he must send down
+the toll, to obviate injustice towards Schlangenwald and
+Ulm.&nbsp; Old Ulrich&rsquo;s grandson, who had run away for a
+lanzknecht, had sent a letter home (written by a comrade), the
+Baron must read and answer it.&nbsp; Steinmark&rsquo;s son wanted
+to be a poor student: the Herr Freiherr must write him a letter
+of recommendation.&nbsp; Mother Grethel&rsquo;s ewe had fallen
+into a cleft; her son came to borrow a rope, and ask aid, and the
+Baron must superintend the hoisting the poor beast up
+again.&nbsp; Hans had found the track of a wolf, and knew the
+hole where a litter of cubs abode; the Freiherr, his wolf-hound,
+and his spear were wanted for their destruction.&nbsp; Dietrich
+could not tell how to manage his new arquebus: the Baron must
+teach him to take aim.&nbsp; Then there was a letter from Ulm to
+invite the Baron to consult on the tax demanded by the Emperor
+for his Italian war, and how far it should concern the profits of
+the bridge; and another letter from the Markgraf of Wurtemburg,
+as chief of the Swabian League, requesting the Lord of Adlerstein
+to be on the look-out for a band of robbers, who were reported to
+be in neighbouring hills, after being hunted out of some of their
+other lurking-places.</p>
+<p>That very night, or rather nearly at the dawn of a summer
+morning, there was a yelling below the castle, and a flashing of
+torches, and tidings rang through it that a boor on the outskirts
+of the mountain had had his ricks fired and his cattle driven by
+the robbers, and his young daughters carried off.&nbsp; Old Sir
+Eberhard hobbled down to the hall in time to see weapons flashing
+as they were dealt out, to hear a clear decided voice giving
+orders, to listen to the tramp of horse, and watch more reitern
+pass out under the gateway than ever the castle had counted in
+his father&rsquo;s time.&nbsp; Then he went back to his bed, and
+when he came down in the morning, found all the womankind of the
+castle roasting and boiling.&nbsp; And, at noon, little Thekla
+came rushing down from the watch-tower with news that all were
+coming home up the Eagle&rsquo;s Steps, and she was sure
+<i>her</i> baron had sent her, and waved to her.&nbsp; Soon
+after, <i>her</i> baron in his glittering steel rode his
+cream-coloured charger (once Friedel&rsquo;s) into the castle
+court, followed by his exultant merrymen.&nbsp; They had
+overtaken the thieves in good time, made them captives, and
+recovered the spoil unhurt; and Heinz and Koppel made the castle
+ring with the deed of their young lord, who had forced the huge
+leader of the band to the earth, and kept him down by main
+strength till they could come to bind him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By main strength?&rdquo; slowly asked Sir Eberhard, who
+had been stirred into excitement.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He was a loose-limbed, awkward fellow,&rdquo; said
+Ebbo, &ldquo;less strong than he looked.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not only that, Sir,&rdquo; said Heinz, looking from his
+old master to his young one; &ldquo;but old iron is not a whit
+stronger than new steel, though the one looks full of might, and
+you would think the other but a toy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And what have you done with the rogues&rsquo;
+heads?&rdquo; asked the old knight.&nbsp; &ldquo;I looked to see
+them on your spears.&nbsp; Or have you hung them?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not so, Sir,&rdquo; said Ebbo.&nbsp; &ldquo;I sent the
+men off to Stuttgard with an escort.&nbsp; I dislike doing
+execution ourselves; it makes the men so lawless.&nbsp; Besides,
+this farmer was Schlangenwalder.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And yet he came to you for redress?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, for Sir Dankwart is at his commandery, and he and
+I agreed to look after each other&rsquo;s lands.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Sir Eberhard retired to his chair as if all had gone past his
+understanding, and thence he looked on while his son and wife
+hospitably regaled, and then dismissed, their auxiliaries in the
+rescue.</p>
+<p>Afterwards Christina told her son that she thought his father
+was rested, and would be better able to attend to him, and Ebbo,
+with a painful swelling in his heart, approached him
+deferentially, with a request that he would say what was his
+pleasure with regard to the Emperor, to whom acknowledgments must
+in the first place be made for his release, and next would arise
+the whole question of homage and investiture.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Look you here, fair son,&rdquo; said Sir Eberhard,
+rousing himself, &ldquo;these things are all past me.&nbsp;
+I&rsquo;ll have none of them.&nbsp; You and your Kaisar
+understand one another, and your homage is paid.&nbsp; It boots
+not changing all for an old fellow that is but come home to
+die.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, father, it is in the order of things that you
+should be lord here.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I never was lord here, and, what is more, I would not,
+and could not be.&nbsp; Son, I marked you yesterday.&nbsp; You
+are master as never was my poor father, with all the bawling and
+blows that used to rule the house, while these fellows mind you
+at a word, in a voice as quiet as your mother&rsquo;s.&nbsp;
+Besides, what should I do with all these mills and bridges of
+yours, and Diets, and Leagues, and councils enough to addle a
+man&rsquo;s brain?&nbsp; No, no; I could once slay a bear, or
+strike a fair stroke at a Schlangenwalder, but even they got the
+better of me, and I am good for nothing now but to save my
+soul.&nbsp; I had thought to do it as a hermit up there; but my
+little Christina thinks the saints will be just as well pleased
+if I tell my beads here, with her to help me, and I know that way
+I shall not make so many mistakes.&nbsp; So, young Sir, if you
+can give the old man a corner of the hearth while he lives, he
+will never interfere with you.&nbsp; And, maybe, if the castle
+were in jeopardy in your absence, with that new-fangled road up
+to it, he could tell the fellows how to hold it out.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Sir&mdash;dear father,&rdquo; cried the ardent Ebbo,
+&ldquo;this is not a fit state of things.&nbsp; I will spare you
+all trouble and care; only make me not undutiful; take your own
+place.&nbsp; Mother, convince him!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, my son,&rdquo; said Sir Eberhard; &ldquo;your
+mother sees what is best for me.&nbsp; I only want to be left to
+her to rest a little while, and repent of my sinful life.&nbsp;
+As Heinz says, the rusty old iron must lie by while the new steel
+does the work.&nbsp; It is quiet that I need.&nbsp; It is joy
+enough for me to see what she has made you, and all around.&nbsp;
+Ah!&nbsp; Stine, my white dove, I knew thine was a wise head; but
+when I left thee, gentle little frightened, fluttering thing, how
+little could I have thought that all alone, unaided, thou wouldst
+have kept that little head above water, and made thy son work out
+all these changes&mdash;thy doing&mdash;and so I know they are
+good and seemly.&nbsp; I see thou hast made him clerkly,
+quick-witted, and yet a good knight.&nbsp; Ah! thou didst tell me
+oft that our lonely pride was not high nor worthy fame.&nbsp;
+Stine, how didst do it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I did it not, dear husband; God did it for me.&nbsp; He
+gave the boys the loving, true tempers that worked out the
+rest!&nbsp; He shielded them and me in our days of
+peril.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, father,&rdquo; added Ebbo, &ldquo;Providence
+guarded us; but, above all, our chief blessing has been the
+mother who has made one of us a holy saint, and taught the other
+to seek after him!&nbsp; Father, I am glad you see how great has
+been the work of the Dove you brought to the Eagle&rsquo;s
+Nest.&rdquo;</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXV<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">THE STAR AND THE SPARK</span></h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> year 1531 has begun, and
+Schloss Adlerstein remains in its strength on the mountain side,
+but with a look of cultivation on its environs such as would have
+amazed Kunigunde.&nbsp; Vines run up trellises against the rocks;
+pot-herbs and flowers nestle in the nooks; outbuildings cluster
+round it; and even the grim old keep has a range of buildings
+connected with it, as if the household had entirely outgrown the
+capacities of the square tower.</p>
+<p>Yet the old hall is still the chief place of assembly, and now
+that it has been wainscoted, with a screen of carved wood to shut
+off the draughty passages, and a stove of bright tiles to
+increase the warmth, it is far more cheerful.&nbsp; Moreover, a
+window has been opened showing the rich green meadow below, with
+the bridge over the Braunwasser, and the little church, with a
+spire of pierced lace-work, and white cottages peeping out of the
+retreating forest.</p>
+<p>That is the window which the Lady Baroness loves.&nbsp; See
+her there, the lovely old lady of seventy-five&mdash;yes,
+lovelier than ever, for her sweet brown eyes have the same
+pensive, clear beauty, enhanced by the snowy whiteness of her
+hair, of which a soft braid shows over the pure pale brow beneath
+the white band, and sweeping black veil, that she has worn by
+right for twenty years.&nbsp; But the slight form is active and
+brisk, and there are ready smiles and looks of interest for the
+pretty fair-haired maidens, three in number, who run in and out
+from their household avocations to appeal to the &ldquo;dear
+grandmother,&rdquo; mischievously to tell of the direful yawns
+proceeding from brothers Ebbo and Gottfried over their studies
+with their tutor, or to gaze from the window and wonder if the
+father, with the two brothers, Friedel Max and Kasimir, will
+return from Ulm in time for the &ldquo;mid-day eating.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Ah! there they are.&nbsp; Quick-eyed Vittoria has seen the
+cavalcade first, and dances off to tell Ermentrude and Stine time
+enough to prepare their last batch of fritters for the
+new-comers; Ebbo and G&ouml;tz rush headlong down the hillside;
+and the Lady Baroness lays down her distaff, and gazes with eyes
+of satisfied content at the small party of horsemen climbing up
+the footpath.&nbsp; Then, when they have wound out of sight round
+a rock, she moves out towards the hall-door, with a light, quick
+step, for never yet has she resigned her great enjoyment, that of
+greeting her son on the steps of the porch&mdash;those steps
+where she once met such fearful news, but where that memory has
+been effaced by many a cheerful welcome.</p>
+<p>There, then, she stands, amid the bright throng of
+grandchildren, while the Baron and his sons spring from their
+horses and come up to her.&nbsp; The Baron doffs his Spanish hat,
+bends the knee, kisses her hand, and receives her kiss on his
+brow, with the fervour of a life-devotion, before he turns to
+accept the salutation of his daughters, and then takes her hand,
+with pretty affectionate ceremony, to hand her back to her
+seat.&nbsp; A few words pass between them.&nbsp; &ldquo;No,
+motherling,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;I signed it not; I will tell
+you all by and by.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And then the mid-day meal is served for the whole household,
+as of old, with the salt-cellar in the middle, but with a far
+larger company above it than when first we saw it.&nbsp; The
+seven young folks preserve a decorous silence, save when Fraulein
+Ermentrude&rsquo;s cookeries are good-naturedly complimented by
+her father, or when Baron Friedmund Maximilianus breaks out with
+some wonderful fact about new armour seen at Ulm.&nbsp; He is a
+handsome, fair, flaxen-haired young man&mdash;like the old
+Adlersteins, say the elder people&mdash;and full of honest gaiety
+and good nature, the special pride of his sisters; and no sooner
+is the meal over, than, with a formal entreaty for dismissal, all
+the seven, and all the dogs, move off together, to that favourite
+gathering-place round the stove, where all their merry tongues
+are let loose together.</p>
+<p>To them, the Herr Vater and the Frau Grossmutter seem nearly
+of the same age, and of the same generation; and verily the
+eighteen years between the mother and son have dwindled into a
+very small difference even in appearance, and a lesser one in
+feeling.&nbsp; She is a youthful, beautiful old lady; he a grave,
+spare, worn, elderly man, in his full strength, but with many a
+trace of care and thought, and far more of silver than of brown
+in his thin hair and pointed beard, and with a melancholy
+thoughtfulness in his clear brown eyes&mdash;all well
+corresponding with the gravity of the dress in which he has been
+meeting the burghers of Ulm; a black velvet suit&mdash;only
+relieved by his small white lace ruff, and the ribbon and jewel
+of the Golden Fleece, the only other approach to ornament that he
+wears being that ring long ago twisted off the Emperor
+Maximilian&rsquo;s chain.&nbsp; But now, as he has bowed off the
+chaplain to his study, and excused himself from aiding his two
+gentlemen-squires in consuming their krug of beer, and hands his
+mother to her favourite nook in the sunny window, taking his seat
+by her side, his features assume an expression of repose and
+relaxation as if here indeed were his true home.&nbsp; He has
+chosen his seat in full view of a picture that hangs on the
+wainscoted wall, near his mother&mdash;a picture whose pure
+ethereal tinting, of colour limpid as the rainbow, yet rich as
+the most glowing flower-beds; and its soft lovely <i>pose</i>,
+and rounded outlines, prove it to be no produce even of one of
+the great German artists of the time, but to have been wrought,
+under an Italian sky, by such a hand as left us the marvellous
+smile of Mona Lisa.&nbsp; It represents two figures, one
+unmistakably himself when in the prime of life, his brow and
+cheeks unfurrowed, and his hair still thick, shining brown, but
+with the same grave earnestness of the dark eye that came with
+the early sense of responsibility, and with the first sorrow of
+his youth.&nbsp; The other figure, one on which the painter
+evidently loved to dwell, is of a lady, so young that she might
+almost pass for his daughter, except for the peculiar, tender
+sweetness that could only become the wife and mother.&nbsp; Fair
+she is as snow, with scarce a deepening of the rose on cheek, or
+even lip, fragile and transparent as a spiritual form, and with a
+light in the blue eyes, and a grace in the soft fugitive smile,
+that scarce seems to belong to earth; a beauty not exactly of
+feature, but rather the pathetic loveliness of calm fading
+away&mdash;as if she were already melting into the clear blue sky
+with the horizon of golden light, that the wondrous power of art
+has made to harmonize with, but not efface, her blue dress,
+golden hair, white coif, and fair skin.&nbsp; It is as if she
+belonged to that sky, and only tarried as unable to detach
+herself from the clasp of the strong hand round and in which both
+her hands are twined; and though the light in her face may be
+from heaven, yet the whole countenance is fixed in one absorbed,
+almost worshipping gaze of her husband, with a wistful simplicity
+and innocence on devotion, like the absorption of a loving
+animal, to whom its master&rsquo;s presence is bliss and
+sunshine.&nbsp; It is a picture to make light in a dark place,
+and that sweet face receives a loving glance, nay, an absolutely
+reverent bend of the knightly head, as the Baron seats
+himself.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So it was as we feared, and this Schmalkaldic League
+did not suit thy sense of loyalty, my son?&rdquo; she asks,
+reading his features anxiously.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, mother.&nbsp; I ever feared that further pressure
+would drive our friends beyond the line where begin schism and
+rebellion; and it seems to me that the moment is come when I must
+hold me still, or transgress mine own sense of duty.&nbsp; I must
+endure the displeasure of many I love and respect.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Surely, my son, they have known you too long and too
+well not to respect your motives, and know that conscience is
+first with you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Scarce may such confidence be looked for, mother, from
+the most part, who esteem every man a traitor to the cause if he
+defend it not precisely in the fashion of their own party.&nbsp;
+But I hear that the King of France has offered himself as an
+ally, and that Dr. Luther, together with others of our best
+divines, have thereby been startled into doubts of the lawfulness
+of the League.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And what think you of doing, my son?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I shall endeavour to wait until such time as the
+much-needed General Council may proclaim the ancient truth, and
+enable us to avouch it without disunion.&nbsp; Into schism I
+<i>will</i> not be drawn.&nbsp; I have held truth all my life in
+the Church, nor will I part from her now.&nbsp; If intrigues
+again should prevail, then, Heaven help us!&nbsp; Meantime,
+mother, the best we can, as has ever been your
+war-cry.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And much has been won for us.&nbsp; Here are the little
+maidens, who, save Vittoria, would never have been scholars,
+reading the Holy Word daily in their own tongue.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ach, I had not told you, mother!&nbsp; I have the Court
+Secretary&rsquo;s answer this day about that command in the
+Kaisar&rsquo;s guards that my dear old master had promised to his
+godson.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Another put-off with Flemish courtesy, I see by thy
+face, Ebbo.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not quite that, mother.&nbsp; The command is ready for
+the Baron Friedmund Maximilianus von Adlerstein Wildschloss, and
+all the rest of it, on the understanding that he has been bred up
+free from all taint of the new doctrine.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;New?&nbsp; Nay, it is the oldest of all
+doctrine.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Even so.&nbsp; As I ever said, Dr. Luther hath been
+setting forth in greater clearness and fulness what our blessed
+Friedel and I learnt at your knee, and my young ones have learnt
+from babyhood of the true Catholic doctrine.&nbsp; Yet I may not
+call my son&rsquo;s faith such as the Kaisar&rsquo;s Spanish
+conscience-keepers would have it, and so the boy must e&rsquo;en
+tarry at home till there be work for his stout arm to
+do.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He seems little disappointed.&nbsp; His laugh comes
+ringing the loudest of all.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The Junker is more of a boy at two-and-twenty than I
+ever recollect myself!&nbsp; He lacks not sense nor wit, but a
+fray or a feast, a chase or a dance, seem to suffice him at an
+age when I had long been dwelling on matters of
+moment.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Thou wast left to be thine own pilot; he is but one of
+thy gay crew, and thus even these stirring times touch him not so
+deeply as thou wert affected by thine own choice in life between
+disorderly freedom and honourable restraint.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I thought of that choice to-day, mother, as I crossed
+the bridge and looked at the church; and more than ever thankful
+did I feel that our blessed Friedel, having aided me over that
+one decisive pass, was laid to rest, his tender spirit unvexed by
+the shocks and divisions that have wrenched me hither and
+thither.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay; not hither and thither.&nbsp; Ever hadst thou a
+resolute purpose and aim.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ever failed in by my own error or that of
+others&mdash;What, thou nestling here, my little Vittoria, away
+from all yonder prattle?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Dear father, if I may, I love far best to hear you and
+the grandmother talk.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Hear the child!&nbsp; She alone hath your face, mother,
+or Friedel&rsquo;s eyes!&nbsp; Is it that thou wouldst be like
+thy noble Roman godmother, the Marchesa di Pescara, that makes
+thee seek our grave company, little one?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I always long to hear you talk of her, and of the
+Italian days, dear father, and how you won this noble jewel of
+yours.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, child, that was before those times!&nbsp; It was
+the gift of good Kaisar Max at his godson&rsquo;s christening,
+when he filled your sweet mother with pretty spite by persuading
+her that it was a little golden bear-skin.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Tell her how you had gained it, my son.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;By vapouring, child; and by the dull pride of my
+neighbours.&nbsp; Heard&rsquo;st thou never of the siege of
+Padua, when we had Bayard, the best knight in Europe, and 500
+Frenchmen for our allies?&nbsp; Our artillery had made a breach,
+and the Kaisar requested the French knights to lead the storm,
+whereto they answered, Well and good, but our German nobles must
+share the assault, and not leave them to fight with no better
+backers than the hired lanzknechts.&nbsp; All in reason, quoth I,
+and more shame for us not to have been foremost in our
+Kaisar&rsquo;s own cause; but what said the rest of our misproud
+chivalry?&nbsp; They would never condescend to climb a wall on
+foot in company with lanzknechts!&nbsp; On horseback must their
+worships fight, or not at all; and when to shame them I called
+myself a mountaineer, more used to climb than to ride, and vowed
+that I should esteem it an honour to follow such a knight as
+Bayard, were it on all fours, then cast they my burgher blood in
+my teeth.&nbsp; Never saw I the Kaisar so enraged; he swore that
+all the common sense in the empire was in the burgher blood, and
+that he would make me a knight of the noblest order in Europe to
+show how he esteemed it.&nbsp; And next morning he was
+gone!&nbsp; So ashamed was he of his own army that he rode off in
+the night, and sent orders to break up the siege.&nbsp; I could
+have torn my hair, for I had just lashed up a few of our nobles
+to a better sense of honour, and we would yet have redeemed our
+name!&nbsp; And after all, the Chapter of proud Flemings would
+never have admitted me had not the heralds hunted up that the
+Sorels were gentlemen of blood and coat armour long ago at
+Li&egrave;ge.&nbsp; I am glad my father lived to see that proved,
+mother.&nbsp; He could not honour thee more than he did, but he
+would have been sorely grieved had I been rejected.&nbsp; He
+often thought me a mechanical burgher, as it was.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not quite so, my son.&nbsp; He never failed to be proud
+of thy deeds, even when he did not understand them; but this, and
+the grandson&rsquo;s birth, were the crowning joys of his
+life.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, those were glad triumphant years, take them all in
+all, ere the Emperor sent me to act ambassador in Rome, and we
+left you the two elder little girls and the boy to take care
+of.&nbsp; My dear little Thekla!&nbsp; She had a foreboding that
+she might never see those children more, yet would she have pined
+her heart away more surely had I left her at home!&nbsp; I never
+was absent a week but I found her wasted with watching for
+me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It was those weary seven years of Italy that changed
+thee most, my son.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Apart from you, mother, and knowing you now indeed to
+be widowed, and with on the one hand such contradictory commands
+from the Emperor as made me sorely ashamed of myself, of my
+nation, and of the man whom I loved and esteemed personally the
+most on earth, yet bound there by his express command, while I
+saw my tender wife&rsquo;s health wasting in the climate day by
+day!&nbsp; Yet still, while most she gasped for a breath of
+Swabian hills, she ever declared it would kill her outright to
+send her from me.&nbsp; And thus it went on till I laid her in
+the stately church of her own patroness.&nbsp; Then how it would
+have fared with me and the helpless little ones I know not, but
+for thy noble godmother, my Vittoria, the wise and ready helper
+of all in trouble, the only friend thy mother had made at Rome,
+and who had been able, from all her heights of learning and
+accomplishment, to value my Thekla&rsquo;s golden soul in its
+simplicity.&nbsp; Even then, when too late, came one of the
+Kaisar&rsquo;s kindest letters, recalling me,&mdash;a letter
+whose every word I would have paid for with a drop of my own
+blood six weeks before! and which he had only failed to send
+because his head was running on the plan of that gorgeous tomb
+where he is not buried!&nbsp; Well, at least it brought us home
+to you again once more, mother, and, where you are, comfort never
+has been utterly absent from me.&nbsp; And then, coming from the
+wilful gloom of Pope Leo&rsquo;s court into our Germany, streamed
+over by the rays of Luther&rsquo;s light, it was as if a new
+world of hope were dawning, as if truth would no longer be
+muffled, and the young would grow up to a world far better and
+purer than the old had ever seen.&nbsp; What trumpet-calls those
+were, and how welcome was the voice of the true Catholic faith no
+longer stifled!&nbsp; And my dear old Kaisar, with his clear
+eyes, his unfettered mind&mdash;he felt the power and truth of
+those theses.&nbsp; He bade the Elector of Saxony well to guard
+the monk Luther as a treasure.&nbsp; Ah! had he been a younger
+man, or had he been more firm and resolute, able to act as well
+as think for himself, things might have gone otherwise with the
+Church.&nbsp; He could think, but could not act; and now we have
+a man who acts, but <i>will</i> not think.&nbsp; It may have been
+a good day for our German reputation among foreign princes when
+Charles V. put on the crown; but only two days in my life have
+been as mournful to me as that when I stood by Kaisar Max&rsquo;s
+death-bed at Wells, and knew that generous, loving, fitful spirit
+was passing away from the earth!&nbsp; Never owned I friend I
+loved so well as Kaisar Max!&nbsp; Nor has any Emperor done so
+much for this our dear land.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The young Emperor never loved thee.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He might have treated me as one who could be useful,
+but he never forgave me for shaking hands with Luther at the Diet
+of Worms.&nbsp; I knew it was all over with my court favour after
+I had joined in escorting the Doctor out of the city.&nbsp; And
+the next thing was that Georg of Freundsberg and his friends
+proclaimed me a bigoted Papist because I did my utmost to keep my
+troop out of the devil&rsquo;s holiday at the sack of Rome!&nbsp;
+It has ever been my lot to be in disgrace with one side or the
+other!&nbsp; Here is my daughter&rsquo;s marriage hindered on the
+one hand, my son&rsquo;s promotion checked on the other, because
+I have a conscience of my own, and not of other
+people&rsquo;s!&nbsp; Heaven knows the right is no easy matter to
+find; but, when one thinks one sees it, there is nothing to be
+done but to guide oneself by it, even if the rest of the world
+will not view it in the same light.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing else!&nbsp; I doubt me whether it be ever easy
+to see the veritably right course while still struggling in the
+midst.&nbsp; That is for after ages, which behold things afar
+off; but each man must needs follow his own principle in an
+honest and good heart, and assuredly God will guide him to work
+out some good end, or hinder some evil one.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Ay, mother.&nbsp; Each party may guard one side or
+other of the truth in all honesty and faithfulness; he who cannot
+with his whole heart cast in his lot with either,&mdash;he is apt
+to serve no purpose, and to be scorned.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Nay, Ebbo, may he not be a witness to the higher and
+more perfect truth than either party have conceived?&nbsp; Nor is
+inaction always needful.&nbsp; That which is right towards either
+side still reveals itself at the due moment, whether it be to act
+or to hold still.&nbsp; And verily, Ebbo, what thou didst say
+even now has set me on a strange thought of mine own dream, that
+which heralded the birth of thyself and thy brother.&nbsp; As
+thou knowest, it seemed to me that I was watching two sparkles
+from the extinguished Needfire wheel.&nbsp; One rose aloft and
+shone as a star!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My guiding-star!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The other fulfilled those words of the Wise Man.&nbsp;
+It shone and ran to and fro in the grass.&nbsp; And surely, my
+Ebbo, thy mother may feel that, in all these dark days of
+perplexity and trial, the spark of light hath ever shone and
+drawn its trail of brightness in the gloom, even though the way
+was long, and seemed uncertain.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The mother who ever fondled me <i>will</i> think so, it
+may be!&nbsp; But, ah! she had better pray that the light be
+clearer, and that I may not fall utterly short of the
+star!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>Travellers in Wurtemburg may perhaps turn aside from glorious
+old Ulm, and the memories of the battlefields around it, to the
+romantic country round the Swabian mountains, through which
+descend the tributaries of the Danube.&nbsp; Here they may think
+themselves fortunate if they come upon a green valley, with a
+bright mountain torrent dashing through it, fresh from the lofty
+mountain, with terraced sides that rise sheer above.&nbsp; An old
+bridge, a mill, and a neat German village lie clustered in the
+valley; a seignorial mansion peeps out of the forest glades; and
+a lovely church, of rather late Gothic, but beautifully designed,
+attracts the eye so soon as it can be persuaded to quit the
+romantic outline of the ruined baronial castle high up on one of
+the mountain ledges.&nbsp; Report declares that there are tombs
+in the church well worth inspection.&nbsp; You seek out an old
+venerable blue-coated peasant who has charge of the church.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What is yonder castle?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is the castle of Adlerstein.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Are the family still extant?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yea, yea; they built yonder house when the Schloss
+became ruinous.&nbsp; They have always been here.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The church is very beautiful in its details, the carved work
+of the east end and pulpit especially so, but nothing is so
+attractive as the altar tomb in the chantry chapel.&nbsp; It is a
+double one, holding not, as usual, the recumbent effigies of a
+husband and wife, but of two knights in armour.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who are these, good friend?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;They are the good Barons Ebbo and Friedel.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Father and son they appear to be, killed at the same time in
+some fatal battle, for the white marble face of one is round with
+youth, no hair on lip nor chin, and with a lovely peaceful
+solemnity, almost cheerfulness, in the expression.&nbsp; The
+other, a bearded man, has the glory of old age in his worn
+features, beautiful and restful, but it is as if one had gone to
+sleep in the light of dawn, the other in the last glow of
+sunset.&nbsp; Their armour and their crests are alike, but the
+young one bears the eagle shield alone, while the elder has the
+same bearing repeated upon an escutcheon of pretence; the young
+man&rsquo;s hands are clasped over a harp, those of the other
+over a Bible, and the elder wears the insignia of the order of
+the Golden Fleece.&nbsp; They are surely father and son, a maiden
+knight and tried warrior who fell together?</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; the guide shakes his head; &ldquo;they are
+twin brothers, the good Barons Ebbo and Friedel, who were born
+when their father had been taken captive by the Saracens while on
+a crusade.&nbsp; Baron Friedel was slain by the Turks at the
+bridge foot, and his brother built the church in his
+memory.&nbsp; He first planted vines upon the mountains, and
+freed the peasants from the lord&rsquo;s dues on their
+flax.&nbsp; And it is true that the two brothers may still be
+seen hovering on the mountain-side in the mist at sunset,
+sometimes one, sometimes both.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>You turn with a smile to the inscription, sure that those
+windows, those porches, that armour, never were of crusading
+date, and ready to refute the old peasant.&nbsp; You spell out
+the upright Gothic letters around the cornice of the tomb, and
+you read, in medi&aelig;val Latin,&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Orate pro Anima Friedmundis Equitis Baronis
+Adlersteini.&nbsp; A. D. mccccxciii&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Then turn to the other side and read&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Hic jacet Eberardus Eques Baro
+Adlersteini.&nbsp; A.D. mdxliii.&nbsp; Demum&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Yes, the guide is right.&nbsp; They are brothers, with
+well-nigh a lifetime between their deaths.&nbsp; Is that the
+meaning of that strange <i>Demum</i>?</p>
+<p>Few of the other tombs are worth attention, each lapsing
+further into the bad taste of later ages; yet there is one still
+deserving admiration, placed close to the head of that of the two
+Barons.&nbsp; It is the effigy of a lady, aged and serene, with a
+delicately-carved face beneath her stiff head-gear.&nbsp; Surely
+this monument was erected somewhat later, for the inscription is
+in German.&nbsp; Stiff, contracted, hard to read, but this is the
+rendering of it:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Here lies Christina Sorel, wife of
+Eberhard, xxth Baron von Adlerstein, and mother of the Barons
+Eberhard and Friedmund.&nbsp; She fell asleep two days before her
+son, on the feast of St. John, mdxliii.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Her children shall rise up and call her blessed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Erected with full hearts by her grandson, Baron
+Friedmund Maximilianus, and his brothers and sisters.&nbsp;
+Farewell.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center">THE END.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<div class="gapshortline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Richard Clay &amp; Sons</i>,
+<i>Limited</i>, <i>London &amp; Bungay</i></p>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DOVE IN THE EAGLE'S NEST***</p>
+<pre>
+
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+This etext was produced from the 1890 Macmillan and Co. edition by
+David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+
+THE DOVE IN THE EAGLE'S NEST
+
+by Charlotte M. Yonge
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+
+In sending forth this little book, I am inclined to add a few
+explanatory words as to the use I have made of historical personages.
+The origin of the whole story was probably Freytag's first series of
+pictures of German Life:  probably, I say, for its first commencement
+was a dream, dreamt some weeks after reading that most interesting
+collection of sketches.  The return of the squire with the tidings of
+the death of the two knights was vividly depicted in sleep; and,
+though without local habitation or name, the scene was most likely to
+have been a reflection from the wild scenes so lately read of.
+
+In fact, waking thoughts decided that such a catastrophe could hardly
+have happened anywhere but in Germany, or in Scotland; and the
+contrast between the cultivation in the free cities and the savagery
+of the independent barons made the former the more suitable region
+for the adventures.  The time could only be before the taming and
+bringing into order of the empire, when the Imperial cities were in
+their greatest splendour, the last free nobles in course of being
+reduced from their lawless liberty, and the House of Austria
+beginning to acquire its preponderance over the other princely
+families.
+
+M. Freytag's books, and Hegewisch's History of Maximilian, will, I
+think, be found fully to bear out the picture I have tried to give of
+the state of things in the reign of the Emperor Friedrich III., when,
+for want of any other law, Faust recht, or fist right, ruled; i.e. an
+offended nobleman, having once sent a Fehde-brief to his adversary,
+was thenceforth at liberty to revenge himself by a private war, in
+which, for the wrong inflicted, no justice was exacted.
+
+Hegewisch remarks that the only benefit of this custom was, that the
+honour of subscribing a feud-brief was so highly esteemed that it
+induced the nobles to learn to write!  The League of St. George and
+the Swabian League were the means of gradually putting down this
+authorized condition of deadly feud.
+
+This was in the days of Maximilian's youth.  He is a prince who seems
+to have been almost as inferior in his foreign to what he was in his
+domestic policy as was Queen Elizabeth.  He is chiefly familiar to us
+as failing to keep up his authority in Flanders after the death of
+Mary of Burgundy, as lingering to fulfil his engagement with Anne of
+Brittany till he lost her and her duchy, as incurring ridicule by his
+ill-managed schemes in Italy, and the vast projects that he was
+always forming without either means or steadiness to carry them out,
+by his perpetual impecuniosity and slippery dealing; and in his old
+age he has become rather the laughing-stock of historians.
+
+But there is much that is melancholy in the sight of a man endowed
+with genius, unbalanced by the force of character that secures
+success, and with an ardent nature whose intention overleapt
+obstacles that in practice he found insuperable.  At home Maximilian
+raised the Imperial power from a mere cipher to considerable weight.
+We judge him as if he had been born in the purple and succeeded to a
+defined power like his descendants.  We forget that the head of the
+Holy Roman Empire had been, ever since the extinction of the Swabian
+line, a mere mark for ambitious princes to shoot at, with everything
+expected from him, and no means to do anything.  Maximilian's own
+father was an avaricious, undignified old man, not until near his
+death Archduke of even all Austria, and with anarchy prevailing
+everywhere under his nominal rule.  It was in the time of Maximilian
+that the Empire became as compact and united a body as could be hoped
+of anything so unwieldy, that law was at least acknowledged, Faust
+recht for ever abolished, and the Emperor became once more a real
+power.
+
+The man under whom all this was effected could have been no fool;
+yet, as he said himself, he reigned over a nation of kings, who each
+chose to rule for himself; and the uncertainty of supplies of men or
+money to be gained from them made him so often fail necessarily in
+his engagements, that he acquired a shiftiness and callousness to
+breaches of promise, which became the worst flaw in his character.
+But of the fascination of his manner there can be no doubt.  Even
+Henry VIII.'s English ambassadors, when forced to own how little they
+could depend on him, and how dangerous it was to let subsidies pass
+through his fingers, still show themselves under a sort of
+enchantment of devotion to his person, and this in his old age, and
+when his conduct was most inexcusable and provoking.
+
+His variety of powers was wonderful.  He was learned in many
+languages--in all those of his empire or hereditary states, and in
+many besides; and he had an ardent love of books, both classical and
+modern.  He delighted in music, painting, architecture, and many arts
+of a more mechanical description; wrote treatises on all these, and
+on other subjects, especially gardening and gunnery.  He was the
+inventor of an improved lock to the arquebus, and first divined how
+to adapt the disposition of his troops to the use of the newly-
+discovered fire-arms.  And in all these things his versatile head and
+ready hand were personally employed, not by deputy; while coupled
+with so much artistic taste was a violent passion for hunting, which
+carried him through many hairbreadth 'scapes.  "It was plain," he
+used to say, "that God Almighty ruled the world, or how could things
+go on with a rogue like Alexander VI. at the head of the Church, and
+a mere huntsman like himself at the head of the Empire."  His bon-
+mots are numerous, all thoroughly characteristic, and showing that
+brilliancy in conversation must have been one of his greatest charms.
+It seems as if only self-control and resolution were wanting to have
+made him a Charles, or an Alfred, the Great.
+
+The romance of his marriage with the heiress of Burgundy is one of
+the best known parts of his life.  He was scarcely two-and-twenty
+when he lost her, who perhaps would have given him the stability he
+wanted; but his tender hove for her endured through life.  It is not
+improbable that it was this still abiding attachment that made him
+slack in overcoming difficulties in the way of other contracts, and
+that he may have hoped that his engagement to Bianca Sforza would
+come to nothing, like so many others.
+
+The most curious record of him is, however, in two books, the
+materials for which he furnished, and whose composition and
+illustration he superintended, Der Weise King, and Theurdank, of both
+of which he is well known to be the hero.  The White, or the Wise
+King, it is uncertain which, is a history of his education and
+exploits, in prose.  Every alternate page has its engraving, showing
+how the Young White King obtains instruction in painting,
+architecture, language, and all arts and sciences, the latter
+including magic--which he learns of an old woman with a long-tailed
+demon sitting, like Mother Hubbard's cat, on her shoulder--and
+astrology.  In the illustration of this study an extraordinary figure
+of a cross within a circle appears in the sky, which probably has
+some connection with his scheme of nativity, for it also appears on
+the breast of Ehrenhold, his constant companion in the metrical
+history of his career, under the name of Theurdank.
+
+The poetry of Theurdank was composed by Maximilian's old writing-
+master, Melchior Pfinznig; but the adventures were the Kaisar's own,
+communicated by himself, and he superintended the wood-cuts.  The
+name is explained to mean "craving glory,"--Gloriaememor.  The
+Germans laugh to scorn a French translator, who rendered it
+"Chermerci."  It was annotated very soon after its publication, and
+each exploit explained and accounted for.  It is remarkable and
+touching in a man who married at eighteen, and was a widower at
+twenty-two, that, in both books, the happy union with his lady love
+is placed at the end--not at the beginning of the book; and in
+Theurdank, at least, the eternal reunion is clearly meant.
+
+In this curious book, Konig Romreich, by whom every contemporary
+understood poor Charles of Burgundy--thus posthumously made King of
+Rome by Maximilian, as the only honour in his power, betroths his
+daughter Ehrenreich (rich in honour) to the Ritter Theurdank.  Soon
+after, by a most mild version of Duke Charles's frightful end, Konig
+Romreich is seen on his back dying in a garden, and Ehrenreich (as
+Mary really did) despatches a ring to summon her betrothed.
+
+But here Theurdank returns for answer that he means first to win
+honour by his exploits, and sets out with his comrade, Ehrenhold, in
+search thereof.  Ehrenhold never appears of the smallest use to him
+in any of the dire adventures into which he falls, but only stands
+complacently by, and in effect may represent Fame, or perhaps that
+literary sage whom Don Quixote always supposed to be at hand to
+record his deeds of prowess.
+
+Next we are presented with the German impersonation of Satan as a
+wise old magician, only with claws instead of feet, commissioning his
+three captains (hauptleutern), Furwitz, Umfallo, and Neidelhard, to
+beset and ruin Theurdank.  They are interpreted as the dangers of
+youth, middle life, and old age--Rashness, Disaster, and Distress (or
+Envy).  One at a time they encounter him,--not once, but again and
+again; and he has ranged under each head, in entire contempt of real
+order of time, the perils he thinks owing to each foe.  Furwitz most
+justly gets the credit of Maximilian's perils on the steeple of Ulm,
+though, unfortunately, the artist has represented the daring climber
+as standing not much above the shoulders of Furwitz and Ehrenhold;
+and although the annotation tells us that his "hinder half foot"
+overhung the scaffold, the danger in the print is not appalling.
+Furwitz likewise inveigles him into putting the point (schnabel) of
+his shoe into the wheel of a mill for turning stone balls, where he
+certainly hardly deserved to lose nothing but the beak of his shoe.
+This enemy also brings him into numerous unpleasant predicaments on
+precipices, where he hangs by one hand; while the chamois stand
+delighted on every available peak, Furwitz grins malevolently, and
+Ehrenhold stands pointing at him over his shoulder.  Time and place
+are given in the notes for all these escapes.  After some twenty
+adventures Furwitz is beaten off, and Umfallo tries his powers.  Here
+the misadventures do not involve so much folly on the hero's part--
+though, to be sure, he ventures into a lion's den unarmed, and has to
+beat off the inmates with a shovel.  But the other adventures are
+more rational.  He catches a jester--of admirably foolish expression-
+-putting a match to a powder-magazine; he is wonderfully preserved in
+mountain avalanches and hurricanes; reins up his horse on the verge
+of an abyss; falls through ice in Holland and shows nothing but his
+head above it; cures himself of a fever by draughts of water, to the
+great disgust of his physicians, and escapes a fire bursting out of a
+tall stove.
+
+Neidelhard brings his real battles and perils.  From this last he is
+in danger of shipwreck, of assassination, of poison, in single
+combat, or in battle; tumults of the people beset him; he is
+imprisoned as at Ghent.  But finally Neidelhard is beaten back; and
+the hero is presented to Ehrenreich.  Ehrenhold recounts his
+triumphs, and accuses the three captains.  One is hung, another
+beheaded, the third thrown headlong from a tower, and a guardian
+angel then summons Theurdank to his union with his Queen.  No doubt
+this reunion was the life-dream of the harassed, busy, inconsistent
+man, who flashed through the turmoils of the early sixteenth century.
+
+The adventures of Maximilian which have been adverted to in the story
+are all to be found in Theurdank, and in his early life he was
+probably the brilliant eager person we have tried in some degree to
+describe.  In his latter years it is well known that he was much
+struck by Luther's arguments; and, indeed, he had long been conscious
+of need of Church reform, though his plans took the grotesque form of
+getting himself made Pope, and taking all into his own hands.
+
+Perhaps it was unwise to have ever so faintly sketched Ebbo's career
+through the ensuing troubles; but the history of the star and of the
+spark in the stubble seemed to need completion; and the working out
+of the character of the survivor was unfinished till his course had
+been thought over from the dawn of the Wittenberg teaching, which
+must have seemed no novelty to an heir of the doctrine of Tauler, and
+of the veritably Catholic divines of old times.  The idea is of the
+supposed course of a thoughtful, refined, conscientious man through
+the earlier times of the Reformation, glad of the hope of cleansing
+the Church, but hoping to cleanse, not to break away from her--a hope
+that Luther himself long cherished, and which was not entirely
+frustrated till the re-assembly at Trent in the next generation.
+Justice has never been done to the men who feared to loose their hold
+on the Church Catholic as the one body to which the promises were
+made.  Their loyalty has been treated as blindness, timidity, or
+superstition; but that there were many such persons, and those among
+the very highest minds of their time, no one can have any doubt after
+reading such lives as those of Friedrich the Wise of Saxony, of
+Erasmus, of Vittoria Colonna, or of Cardinal Giustiniani.
+
+April 9, 1836.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I:  MASTER GOTTFRIED'S WORKSHOP
+
+
+
+The upper lattices of a tall, narrow window were open, and admitted
+the view, of first some richly-tinted vine leaves and purpling
+grapes, then, in dazzling freshness of new white stone, the lacework
+fabric of a half-built minster spire, with a mason's crane on the
+summit, bending as though craving for a further supply of materials;
+and beyond, peeping through every crevice of the exquisite open
+fretwork, was the intensely blue sky of early autumn.
+
+The lower longer panes of the window were closed, and the glass,
+divided into circles and quarrels, made the scene less distinct; but
+still the huge stone tower was traceable, and, farther off, the slope
+of a gently-rising hill, clothed with vineyards blushing into autumn
+richness.  Below, the view was closed by the gray wall of a court-
+yard, laden with fruit-trees in full bearing, and inclosing paved
+paths that radiated from a central fountain, and left spaces between,
+where a few summer flowers still lingered, and the remains of others
+showed what their past glory had been.
+
+The interior of the room was wainscoted, the floor paved with bright
+red and cream-coloured tiles, and the tall stove in one corner
+decorated with the same.  The eastern end of the apartment was
+adorned with an exquisite small group carved in oak, representing the
+carpenter's shop at Nazareth, with the Holy Child instructed by
+Joseph in the use of tools, and the Mother sitting with her book,
+"pondering these things in her heart."  All around were blocks of
+wood and carvings in varying states of progress--some scarcely shaped
+out, and others in perfect completion.  And the subjects were equally
+various.  Here was an adoring angel with folded wings, clasped hands,
+and rapt face; here a majestic head of an apostle or prophet; here a
+lovely virgin saint, seeming to play smilingly with the instrument of
+her martyrdom; here a grotesque miserere group, illustrating a fairy
+tale, or caricaturing a popular fable here a beauteous festoon of
+flowers and fruit, emulating nature in all save colour; and on the
+work-table itself, growing under the master's hand, was a long
+wreath, entirely composed of leaves and seed-vessels in their quaint
+and beauteous forms--the heart-shaped shepherd's purse, the mask-like
+skull-cap, and the crowned urn of the henbane.  The starred cap of
+the poppy was actually being shaped under the tool, copied from a
+green capsule, surmounted with purple velvety rays, which, together
+with its rough and wavy leaf, was held in the hand of a young maiden
+who knelt by the table, watching the work with eager interest.
+
+She was not a beautiful girl--not one of those whose "bright eyes
+rain influence, and judge the prize."  She was too small, too slight,
+too retiring for such a position.  If there was something lily-like
+in her drooping grace, it was not the queen-lily of the garden that
+she resembled, but the retiring lily of the valley--so purely,
+transparently white was her skin, scarcely tinted by a roseate blush
+on the cheek, so tender and modest the whole effect of her slender
+figure, and the soft, downcast, pensive brown eyes, utterly
+dissimilar in hue from those of all her friends and kindred, except
+perhaps the bright, quick ones of her uncle, the master-carver.
+Otherwise, his portly form, open visage, and good-natured
+stateliness, as well as his furred cap and gold chain, were
+thoroughly those of the German burgomaster of the fifteenth century;
+but those glittering black eyes had not ceased to betray their
+French, or rather Walloon, origin, though for several generations
+back the family had been settled at Ulm.  Perhaps, too, it was
+Walloon quickness and readiness of wit that had made them, so soon as
+they became affiliated, so prominent in all the councils of the good
+free city, and so noted for excellence in art and learning.  Indeed
+the present head of the family, Master Gottfried Sorel, was so much
+esteemed for his learning that he had once had serious thoughts of
+terming himself Magister Gothofredus Oxalicus, and might have carried
+it out but for the very decided objections of his wife, Dame Johanna,
+and his little niece, Christina, to being dubbed by any such surname.
+
+Master Gottfried had had a scapegrace younger brother named Hugh, who
+had scorned both books and tools, had been the plague of the
+workshop, and, instead of coming back from his wandering year of
+improvement, had joined a band of roving Lanzknechts.  No more had
+been heard of him for a dozen or fifteen years, when he suddenly
+arrived at the paternal mansion at Ulm, half dead with intermittent
+fever, and with a young, broken-hearted, and nearly expiring wife,
+his spoil in his Italian campaigns.  His rude affection had utterly
+failed to console her for her desolated home and slaughtered kindred,
+and it had so soon turned to brutality that, when brought to
+comparative peace and rest in his brother's home, there was nothing
+left for the poor Italian but to lie down and die, commending her
+babe in broken German to Hausfrau Johanna, and blessing Master
+Gottfried for his flowing Latin assurances that the child should be
+to them even as the little maiden who was lying in the God's acre
+upon the hillside
+
+And verily the little Christina had been a precious gift to the
+bereaved couple.  Her father had no sooner recovered than he returned
+to his roving life, and, except for a report that he had been seen
+among the retainers of one of the robber barons of the Swabian Alps,
+nothing had been heard of him; and Master Gottfried only hoped to be
+spared the actual pain and scandal of knowing when his eyes were
+blinded and his head swept off at a blow, or when he was tumbled
+headlong into a moat, suspended from a tree, or broken on the wheel:
+a choice of fates that was sure sooner or later to befall him.
+Meantime, both the burgomeister and burgomeisterinn did their utmost
+to forget that the gentle little girl was not their own; they set all
+their hopes and joys on her, and, making her supply the place at once
+of son and daughter, they bred her up in all the refinements and
+accomplishments in which the free citizens of Germany took the lead
+in the middle and latter part of the fifteenth century.  To aid her
+aunt in all house-wifely arts, to prepare dainty food and varied
+liquors, and to spin, weave, and broider, was only a part of
+Christina's training; her uncle likewise set great store by her sweet
+Italian voice, and caused her to be carefully taught to sing and play
+on the lute, and he likewise delighted in hearing her read aloud to
+him from the hereditary store of MSS. and from the dark volumes that
+began to proceed from the press.  Nay, Master Gottfried had made
+experiments in printing and wood-engraving on his own account, and
+had found no head so intelligent, no hand so desirous to aid him, as
+his little Christina's, who, in all that needed taste and skill
+rather than strength, was worth all his prentices and journeymen
+together.  Some fine bold wood-cuts had been produced by their joint
+efforts; but these less important occupations had of late been set
+aside by the engrossing interest of the interior fittings of the
+great "Dome Kirk," which for nearly a century had been rising by the
+united exertions of the burghers, without any assistance from
+without.  The foundation had been laid in 1377; and at length, in the
+year of grace 1472, the crown of the apse had been closed in, and
+matters were so forward that Master Gottfried's stall work was
+already in requisition for the choir.
+
+"Three cubits more," he reckoned.  "Child, hast thou found me fruits
+enough for the completing of this border?"
+
+"O yes, mine uncle.  I have the wild rosehip, and the flat shield of
+the moonwort, and a pea-pod, and more whose names I know not.  But
+should they all be seed and fruit?"
+
+"Yea, truly, my Stina, for this wreath shall speak of the goodly
+fruits of a completed life."
+
+"Even as that which you carved in spring told of the blossom and fair
+promise of youth," returned the maiden.  "Methinks the one is the
+most beautiful, as it ought to be;" then, after a little pause, and
+some reckoning, "I have scarce seed-pods enough in store, uncle;
+might we not seek some rarer shapes in the herb-garden of Master
+Gerhard, the physician?  He, too, might tell me the names of some of
+these."
+
+"True, child; or we might ride into the country beyond the walls, and
+seek them.  What, little one, wouldst thou not?"
+
+"So we go not far," faltered Christina, colouring.
+
+"Ha, thou hast not forgotten the fright thy companions had from the
+Schlangenwald reitern when gathering Maydew?  Fear not, little
+coward; if we go beyond the suburbs we will take Hans and Peter with
+their halberts.  But I believe thy silly little heart can scarce be
+free for enjoyment if it can fancy a Reiter within a dozen leagues of
+thee."
+
+"At your side I would not fear.  That is, I would not vex thee by my
+folly, and I might forget it," replied Christina, looking down.
+
+"My gentle child!" the old man said approvingly.  "Moreover, if our
+good Raiser has his way, we shall soon be free of the reitern of
+Schlangenwald, and Adlerstein, and all the rest of the mouse-trap
+barons.  He is hoping to form a league of us free imperial cities
+with all the more reasonable and honest nobles, to preserve the peace
+of the country.  Even now a letter from him was read in the Town Hall
+to that effect; and, when all are united against them, my lords-
+mousers must needs become pledged to the league, or go down before
+it."
+
+"Ah! that will be well," cried Christina.  "Then will our wagons be
+no longer set upon at the Debateable Ford by Schlangenwald or
+Adlerstein; and our wares will come safely, and there will be wealth
+enough to raise our spire!  O uncle, what a day of joy will that be
+when Our Lady's great statue will be set on the summit!"
+
+"A day that I shall scarce see, and it will be well if thou dost,"
+returned her uncle, "unless the hearts of the burghers of Ulm return
+to the liberality of their fathers, who devised that spire!  But what
+trampling do I hear?"
+
+There was indeed a sudden confusion in the house, and, before the
+uncle and niece could rise, the door was opened by a prosperous
+apple-faced dame, exclaiming in a hasty whisper, "Housefather, O
+Housefather, there are a troop of reitern at the door, dismounting
+already;" and, as the master came forward, brushing from his furred
+vest the shavings and dust of his work, she added in a more furtive,
+startled accent, "and, if I mistake not, one is thy brother!"
+
+"He is welcome," replied Master Gottfried, in his cheery fearless
+voice; "he brought us a choice gift last time he came; and it may be
+he is ready to seek peace among us after his wanderings.  Come
+hither, Christina, my little one; it is well to be abashed, but thou
+art not a child who need fear to meet a father."
+
+Christina's extreme timidity, however, made her pale and crimson by
+turns, perhaps by the infection of anxiety from her aunt, who could
+not conceal a certain dissatisfaction and alarm, as the maiden, led
+on either side by her adopted parents, thus advanced from the little
+studio into a handsomely-carved wooden gallery, projecting into a
+great wainscoated room, with a broad carved stair leading down into
+it.  Down this stair the three proceeded, and reached the stone hall
+that lay beyond it, just as there entered from the trellised porch,
+that covered the steps into the street, a thin wiry man, in a worn
+and greasy buff suit, guarded on the breast and arms with rusty
+steel, and a battered helmet with the vizor up, disclosing a weather-
+beaten bronzed face, with somewhat wild dark eyes, and a huge
+grizzled moustache forming a straight line over his lips.  Altogether
+he was a complete model of the lawless Reiter or Lanzknecht, the
+terror of Swabia, and the bugbear of Christina's imagination.  The
+poor child's heart died within her as she perceived the mutual
+recognition between her uncle and the new comer; and, while Master
+Gottfried held out his hands with a cordial greeting of "Welcome,
+home, brother Hugh," she trembled from head to foot, as she sank on
+her knees, and murmured, "Your blessing, honoured father."
+
+"Ha?  What, this is my girl?  What says she?  My blessing, eh?  There
+then, thou hast it, child, such as I have to give, though they'll
+tell thee at Adlerstein that I am more wont to give the other sort of
+blessing!  Now, give me a kiss, girl, and let me see thee!  How now!"
+as he folded her in his rough arms; "thou art a mere feather, as
+slight as our sick Jungfrau herself."  And then, regarding her, as
+she stood drooping, "Thou art not half the woman thy mother was--she
+was stately and straight as a column, and tall withal."
+
+"True!" replied Hausfrau Johanna, in a marked tone; "but both she and
+her poor babe had been so harassed and wasted with long journeys and
+hardships, that with all our care of our Christina, she has never
+been strong or well-grown.  The marvel is that she lived at all."
+
+"Our Christina is not beautiful, we know," added her uncle,
+reassuringly taking her hand; "but she is a good and meek maiden."
+
+"Well, well," returned the Lanzknecht, "she will answer the purpose
+well enough, or better than if she were fair enough to set all our
+fellows together by the ears for her.  Camilla, I say--no, what's her
+name, Christina?--put up thy gear and be ready to start with me to-
+morrow morning for Adlerstein."
+
+"For Adlerstein?" re-echoed the housemother, in a tone of horrified
+dismay; and Christina would have dropped on the floor but for her
+uncle's sustaining hand, and the cheering glance with which he met
+her imploring look.
+
+"Let us come up to the gallery, and understand what you desire,
+brother," said Master Gottfried, gravely.  "Fill the cup of greeting,
+Hans.  Your followers shall be entertained in the hall," he added.
+
+"Ay, ay," quoth Hugh, "I will show you reason over a goblet of the
+old Rosenburg.  Is it all gone yet, brother Goetz?  No?  I reckon
+there would not be the scouring of a glass left of it in a week if it
+were at Adlerstein."
+
+So saying, the trooper crossed the lower room, which contained a huge
+tiled baking oven, various brilliantly-burnished cooking utensils,
+and a great carved cupboard like a wooden bedstead, and, passing the
+door of the bathroom, clanked up the oaken stairs to the gallery, the
+reception-room of the house.  It had tapestry hangings to the wall,
+and cushions both to the carved chairs and deep windows, which looked
+out into the street, the whole storey projecting into close proximity
+with the corresponding apartment of the Syndic Moritz, the goldsmith
+on the opposite side.  An oaken table stood in the centre, and the
+gallery was adorned with a dresser, displaying not only bright
+pewter, but goblets and drinking cups of beautifully-shaped and
+coloured glass, and saltcellars, tankards, &c. of gold and silver.
+
+"Just as it was in the old man's time," said the soldier, throwing
+himself into the housefather's chair.  "A handful of Lanzknechts
+would make short work with your pots and pans, good sister Johanna."
+
+"Heaven forbid!" said poor Johanna under her breath.  "Much good they
+do you, up in a row there, making you a slave to furbishing them.
+There's more sense in a chair like this--that does rest a man's
+bones.  Here, Camilla, girl, unlace my helmet!  What, know'st not
+how?  What is a woman made for but to let a soldier free of his
+trappings?  Thou hast done it!  There!  Now my boots," stretching out
+his legs.
+
+"Hans shall draw off your boots, fair brother," began the dame; but
+poor Christina, the more anxious to propitiate him in little things,
+because of the horror and dread with which his main purpose inspired
+her, was already on her knees, pulling with her small quivering hands
+at the long steel-guarded boot--a task to which she would have been
+utterly inadequate, but for some lazy assistance from her father's
+other foot.  She further brought a pair of her uncle's furred
+slippers, while Reiter Hugh proceeded to dangle one of the boots in
+the air, expatiating on its frail condition, and expressing his
+intention of getting a new pair from Master Matthias, the sutor, ere
+he should leave Ulm on the morrow.  Then, again, came the dreaded
+subject; his daughter must go with him.
+
+"What would you with Christina, brother?" gravely asked Master
+Gottfried, seating himself on the opposite side of the stove, while
+out of sight the frightened girl herself knelt on the floor, her head
+on her aunt's knees, trying to derive comfort from Dame Johanna's
+clasping hands, and vehement murmurs that they would not let their
+child be taken from them.  Alas! these assurances were little in
+accordance with Hugh's rough reply, "And what is it to you what I do
+with mine own?"
+
+"Only this, that, having bred her up as my child and intended
+heiress, I might have some voice."
+
+"Oh! in choosing her mate!  Some mincing artificer, I trow, fiddling
+away with wood and wire to make gauds for the fair-day!  Hast got him
+here?  If I like him, and she likes him, I'll bring her back when her
+work is done."
+
+"There is no such person as yet in the case," said Gottfried.
+"Christina is not yet seventeen, and I would take my time to find an
+honest, pious burgher, who will value this precious jewel of mine."
+
+"And let her polish his flagons to the end of her days," laughed Hugh
+grimly, but manifestly somewhat influenced by the notion of his
+brother's wealth.  "What, hast no child of thine own?" he added.
+
+"None, save in Paradise," answered Gottfried, crossing himself.  "And
+thus, if Christina should remain with me, and be such as I would have
+her, then, brother, my wealth, after myself and my good housewife,
+shall be hers, with due provision for thee, if thou shouldst weary of
+thy wild life.  Otherwise," he added, looking down, and speaking in
+an under tone, "my poor savings should go to the completion of the
+Dome Kirk."
+
+"And who told thee, Goetz, that I would do ought with the girl that
+should hinder her from being the very same fat, sourkrout-cooking,
+pewter-scrubbing housewife of thy mind's eye?"
+
+"I have heard nothing of thy designs as yet, brother Hugh, save that
+thou wouldst take her to Adlerstein, which men greatly belie if it be
+not a nest of robbers."
+
+"Aha! thou hast heard of Adlerstein!  We have made the backs of your
+jolly merchants tingle as well as they could through their well-lined
+doublets!  Ulm knows of Adlerstein, and the Debateable Ford!"
+
+"It knows little to its credit," said Gottfried, gravely; "and it
+knows also that the Emperor is about to make a combination against
+all the Swabian robber-holds, and that such as join not in it will
+fare the worse."
+
+"Let Kaiser Fritz catch his bear ere he sells its hide!  He has never
+tried to mount the Eagle's Ladder!  Why, man, Adlerstein might be
+held against five hundred men by sister Johanna with her rock and
+spindle!  'Tis a free barony, Master Gottfried, I tell thee--has
+never sworn allegiance to Kaiser or Duke of Swabia either!  Freiherr
+Eberhard is as much a king on his own rock as Kaiser Fritz ever was
+of the Romans, and more too, for I never could find out that they
+thought much of our king at Rome; and, as to gainsaying our old
+Freiherr, one might as well leap over the abyss at once."
+
+"Yes, those old free barons are pitiless tyrants," said Gottfried,
+"and I scarce think I can understand thee aright when I hear thee say
+thou wouldst carry thy daughter to such an abode."
+
+"It is the Freiherr's command," returned Hugh.  "Look you, they have
+had wondrous ill-luck with their children; the Freiherrinn Kunigunde
+has had a dozen at least, and only two are alive, my young Freiherr
+and my young Lady Ermentrude; and no wonder, you would say, if you
+could see the gracious Freiherrinn, for surely Dame Holda made a
+blunder when she fished her out of the fountain woman instead of man.
+She is Adlerstein herself by birth, married her cousin, and is
+prouder and more dour than our old Freiherr himself--fitter far to
+handle shield than swaddled babe.  And now our Jungfrau has fallen
+into a pining waste, that 'tis a pity to see how her cheeks have
+fallen away, and how she mopes and fades.  Now, the old Freiherr and
+her brother, they both dote on her, and would do anything for her.
+They thought she was bewitched, so we took old Mother Ilsebill and
+tried her with the ordeal of water; but, look you, she sank as
+innocent as a puppy dog, and Ursel was at fault to fix on any one
+else.  Then one day, when I looked into the chamber, I saw the poor
+maiden sitting, with her head hanging down, as if 'twas too heavy for
+her, on a high-backed chair, no rest for her feet, and the wind
+blowing keen all round her, and nothing to taste but scorched beef,
+or black bread and sour wine, and her mother rating her for foolish
+fancies that gave trouble.  And, when my young Freiherr was bemoaning
+himself that we could not hear of a Jew physician passing our way to
+catch and bring up to cure her, I said to him at last that no doctor
+could do for her what gentle tendance and nursing would, for what the
+poor maiden needed was to be cosseted and laid down softly, and fed
+with broths and possets, and all that women know how to do with one
+another.  A proper scowl and hard words I got from my gracious Lady,
+for wanting to put burgher softness into an Adlerstein; but my old
+lord and his son opened on the scent at once.  'Thou hast a
+daughter?' quoth the Freiherr.  'So please your gracious lordship,'
+quoth I; 'that is, if she still lives, for I left her a puny infant.'
+'Well,' said my lord, 'if thou wilt bring her here, and her care
+restores my daughter to health and strength, then will I make thee my
+body squire, with a right to a fourth part of all the spoil, and feed
+for two horses in my stable.'  And young Freiherr Eberhard gave his
+word upon it."
+
+Gottfried suggested that a sick nurse was the person required rather
+than a child like Christina; but, as Hugh truly observed, no nurse
+would voluntarily go to Adlerstein, and it was no use to wait for the
+hopes of capturing one by raid or foray.  His daughter was at his own
+disposal, and her services would be repaid by personal advantages to
+himself which he was not disposed to forego; in effect these were the
+only means that the baron had of requiting any attendance upon his
+daughter.
+
+The citizens of old Germany had the strongest and most stringent
+ideas of parental authority, and regarded daughters as absolute
+chattels of their father; and Master Gottfried Sorel, though he alone
+had done the part of a parent to his niece, felt entirely unable to
+withstand the nearer claim, except by representations; and these fell
+utterly disregarded, as in truth every counsel had hitherto done,
+upon the ears of Reiter Hugh, ever since he had emerged from his
+swaddling clothes.  The plentiful supper, full cup of wine, the
+confections, the soft chair, together perhaps with his brother's
+grave speech, soon, however, had the effect of sending him into a
+doze, whence he started to accept civilly the proposal of being
+installed in the stranger's room, where he was speedily snoring
+between two feather beds.
+
+Then there could be freedom of speech in the gallery, where the uncle
+and aunt held anxious counsel over the poor little dark-tressed head
+that still lay upon good Johanna's knees.  The dame was indignant and
+resolute:  "Take the child back with him into a very nest of
+robbers!--her own innocent dove whom they had shielded from all evil
+like a very nun in a cloister!  She should as soon think of yielding
+her up to be borne off by the great Satan himself with his horns and
+hoofs."
+
+"Hugh is her father, housewife," said the master-carver.
+
+"The right of parents is with those that have done the duty of
+parents," returned Johanna.  "What said the kid in the fable to the
+goat that claimed her from the sheep that bred her up?  I am ashamed
+of you, housefather, for not better loving your own niece."
+
+"Heaven knows how I love her," said Gottfried, as the sweet face was
+raised up to him with a look acquitting him of the charge, and he
+bent to smooth back the silken hair, and kiss the ivory brow; "but
+Heaven also knows that I see no means of withholding her from one
+whose claim is closer than my own--none save one; and to that even
+thou, housemother, wouldst not have me resort."
+
+"What is it?" asked the dame, sharply, yet with some fear.
+
+"To denounce him to the burgomasters as one of the Adlerstein
+retainers who robbed Philipp der Schmidt, and have him fast laid by
+the heels."
+
+Christina shuddered, and Dame Johanna herself recoiled; but presently
+exclaimed, "Nay, you could not do that, good man, but wherefore not
+threaten him therewith?  Stand at his bedside in early dawn, and tell
+him that, if he be not off ere daylight with both his cut-throats,
+the halberdiers will be upon him."
+
+"Threaten what I neither could nor would perform, mother?  That were
+a shrewish resource."
+
+"Yet would it save the child," muttered Johanna.  But, in the
+meantime, Christina was rising from the floor, and stood before them
+with loose hair, tearful eyes, and wet, flushed cheeks.  "It must be
+thus," she said, in a low, but not unsteady voice.  "I can bear it
+better since I have heard of the poor young lady, sick and with none
+to care for her.  I will go with my father; it is my duty.  I will do
+my best; but oh! uncle, so work with him that he may bring me back
+again."
+
+"This from thee, Stina!" exclaimed her aunt; "from thee who art sick
+for fear of a lanzknecht!"
+
+"The saints will be with me, and you will pray for me," said
+Christina, still trembling.
+
+"I tell thee, child, thou knowst not what these vile dens are.
+Heaven forfend thou shouldst!" exclaimed her aunt.  "Go only to
+Father Balthazar, housefather, and see if he doth not call it a
+sending of a lamb among wolves."
+
+"Mind'st thou the carving I did for Father Balthazar's own oratory?"
+replied Master Gottfried.
+
+"I talk not of carving!  I talk of our child!" said the dame,
+petulantly.
+
+"Ut agnus inter lupos," softly said Gottfried, looking tenderly,
+though sadly, at his niece, who not only understood the quotation,
+but well remembered the carving of the cross-marked lamb going forth
+from its fold among the howling wolves.
+
+"Alas!  I am not an apostle," said she.
+
+"Nay, but, in the path of duty, 'tis the same hand that sends thee
+forth," answered her uncle, "and the same will guard thee."
+
+"Duty, indeed!" exclaimed Johanna.  "As if any duty could lead that
+silly helpless child among that herd of evil men, and women yet
+worse, with a good-for-nothing father, who would sell her for a good
+horse to the first dissolute Junker who fell in his way."
+
+"I will take care that he knows it is worth his while to restore her
+safe to us.  Nor do I think so ill of Hugh as thou dost, mother.
+And, for the rest, Heaven and the saints and her own discretion must
+be her guard till she shall return to us."
+
+"How can Heaven be expected to protect her when you are flying in its
+face by not taking counsel with Father Balthazar?"
+
+"That shalt thou do," replied Gottfried, readily, secure that Father
+Balthazar would see the matter in the same light as himself, and
+tranquillize the good woman.  It was not yet so late but that a
+servant could be despatched with a request that Father Balthazar, who
+lived not many houses off in the same street, would favour the
+Burgomeisterinn Sorel by coming to speak with her.  In a few minutes
+he appeared,--an aged man, with a sensible face, of the fresh pure
+bloom preserved by a temperate life.  He was a secular parish-priest,
+and, as well as his friend Master Gottfried, held greatly by the
+views left by the famous Strasburg preacher, Master John Tauler.
+After the good housemother had, in strong terms, laid the case before
+him, she expected a trenchant decision on her own side, but, to her
+surprise and disappointment, he declared that Master Gottfried was
+right, and that, unless Hugh Sorel demanded anything absolutely
+sinful of his daughter, it was needful that she should submit.  He
+repeated, in stronger terms, the assurance that she would be
+protected in the endeavour to do right, and the Divine promises which
+he quoted from the Latin Scriptures gave some comfort to the niece,
+who understood them, while they impressed the aunt, who did not.
+There was always the hope that, whether the young lady died or
+recovered, the conclusion of her illness would be the term of
+Christina's stay at Adlerstein, and with this trust Johanna must
+content herself.  The priest took leave, after appointing with
+Christina to meet her in the confessional early in the morning before
+mass; and half the night was spent by the aunt and niece in preparing
+Christina's wardrobe for her sudden journey.
+
+Many a tear was shed over the tokens of the little services she was
+wont to render, her half-done works, and pleasant studies so suddenly
+broken off, and all the time Hausfrau Johanna was running on with a
+lecture on the diligent preservation of her maiden discretion, with
+plentiful warnings against swaggering men-at-arms, drunken
+lanzknechts, and, above all, against young barons, who most assuredly
+could mean no good by any burgher maiden.  The good aunt blessed the
+saints that her Stina was likely only to be lovely in affectionate
+home eyes; but, for that matter, idle men, shut up in a castle, with
+nothing but mischief to think of, would be dangerous to Little Three
+Eyes herself, and Christina had best never stir a yard from her
+lady's chair, when forced to meet them.  All this was interspersed
+with motherly advice how to treat the sick lady, and receipts for
+cordials and possets; for Johanna began to regard the case as a sort
+of second-hand one of her own.  Nay, she even turned it over in her
+mind whether she should not offer herself as the Lady Ermentrude's
+sick-nurse, as being a less dangerous commodity than her little
+niece:  but fears for the well-being of the master-carver, and his
+Wirthschaft, and still more the notion of gossip Gertrude Grundt
+hearing that she had ridden off with a wild lanzknecht, made her at
+once reject the plan, without even mentioning it to her husband or
+his niece.
+
+By the time Hugh Sorel rolled out from between his feather beds, and
+was about to don his greasy buff, a handsome new suit, finished point
+device, and a pair of huge boots to correspond, had been laid by his
+bedside.
+
+"Ho, ho!  Master Goetz," said he, as he stumbled into the Stube, "I
+see thy game.  Thou wouldst make it worth my while to visit the
+father-house at Ulm?"
+
+"It shall be worth thy while, indeed, if thou bringest me back my
+white dove," was Gottfried's answer.
+
+"And how if I bring her back with a strapping reiter son-in-law?"
+laughed Hugh.  "What welcome should the fellow receive?"
+
+"That would depend on what he might be," replied Gottfried; and Hugh,
+his love of tormenting a little allayed by satisfaction in his buff
+suit, and by an eye to a heavy purse that lay by his brother's hand
+on the table, added, "Little fear of that.  Our fellows would look
+for lustier brides than yon little pale face.  'Tis whiter than ever
+this morning,--but no tears.  That is my brave girl."
+
+"Yes, father, I am ready to do your bidding," replied Christina,
+meekly.
+
+"That is well, child.  Mark me, no tears.  Thy mother wept day and
+night, and, when she had wept out her tears, she was sullen, when I
+would have been friendly towards her.  It was the worse for her.
+But, so long as thou art good daughter to me, thou shalt find me good
+father to thee;" and for a moment there was a kindliness in his eye
+which made it sufficiently like that of his brother to give some
+consolation to the shrinking heart that he was rending from all it
+loved; and she steadied her voice for another gentle profession of
+obedience, for which she felt strengthened by the morning's orisons.
+
+"Well said, child.  Now canst sit on old Nibelung's croup?  His back-
+bone is somewhat sharper than if he had battened in a citizen's
+stall; but, if thine aunt can find thee some sort of pillion, I'll
+promise thee the best ride thou hast had since we came from
+Innspruck, ere thou canst remember."
+
+"Christina has her own mule," replied her uncle, "without troubling
+Nibelung to carry double."
+
+"Ho! her own!  An overfed burgomaster sort of a beast, that will turn
+restive at the first sight of the Eagle's Ladder!  However, he may
+carry her so far, and, if we cannot get him up the mountain, I shall
+know what to do with him," he muttered to himself.
+
+But Hugh, like many a gentleman after him, was recusant at the sight
+of his daughter's luggage; and yet it only loaded one sumpter mule,
+besides forming a few bundles which could be easily bestowed upon the
+saddles of his two knappen, while her lute hung by a silken string on
+her arm.  Both she and her aunt thought she had been extremely
+moderate; but his cry was, What could she want with so much?  Her
+mother had never been allowed more than would go into a pair of
+saddle-bags; and his own Jungfrau--she had never seen so much gear
+together in her life; he would be laughed to scorn for his
+presumption in bringing such a fine lady into the castle; it would be
+well if Freiherr Eberhard's bride brought half as much.
+
+Still he had a certain pride in it--he was, after all, by birth and
+breeding a burgher--and there had been evidently a softening and
+civilizing influence in the night spent beneath his paternal roof,
+and old habits, and perhaps likewise in the submission he had met
+with from his daughter.  The attendants, too, who had been pleased
+with their quarters, readily undertook to carry their share of the
+burthen, and, though he growled and muttered a little, he at length
+was won over to consent, chiefly, as it seemed, by Christina's
+obliging readiness to leave behind the bundle that contained her
+holiday kirtle.
+
+He had been spared all needless irritation.  Before his waking,
+Christina had been at the priest's cell, and had received his last
+blessings and counsels, and she had, on the way back, exchanged her
+farewells and tears with her two dearest friends, Barbara Schmidt,
+and Regina Grundt, confiding to the former her cage of doves, and to
+the latter the myrtle, which, like every German maiden, she cherished
+in her window, to supply her future bridal wreath.  Now pale as
+death, but so resolutely composed as to be almost disappointing to
+her demonstrative aunt, she quietly went through her home partings;
+while Hausfrau Johanna adjured her father by all that was sacred to
+be a true guardian and protector of the child, and he could not
+forbear from a few tormenting auguries about the lanzknecht son-in-
+law.  Their effect was to make the good dame more passionate in her
+embraces and admonitions to Christina to take care of herself.  She
+would have a mass said every day that Heaven might have a care of
+her!
+
+Master Gottfried was going to ride as far as the confines of the free
+city's territory, and his round, sleek, cream-coloured palfrey, used
+to ambling in civic processions, was as great a contrast to raw-
+boned, wild-eyed Nibelung, all dappled with misty grey, as was the
+stately, substantial burgher to his lean, hungry-looking brother, or
+Dame Johanna's dignified, curled, white poodle, which was forcibly
+withheld from following Christina, to the coarse-bristled, wolfish-
+looking hound who glared at the household pet with angry and
+contemptuous eyes, and made poor Christina's heart throb with terror
+whenever it bounded near her.
+
+Close to her uncle she kept, as beneath the trellised porches that
+came down from the projecting gables of the burghers' houses many a
+well-known face gazed and nodded, as they took their way through the
+crooked streets, many a beggar or poor widow waved her a blessing.
+Out into the market-place, with its clear fountain adorned with
+arches and statues, past the rising Dome Kirk, where the swarms of
+workmen unbonneted to the master-carver, and the reiter paused with
+an irreverent sneer at the small progress made since he could first
+remember the building.  How poor little Christina's soul clung to
+every cusp of the lacework spire, every arch of the window, each of
+which she had hailed as an achievement!  The tears had well-nigh
+blinded her in a gush of feeling that came on her unawares, and her
+mule had his own way as he carried her under the arch of the tall and
+beautifully-sculptured bridge tower, and over the noble bridge across
+the Danube.
+
+Her uncle spoke much, low and earnestly, to his brother.  She knew it
+was in commendation of her to his care, and an endeavour to impress
+him with a sense of the kind of protection she would require, and she
+kept out of earshot.  It was enough for her to see her uncle still,
+and feel that his tenderness was with her, and around her.  But at
+last he drew his rein.  "And now, my little one, the daughter of my
+heart, I must bid thee farewell," he said.
+
+Christina could not be restrained from springing from her mule, and
+kneeling on the grass to receive his blessing, her face hidden in her
+hands, that her father might not see her tears.
+
+"The good God bless thee, my child," said Gottfried, who seldom
+invoked the saints; "bless thee, and bring thee back in His own good
+time.  Thou hast been a good child to us; be so to thine own father.
+Do thy work, and come back to us again."
+
+The tears rained down his cheeks, as Christina's head lay on his
+bosom, and then with a last kiss he lifted her again on her mule,
+mounted his horse, and turned back to the city, with his servant.
+
+Hugh was merciful enough to let his daughter gaze long after the
+retreating figure ere he summoned her on.  All day they rode, at
+first through meadow lands and then through more broken, open ground,
+where at mid-day they halted, and dined upon the plentiful fare with
+which the housemother had provided them, over which Hugh smacked his
+lips, and owned that they did live well in the old town!  Could
+Christina make such sausages?
+
+"Not as well as my aunt."
+
+"Well, do thy best, and thou wilt win favour with the baron."
+
+The evening began to advance, and Christina was very weary, as the
+purple mountains that she had long watched with a mixture of fear and
+hope began to look more distinct, and the ground was often in abrupt
+ascents.  Her father, without giving space for complaints, hurried
+her on.  He must reach the Debateable Ford ere dark.  It was,
+however, twilight when they came to an open space, where, at the foot
+of thickly forest-clad rising ground, lay an expanse of turf and rich
+grass, through which a stream made its way, standing in a wide
+tranquil pool as if to rest after its rough course from the
+mountains.  Above rose, like a dark wall, crag upon crag, peak on
+peak, in purple masses, blending with the sky; and Hugh, pointing
+upwards to a turreted point, apparently close above their heads,
+where a star of light was burning, told her that there was
+Adlerstein, and this was the Debateable Ford.
+
+In fact, as he explained, while splashing through the shallow
+expanse, the stream had changed its course.  It was the boundary
+between the lands of Schlangenwald and Adlerstein, but it had within
+the last sixty years burst forth in a flood, and had then declined to
+return to its own bed, but had flowed in a fresh channel to the right
+of the former one.  The Freiherren von Adlerstein claimed the ground
+to the old channel, the Graffen von Schlangenwald held that the river
+was the landmark; and the dispute had a greater importance than
+seemed explained from the worth of the rushy space of ground in
+question, for this was the passage of the Italian merchants on their
+way from Constance, and every load that was overthrown in the river
+was regarded as the lawful prey of the noble on whose banks the
+catastrophe befell.
+
+Any freight of goods was anxiously watched by both nobles, and it was
+not their fault if no disaster befell the travellers.  Hugh talked of
+the Schlangenwald marauders with the bitterness of a deadly feud, but
+manifestly did not breathe freely till his whole convoy were safe
+across both the wet and the dry channel.
+
+Christina supposed they should now ascend to the castle; but her
+father laughed, saying that the castle was not such a step off as she
+fancied, and that they must have daylight for the Eagle's Stairs.  He
+led the way through the trees, up ground that she thought mountain
+already, and finally arrived at a miserable little hut, which served
+the purpose of an inn.
+
+He was received there with much obsequiousness, and was plainly a
+great authority there.  Christina, weary and frightened, descended
+from her mule, and was put under the protection of a wild, rough-
+looking peasant woman, who stared at her like something from another
+world, but at length showed her a nook behind a mud partition, where
+she could spread her mantle, and at least lie down, and tell her
+beads unseen, if she could not sleep in the stifling, smoky
+atmosphere, amid the sounds of carousal among her father and his
+fellows.
+
+The great hound came up and smelt to her.  His outline was so-
+wolfish, that she had nearly screamed:  but, more in terror at the
+men who might have helped her than even at the beast, she tried to
+smooth him with her trembling hand, whispered his name of "Festhold,"
+and found him licking her hand, and wagging his long rough tail.  And
+he finally lay down at her feet, as though to protect her.
+
+"Is it a sign that good angels will not let me be hurt?" she thought,
+and, wearied out, she slept.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II:  THE EYRIE
+
+
+
+Christina Sorel awoke to a scene most unlike that which had been wont
+to meet her eyes in her own little wainscoted chamber high in the
+gabled front of her uncle's house.  It was a time when the imperial
+free towns of Germany had advanced nearly as far as those of Italy in
+civilization, and had reached a point whence they retrograded
+grievously during the Thirty Years' War, even to an extent that they
+have never entirely recovered.  The country immediately around them
+shared the benefits of their civilization, and the free peasant-
+proprietors lived in great ease and prosperity, in beautiful and
+picturesque farmsteads, enjoying a careless abundance, and keeping
+numerous rural or religious feasts, where old Teutonic mythological
+observances had received a Christian colouring and adaptation.
+
+In the mountains, or around the castles, it was usually very
+different.  The elective constitution of the empire, the frequent
+change of dynasty, the many disputed successions, had combined to
+render the sovereign authority uncertain and feeble, and it was
+seldom really felt save in the hereditary dominions of the Kaiser for
+the time being.  Thus, while the cities advanced in the power of
+self-government, and the education it conveyed, the nobles,
+especially those whose abodes were not easily accessible, were often
+practically under no government at all, and felt themselves
+accountable to no man.  The old wild freedom of the Suevi, and other
+Teutonic tribes, still technically, and in many cases practically,
+existed.  The Heretogen, Heerzogen, or, as we call them, Dukes, had
+indeed accepted employment from the Kaiser as his generals, and had
+received rewards from him; the Gerefen, or Graffen, of all kinds were
+his judges, the titles of both being proofs of their holding
+commissions from, and being thus dependent on, the court.  But the
+Freiherren, a word very inadequately represented by our French term
+of baron, were absolutely free, "never in bondage to any man,"
+holding their own, and owing no duty, no office; poorer, because
+unendowed by the royal authority, but holding themselves infinitely
+higher, than the pensioners of the court.  Left behind, however, by
+their neighbours, who did their part by society, and advanced with
+it, the Freiherren had been for the most part obliged to give up
+their independence and fall into the system, but so far in the rear,
+that they ranked, like the barons of France and England, as the last
+order of nobility.
+
+Still, however, in the wilder and more mountainous parts of the
+country, some of the old families of unreduced, truly free Freiherren
+lingered, their hand against every man, every man's hand against
+them, and ever becoming more savage, both positively and still more
+proportionately, as their isolation and the general progress around
+them became greater.  The House of Austria, by gradually absorbing
+hereditary states into its own possessions, was, however, in the
+fifteenth century, acquiring a preponderance that rendered its
+possession of the imperial throne almost a matter of inheritance, and
+moreover rendered the supreme power far more effective than it had
+ever previously been.  Freidrich III. a man still in full vigour, and
+with an able and enterprising son already elected to the succession,
+was making his rule felt, and it was fast becoming apparent that the
+days of the independent baronies were numbered, and that the only
+choice that would soon be left them would be between making terms and
+being forcibly reduced.  Von Adlerstein was one of the oldest of
+these free families.  If the lords of the Eagle's Stone had ever
+followed the great Konrads and Freidrichs of Swabia in their imperial
+days, their descendants had taken care to forget the weakness, and
+believed themselves absolutely free from all allegiance.
+
+And the wildness of their territory was what might be expected from
+their hostility to all outward influences.  The hostel, if it
+deserved the name, was little more than a charcoal-burner's hut,
+hidden in the woods at the foot of the mountain, serving as a
+halting-place for the Freiherren's retainers ere they attempted the
+ascent.  The inhabitants were allowed to ply their trade of charring
+wood in the forest on condition of supplying the castle with
+charcoal, and of affording a lodging to the followers on occasions
+like the present.
+
+Grimy, half-clad, and brawny, with the whites of his eyes gleaming
+out of his black face, Jobst the Kohler startled Christina terribly
+when she came into the outer room, and met him returning from his
+night's work, with his long stoking-pole in his hand.  Her father
+shouted with laughter at her alarm.
+
+"Thou thinkest thyself in the land of the kobolds and dwarfs, my
+girl!  Never mind, thou wilt see worse than honest Jobst before thou
+hast done.  Now, eat a morsel and be ready--mountain air will make
+thee hungry ere thou art at the castle.  And, hark thee, Jobst, thou
+must give stable-room to yon sumpter-mule for the present, and let
+some of my daughter's gear lie in the shed."
+
+"O father!" exclaimed Christina, in dismay.
+
+"We'll bring it up, child, by piecemeal," he said in a low voice, "as
+we can; but if such a freight came to the castle at once, my lady
+would have her claws on it, and little more wouldst thou ever see
+thereof.  Moreover, I shall have enough to do to look after thee up
+the ascent, without another of these city-bred beasts."
+
+"I hope the poor mule will be well cared for.  I can pay for--" began
+Christina; but her father squeezed her arm, and drowned her soft
+voice in his loud tones.
+
+"Jobst will take care of the beast, as belonging to me.  Woe betide
+him, if I find it the worse!"--and his added imprecations seemed
+unnecessary, so earnest were the asseverations of both the man and
+his wife that the animal should be well cared for.
+
+"Look you, Christina," said Hugh Sorel, as soon as he had placed her
+on her mule, and led her out of hearing, "if thou hast any gold about
+thee, let it be the last thing thou ownest to any living creature up
+there."  Then, as she was about to speak--"Do not even tell me.  I
+WILL not know."  The caution did not add much to Christina's comfort;
+but she presently asked, "Where is thy steed, father?"
+
+"I sent him up to the castle with the Schneiderlein and Yellow
+Lorentz," answered the father.  "I shall have ado enough on foot with
+thee before we are up the Ladder."
+
+The father and daughter were meantime proceeding along a dark path
+through oak and birch woods, constantly ascending, until the oak grew
+stunted and disappeared, and the opening glades showed steep, stony,
+torrent-furrowed ramparts of hillside above them, looking to
+Christina's eyes as if she were set to climb up the cathedral side
+like a snail or a fly.  She quite gasped for breath at the very
+sight, and was told in return to wait and see what she would yet say
+to the Adlerstreppe, or Eagle's Ladder.  Poor child! she had no
+raptures for romantic scenery; she knew that jagged peaks made very
+pretty backgrounds in illuminations, but she had much rather have
+been in the smooth meadows of the environs of Ulm.  The Danube looked
+much more agreeable to her, silver-winding between its green banks,
+than did the same waters leaping down with noisy voices in their
+stony, worn beds to feed the river that she only knew in his grave
+breadth and majesty.  Yet, alarmed as she was, there was something in
+the exhilaration and elasticity of the mountain air that gave her an
+entirely new sensation of enjoyment and life, and seemed to brace her
+limbs and spirits for whatever might be before her; and, willing to
+show herself ready to be gratified, she observed on the freshness and
+sweetness of the air.
+
+"Thou find'st it out, child?  Ay, 'tis worth all the feather-beds and
+pouncet-boxes in Ulm; is it not?  That accursed Italian fever never
+left me till I came up here.  A man can scarce draw breath in your
+foggy meadows below there.  Now then, here is the view open.  What
+think you of the Eagle's Nest?"
+
+For, having passed beyond the region of wood they had come forth upon
+the mountain-side.  A not immoderately steep slope of boggy, mossy-
+looking ground covered with bilberries, cranberries, &c. and with
+bare rocks here and there rising, went away above out of her ken; but
+the path she was upon turned round the shoulder of the mountain, and
+to the left, on a ledge of rock cut off apparently on their side by a
+deep ravine, and with a sheer precipice above and below it, stood a
+red stone pile, with one turret far above the rest.
+
+"And this is Schloss Adlerstein?" she exclaimed.
+
+"That is Schloss Adlerstein; and there shalt thou be in two hours'
+time, unless the devil be more than usually busy, or thou mak'st a
+fool of thyself.  If so, not Satan himself could save thee."
+
+It was well that Christina had resolution to prevent her making a
+fool of herself on the spot, for the thought of the pathway turned
+her so dizzy that she could only shut her eyes, trusting that her
+father did not see her terror.  Soon the turn round to the side of
+the mountain was made, and the road became a mere track worn out on
+the turf on the hillside, with an abyss beneath, close to the edge of
+which the mule, of course, walked.
+
+When she ventured to look again, she perceived that the ravine was
+like an enormous crack open on the mountain-side, and that the stream
+that formed the Debateable Ford flowed down the bottom of it.  The
+ravine itself went probably all the way up the mountain, growing
+shallower as it ascended higher; but here, where Christina beheld it,
+it was extremely deep, and savagely desolate and bare.  She now saw
+that the Eagle's Ladder was a succession of bare gigantic terraces of
+rock, of which the opposite side of the ravine was composed, and on
+one of which stood the castle.  It was no small mystery to her how it
+had ever been built, or how she was ever to get there.  She saw in
+the opening of the ravine the green meadows and woods far below; and,
+when her father pointed out to her the Debateable Ford, apparently
+much nearer to the castle than they themselves were at present, she
+asked why they had so far overpassed the castle, and come by this
+circuitous course.
+
+"Because," said Hugh, "we are not eagles outright.  Seest thou not,
+just beyond the castle court, this whole crag of ours breaks off
+short, falls like the town wall straight down into the plain?  Even
+this cleft that we are crossing by, the only road a horse can pass,
+breaks off short and sudden too, so that the river is obliged to take
+leaps which nought else but a chamois could compass.  A footpath
+there is, and Freiherr Eberhard takes it at all times, being born to
+it; but even I am too stiff for the like.  Ha! ha!  Thy uncle may
+talk of the Kaiser and his League, but he would change his note if we
+had him here."
+
+"Yet castles have been taken by hunger," said Christina.
+
+"What, knowest thou so much?--True!  But look you," pointing to a
+white foamy thread that descended the opposite steeps, "yonder beck
+dashes through the castle court, and it never dries; and see you the
+ledge the castle stands on?  It winds on out of your sight, and forms
+a path which leads to the village of Adlerstein, out on the other
+slope of the mountains; and ill were it for the serfs if they
+victualled not the castle well."
+
+The fearful steepness of the ground absorbed all Christina's
+attention.  The road, or rather stairs, came down to the stream at
+the bottom of the fissure, and then went again on the other side up
+still more tremendous steeps, which Hugh climbed with a staff,
+sometimes with his hand on the bridle, but more often only keeping a
+watchful eye on the sure-footed mule, and an arm to steady his
+daughter in the saddle when she grew absolutely faint with giddiness
+at the abyss around her.  She was too much in awe of him to utter cry
+or complaint, and, when he saw her effort to subdue her mortal
+terror, he was far from unkind, and let her feel his protecting
+strength.
+
+Presently a voice was heard above--"What, Sorel, hast brought her!
+Trudchen is wearying for her."
+
+The words were in the most boorish dialect and pronunciation, the
+stranger to Christina's ears, because intercourse with foreign
+merchants, and a growing affectation of Latinism, had much refined
+the city language to which she was accustomed; and she was surprised
+to perceive by her father's gesture and address that the speaker must
+be one of the lords of the castle.  She looked up, and saw on the
+pathway above her a tall, large-framed young man, his skin dyed red
+with sun and wind, in odd contrast with his pale shaggy hair,
+moustache, and beard, as though the weather had tanned the one and
+bleached the other.  His dress was a still shabbier buff suit than
+her father had worn, but with a richly-embroidered belt sustaining a
+hunting-horn with finely-chased ornaments of tarnished silver, and an
+eagle's plume was fastened into his cap with a large gold Italian
+coin.  He stared hard at the maiden, but vouchsafed her no token of
+greeting--only distressed her considerably by distracting her
+father's attention from her mule by his questions about the journey,
+all in the same rude, coarse tone and phraseology.  Some amount of
+illusion was dispelled.  Christina was quite prepared to find the
+mountain lords dangerous ruffians, but she had expected the graces of
+courtesy and high birth; but, though there was certainly an air of
+command and freedom of bearing about the present specimen, his
+manners and speech were more uncouth than those of any newly-caught
+apprentice of her uncle, and she could not help thinking that her
+good aunt Johanna need not have troubled herself about the danger of
+her taking a liking to any such young Freiherr as she here beheld.
+
+By this time a last effort of the mule had climbed to the level of
+the castle.  As her father had shown her, there was precipice on two
+sides of the building; on the third, a sheer wall of rock going up to
+a huge height before it reached another of the Eagle's Steps; and on
+the fourth, where the gateway was, the little beck had been made to
+flow in a deep channel that had been hollowed out to serve as a moat,
+before it bounded down to swell the larger water-course in the
+ravine.  A temporary bridge had been laid across; the drawbridge was
+out of order, and part of Hugh's business had been to procure
+materials for mending its apparatus.  Christina was told to dismount
+and cross on foot.  The unrailed board, so close to the abyss, and
+with the wild water foaming above and below, was dreadful to her;
+and, though she durst not speak, she hung back with an involuntary
+shudder, as her father, occupied with the mule, did not think of
+giving her a hand.  The young baron burst out into an unrestrained
+laugh--a still greater shock to her feelings; but at the same time he
+roughly took her hand, and almost dragged her across, saying, "City
+bred--ho, ho!"  "Thanks, sir," she strove to say, but she was very
+near weeping with the terror and strangeness of all around.
+
+The low-browed gateway, barely high enough to admit a man on
+horseback, opened before her, almost to her feelings like the gate of
+the grave, and she could not help crossing herself, with a silent
+prayer for protection, as she stepped under it, and came into the
+castle court--not such a court as gave its name to fair courtesy,
+but, if truth must be told, far more resembling an ill-kept, ill-
+savoured stable-yard, with the piggeries opening into it.  In
+unpleasantly close quarters, the Schneiderlein, or little tailor,
+i.e. the biggest and fiercest of all the knappen, was grooming
+Nibelung; three long-backed, long-legged, frightful swine were
+grubbing in a heap of refuse; four or five gaunt ferocious-looking
+dogs came bounding up to greet their comrade Festhold; and a great
+old long-bearded goat stood on the top of the mixen, looking much
+disposed to butt at any newcomer.  The Sorel family had brought
+cleanliness from Flanders, and Hausfrau Johanna was scrupulously
+dainty in all her appointments.  Christina scarcely knew how she
+conveyed herself and her blue kirtle across the bemired stones to the
+next and still darker portal, under which a wide but rough ill-hewn
+stair ascended.  The stables, in fact, occupied the lower floor of
+the main building, and not till these stairs had ascended above them
+did they lead out into the castle hall.  Here were voices--voices
+rude and harsh, like those Christina had shrunk from in passing
+drinking booths.  There was a long table, with rough men-at-arms
+lounging about, and staring rudely at her; and at the upper end, by a
+great open chimney, sat, half-dozing, an elderly man, more rugged in
+feature than his son; and yet, when he roused himself and spoke to
+Hugh, there was a shade more of breeding, and less of clownishness in
+his voice and deportment, as if he had been less entirely devoid of
+training.  A tall darkly-robed woman stood beside him--it was her
+harsh tone of reproof and command that had so startled Christina as
+she entered--and her huge towering cap made her look gigantic in the
+dim light of the smoky hall.  Her features had been handsome, but had
+become hardened into a grim wooden aspect; and with sinking spirits
+Christina paused at the step of the dais, and made her reverence,
+wishing she could sink beneath the stones of the pavement out of
+sight of these terrible personages.
+
+"So that's the wench you have taken all this trouble for," was
+Freiherrinn Kunigunde's greeting.  "She looks like another sick baby
+to nurse; but I'll have no trouble about her;--that is all.  Take her
+up to Ermentrude; and thou, girl, have a care thou dost her will, and
+puttest none of thy city fancies into her head."
+
+"And hark thee, girl," added the old Freiherr, sitting up.  "So thou
+canst nurse her well, thou shalt have a new gown and a stout
+husband."
+
+"That way," pointed the lady towards one of the four corner towers;
+and Christina moved doubtfully towards it, reluctant to quit her
+father, her only protector, and afraid to introduce herself.  The
+younger Freiherr, however, stepped before her, went striding two or
+three steps at a time up the turret stair, and, before Christina had
+wound her way up, she heard a thin, impatient voice say, "Thou saidst
+she was come, Ebbo."
+
+"Yes, even so," she heard Freiherr Eberhard return; "but she is slow
+and town-bred.  She was afraid of crossing the moat."  And then both
+laughed, so that Christina's cheeks tingled as she emerged from the
+turret into another vaulted room.  "Here she is," quoth the brother;
+"now will she make thee quite well."
+
+It was a very bare and desolate room, with no hangings to the rough
+stone walls, and scarcely any furniture, except a great carved
+bedstead, one wooden chair, a table, and some stools.  On the bare
+floor, in front of the fire, her arm under her head, and a profusion
+of long hair falling round her like flax from a distaff, lay wearily
+a little figure, beside whom Sir Eberhard was kneeling on one knee.
+
+"Here is my sisterling," said he, looking up to the newcomer.  "They
+say you burgher women have ways of healing the sick.  Look at her.
+Think you you can heal her?"
+
+In an excess of dumb shyness Ermentrude half rose, and effectually
+hindered any observations on her looks by hiding her face away upon
+her brother's knee.  It was the gesture of a child of five years old,
+but Ermentrude's length of limb forbade Christina to suppose her less
+than fourteen or fifteen.  "What, wilt not look at her?" he said,
+trying to raise her head; and then, holding out one of her wasted,
+feverish hands to Christina, he again asked, with a wistfulness that
+had a strange effect from the large, tall man, almost ten years her
+elder, "Canst thou cure her, maiden?"
+
+"I am no doctor, sir," replied Christina; "but I could, at least,
+make her more comfortable.  The stone is too hard for her."
+
+"I will not go away; I want the fire," murmured the sick girl,
+holding out her hands towards it, and shivering.
+
+Christina quickly took off her own thick cloth mantle, well lined
+with dressed lambskins, laid it on the floor, rolled the collar of it
+over a small log of wood--the only substitute she could see for a
+pillow--and showed an inviting couch in an instant.  Ermentrude let
+her brother lay her down, and then was covered with the ample fold.
+She smiled as she turned up her thin, wasted face, faded into the
+same whitey-brown tint as her hair.  "That is good," she said, but
+without thanks; and, feeling the soft lambswool:  "Is that what you
+burgher-women wear?  Father is to give me a furred mantle, if only
+some court dame would pass the Debateable Ford.  But the
+Schlangenwaldern got the last before ever we could get down.  Jobst
+was so stupid.  He did not give us warning in time; but he is to be
+hanged next time if he does not."
+
+Christina's blood curdled as she heard this speech in a weak little
+complaining tone, that otherwise put her sadly in mind of Barbara
+Schmidt's little sister, who had pined and wasted to death.  "Never
+mind, Trudchen," answered the brother kindly; "meantime I have kept
+all the wild catskins for thee, and may be this--this--SHE could sew
+them up into a mantle for thee."
+
+"O let me see," cried the young lady eagerly; and Sir Eberhard,
+walking off, presently returned with an armful of the beautiful
+brindled furs of the mountain cat, reminding Christina of her aunt's
+gentle domestic favourite.  Ermentrude sat up, and regarded the
+placing out of them with great interest; and thus her brother left
+her employed, and so much delighted that she had not flagged, when a
+great bell proclaimed that it was the time for the noontide meal, for
+which Christina, in spite of all her fears of the company below
+stairs, had been constrained by mountain air to look forward with
+satisfaction.
+
+Ermentrude, she found, meant to go down, but with no notion of the
+personal arrangements that Christina had been wont to think a needful
+preliminary.  With all her hair streaming, down she went, and was so
+gladly welcomed by her father that it was plain that her presence was
+regarded as an unusual advance towards recovery, and Christina feared
+lest he might already be looking out for the stout husband.  She had
+much to tell him about the catskin cloak, and then she was seized
+with eager curiosity at the sight of Christina's bundles, and
+especially at her lute, which she must hear at once.
+
+"Not now," said her mother, "there will be jangling and jingling
+enough by and by--meat now."
+
+The whole establishment were taking their places--or rather tumbling
+into them.  A battered, shapeless metal vessel seemed to represent
+the salt-cellar, and next to it Hugh Sorel seated himself, and kept a
+place for her beside him.  Otherwise she would hardly have had seat
+or food.' She was now able to survey the inmates of the castle.
+Besides the family themselves, there were about a dozen men, all
+ruffianly-looking, and of much lower grade than her father, and three
+women.  One, old Ursel, the wife of Hatto the forester, was a bent,
+worn, but not ill-looking woman, with a motherly face; the younger
+ones were hard, bold creatures, from whom Christina felt a shrinking
+recoil.  The meal was dressed by Ursel and her kitchen boy.  From a
+great cauldron, goat's flesh and broth together were ladled out into
+wooden bowls.  That every one provided their own spoon and knife--no
+fork--was only what Christina was used to in the most refined
+society, and she had the implements in a pouch hanging to her girdle;
+but she was not prepared for the unwashed condition of the bowls, nor
+for being obliged to share that of her father--far less for the
+absence of all blessing on the meal, and the coarse boisterousness of
+manners prevailing thereat.  Hungry as she was, she did not find it
+easy to take food under these circumstances, and she was relieved
+when Ermentrude, overcome by the turmoil, grew giddy, and was carried
+upstairs by her father, who laid her down upon her great bed, and
+left her to the attendance of Christina.  Ursel had followed, but was
+petulantly repulsed by her young lady in favour of the newcomer, and
+went away grumbling.
+
+Nestled on her bed, Ermentrude insisted on hearing the lute, and
+Christina had to creep down to fetch it, with some other of her
+goods, in trembling haste, and redoubled disgust at the aspect of the
+meal, which looked even more repulsive in this later stage, and to
+one who was no longer partaking of it.
+
+Low and softly, with a voice whence she could scarcely banish tears,
+and in dread of attracting attention, Christina sung to the sick
+girl, who listened with a sort of rude wonder, and finally was lulled
+to sleep.  Christina ventured to lay down her instrument and move
+towards the window, heavily mullioned with stone, barred with iron,
+and glazed with thick glass; being in fact the only glazed window in
+the castle.  To her great satisfaction it did not look out over the
+loathsome court, but over the opening of the ravine.  The apartment
+occupied the whole floor of the keep; it was stone-paved, but the
+roof was boarded, and there was a round turret at each angle.  One
+contained the staircase, and was that which ran up above the keep,
+served as a watch-tower, and supported the Eagle banner.  The other
+three were empty, and one of these, which had a strong door, and a
+long loophole window looking out over the open country, Christina
+hoped that she might appropriate.  The turret was immediately over
+the perpendicular cliff that descended into the plain.  A stone
+thrown from the window would have gone straight down, she knew not
+where.  Close to her ears rushed the descending waterfall in its leap
+over the rock side, and her eyes could rest themselves on the green
+meadow land below, and the smooth water of the Debateable Ford; nay--
+far, far away beyond retreating ridges of wood and field--she thought
+she could track a silver line and, guided by it, a something that
+might be a city.  Her heart leapt towards it, but she was recalled by
+Ermentrude's fretfully imperious voice.
+
+"I was only looking forth from the window, lady," she said,
+returning.
+
+"Ah! thou saw'st no travellers at the Ford?" cried Ermentrude,
+starting up with lively interest.
+
+"No, lady; I was gazing at the far distance.  Know you if it be
+indeed Ulm that we see from these windows?"
+
+"Ulm?  That is where thou comest from?" said Ermentrude languidly.
+
+"My happy home, with my dear uncle and aunt!  O, if I can but see it
+hence, it will be joy!"
+
+"I do not know.  Let me see," said Ermentrude, rising; but at the
+window her pale blue eyes gazed vacantly as if she did not know what
+she was looking at or for.
+
+"Ah! if the steeple of the Dome Kirk were but finished, I could not
+mistake it," said Christina.  "How beauteous the white spire will
+look from hence!"
+
+"Dome Kirk?" repeated Ermentrude; "what is that?"
+
+Such an entire blank as the poor child's mind seemed to be was
+inconceivable to the maiden, who had been bred up in the busy hum of
+men, where the constant resort of strange merchants, the daily
+interests of a self-governing municipality, and the numerous
+festivals, both secular and religious, were an unconscious education,
+even without that which had been bestowed upon her by teachers, as
+well as by her companionship with her uncle, and participation in his
+studies, taste and arts.
+
+Ermentrude von Adlerstein had, on the contrary, not only never gone
+beyond the Kohler's hut on the one side, and the mountain village on
+the other, but she never seen more of life than the festival at the
+wake the hermitage chapel there on Midsummer-day.  The only strangers
+who ever came to the castle were disbanded lanzknechts who took
+service with her father, or now and then a captive whom he put to
+ransom.  She knew absolutely nothing of the world, except for a
+general belief that Freiherren lived there to do what they chose with
+other people, and that the House of Adlerstein was the freest and
+noblest in existence.  Also there was a very positive hatred to the
+house of Schlangenwald, and no less to that of Adlerstein
+Wildschloss, for no reason that Christina could discover save that,
+being a younger branch of the family, they had submitted to the
+Emperor.  To destroy either the Graf von Schlangenwald, or her
+Wildschloss cousin, was evidently the highest gratification
+Ermentrude could conceive; and, for the rest, that her father and
+brother should make successful captures at the Debateable Ford was
+the more abiding, because more practicable hope.  She had no further
+ideas, except perhaps to elude her mother's severity, and to desire
+her brother's success in chamois-hunting.  The only mental culture
+she had ever received was that old Ursel had taught her the Credo,
+Pater Noster, and Ave, as correctly as might be expected from a long
+course of traditionary repetitions of an incomprehensible language.
+And she knew besides a few German rhymes and jingles, half Christian,
+half heathen, with a legend or two which, if the names were
+Christian, ran grossly wild from all Christian meaning or morality.
+As to the amenities, nay, almost the proprieties, of life, they were
+less known in that baronial castle than in any artisan's house at
+Ulm.  So little had the sick girl figured them to herself, that she
+did not even desire any greater means of ease than she possessed.
+She moaned and fretted indeed, with aching limbs and blank weariness,
+but without the slightest formed desire for anything to remove her
+discomfort, except the few ameliorations she knew, such as sitting on
+her brother's knee, with her head on his shoulder, or tasting the
+mountain berries that he gathered for her.  Any other desire she
+exerted herself to frame was for finery to be gained from the spoils
+of travellers.
+
+And this was Christina's charge, whom she must look upon as the least
+alien spirit in this dreadful castle of banishment!  The young and
+old lords seemed to her savage bandits, who frightened her only less
+than did the proud sinister expression of the old lady, for she had
+not even the merit of showing any tenderness towards the sickly girl,
+of whom she was ashamed, and evidently regarded the town-bred
+attendant as a contemptible interloper.
+
+Long, long did the maiden weep and pray that night after Ermentrude
+had sunk to sleep.  She strained her eyes with home-sick longings to
+detect lights where she thought Ulm might be; and, as she thought of
+her uncle and aunt, the poodle and the cat round the stove, the maids
+spinning and the prentices knitting as her uncle read aloud some
+grave good book, most probably the legend of the saint of the day,
+and contrasted it with the rude gruff sounds of revelry that found
+their way up the turret stairs, she could hardly restrain her sobs
+from awakening the young lady whose bed she was to share.  She
+thought almost with envy of her own patroness, who was cast into the
+lake of Bolsena with a millstone about her neck--a better fate,
+thought she, than to live on in such an abode of loathsomeness and
+peril.
+
+But then had not St. Christina floated up alive, bearing up her
+millstone with her?  And had not she been put into a dungeon full of
+venomous reptiles who, when they approached her, had all been changed
+to harmless doves?  Christina had once asked Father Balthazar how
+this could be; and had he not replied that the Church did not teach
+these miracles as matters of faith, but that she might there discern
+in figure how meek Christian holiness rose above all crushing
+burthens, and transformed the rudest natures.  This poor maiden-
+dying, perhaps; and oh! how unfit to live or die!--might it be her
+part to do some good work by her, and infuse some Christian hope,
+some godly fear?  Could it be for this that the saints had led her
+hither?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III:  THE FLOTSAM AND JETSAM OF THE DEBATEABLE FORD
+
+
+
+Life in Schloss Adlerstein was little less intolerable than
+Christina's imagination had depicted it.  It was entirely devoid of
+all the graces of chivalry, and its squalor and coarseness, magnified
+into absurdity by haughtiness and violence, were almost
+inconceivable.  Fortunately for her, the inmates of the castle
+resided almost wholly below stairs in the hall and kitchen, and in
+some dismal dens in the thickness of their walls.  The height of the
+keep was intended for dignity and defence, rather than for
+habitation; and the upper chamber, with its great state-bed, where
+everybody of the house of Adlerstein was born and died, was not
+otherwise used, except when Ermentrude, unable to bear the oppressive
+confusion below stairs, had escaped thither for quietness' sake.  No
+one else wished to inhabit it.  The chamber above was filled with the
+various appliances for the defence of the castle; and no one would
+have ever gone up the turret stairs had not a warder been usually
+kept on the roof to watch the roads leading to the Ford.  Otherwise
+the Adlersteiners had all the savage instinct of herding together in
+as small a space as possible.
+
+Freiherrin Kunigunde hardly ever mounted to her daughter's chamber.
+All her affection was centred on the strong and manly son, of whom
+she was proud, while the sickly pining girl, who would hardly find a
+mate of her own rank, and who had not even dowry enough for a
+convent, was such a shame and burthen to her as to be almost a
+distasteful object.  But perversely, as it seemed to her, the only
+daughter was the darling of both father and brother, who were ready
+to do anything to gratify the girl's sick fancies, and hailed with
+delight her pleasure in her new attendant.  Old Ursel was at first
+rather envious and contemptuous of the childish, fragile stranger,
+but her gentleness disarmed the old woman; and, when it was plain
+that the young lady's sufferings were greatly lessened by tender
+care, dislike gave way to attachment, and there was little more
+murmuring at the menial services that were needed by the two maidens,
+even when Ermentrude's feeble fancies, or Christina's views of dainty
+propriety, rendered them more onerous than before.  She was even
+heard to rejoice that some Christian care and tenderness had at last
+reached her poor neglected child.
+
+It was well for Christina that she had such an ally.  The poor child
+never crept down stairs to the dinner or supper, to fetch food for
+Ermentrude, or water for herself, without a trembling and shrinking
+of heart and nerves.  Her father's authority guarded her from rude
+actions, but from rough tongues he neither could nor would guard her,
+nor understand that what to some would have been a compliment seemed
+to her an alarming insult; and her chief safeguard lay in her own
+insignificance and want of attraction, and still more in the modesty
+that concealed her terror at rude jests sufficiently to prevent
+frightening her from becoming an entertainment.
+
+Her father, whom she looked on as a cultivated person in comparison
+with the rest of the world, did his best for her after his own views,
+and gradually brought her all the properties she had left at the
+Kohler's hut.  Therewith she made a great difference in the aspect of
+the chamber, under the full sanction of the lords of the castle.
+Wolf, deer, and sheep skins abounded; and with these, assisted by her
+father and old Hatto, she tapestried the lower part of the bare grim
+walls, a great bear's hide covered the neighbourhood of the hearth,
+and cushions were made of these skins, and stuffed from Ursel's
+stores of feathers.  All these embellishments were watched with great
+delight by Ermentrude, who had never been made of so much importance,
+and was as much surprised as relieved by such attentions.  She was
+too young and too delicate to reject civilization, and she let
+Christina braid her hair, bathe her, and arrange her dress, with
+sensations of comfort that were almost like health.  To train her
+into occupying herself was however, as Christina soon found, in her
+present state, impossible.  She could spin and sew a little, but
+hated both; and her clumsy, listless fingers only soiled and wasted
+Christina's needles, silk, and lute strings, and such damage was not
+so easily remedied as in the streets of Ulm.  She was best provided
+for when looking on at her attendant's busy hands, and asking to be
+sung to, or to hear tales of the active, busy scenes of the city
+life--the dresses, fairs, festivals, and guild processions.
+
+The gentle nursing and the new interests made her improve in health,
+so that her father was delighted, and Christina began to hope for a
+return home.  Sometimes the two girls would take the air, either, on
+still days, upon the battlements, where Ermentrude watched the
+Debateable Ford, and Christina gazed at the Danube and at Ulm; or
+they would find their way to a grassy nook on the mountain-side,
+where Christina gathered gentians and saxifrage, trying to teach her
+young lady that they were worth looking at, and sighing at the
+thought of Master Gottfried's wreath when she met with the asphodel
+seed-vessels.  Once the quiet mule was brought into requisition; and,
+with her brother walking by her, and Sorel and his daughter in
+attendance, Ermentrude rode towards the village of Adlerstein.  It
+was a collection of miserable huts, on a sheltered slope towards the
+south, where there was earth enough to grow some wretched rye and
+buckwheat, subject to severe toll from the lord of the soil.  Perched
+on a hollow rock above the slope was a rude little church, over a
+cave where a hermit had once lived and died in such odour of sanctity
+that, his day happening to coincide with that of St. John the
+Baptist, the Blessed Freidmund had acquired the credit of the lion's
+share both of the saint's honours and of the old solstitial feast of
+Midsummer.  This wake was the one gaiety of the year, and attracted a
+fair which was the sole occasion of coming honestly by anything from
+the outer world; nor had his cell ever lacked a professional
+anchorite.
+
+The Freiherr of his day had been a devout man, who had gone a
+pilgrimage with Kaiser Friedrich of the Red Beard, and had brought
+home a bit of stone from the council chamber of Nicaea, which he had
+presented to the little church that he had built over the cavern.  He
+had named his son Friedmund; and there were dim memories of his days
+as of a golden age, before the Wildschlossen had carried off the best
+of the property, and when all went well.
+
+This was Christina's first sight of a church since her arrival,
+except that in the chapel, which was a dismal neglected vault, where
+a ruinous altar and mouldering crucifix testified to its sacred
+purpose.  The old baron had been excommunicated for twenty years,
+ever since he had harried the wains of the Bishop of Augsburg on his
+way to the Diet; and, though his household and family were not under
+the same sentence, "Sunday didna come abune the pass."  Christina's
+entreaty obtained permission to enter the little building, but she
+had knelt there only a few moments before her father came to hurry
+her away, and her supplications that he would some day take her to
+mass there were whistled down the wind; and indeed the hermit was a
+layman, and the church was only served on great festivals by a monk
+from the convent of St. Ruprecht, on the distant side of the
+mountain, which was further supposed to be in the Schlangenwald
+interest.  Her best chance lay in infusing the desire into
+Ermentrude, who by watching her prayers and asking a few questions
+had begun to acquire a few clearer ideas.  And what Ermentrude wished
+had always hitherto been acquiesced in by the two lords.
+
+The elder baron came little into Christina's way.  He meant to be
+kind to her, but she was dreadfully afraid of him, and, when he came
+to visit his daughter, shrank out of his notice as much as possible,
+shuddering most of all at his attempts at civilities.  His son she
+viewed as one of the thickwitted giants meant to be food for the
+heroism of good knights of romance.  Except that he was fairly
+conversant with the use of weapons, and had occasionally ridden
+beyond the shadow of his own mountain, his range was quite as limited
+as his sister's; and he had an equal scorn for all beyond it.  His
+unfailing kindness to his sister was however in his favour, and he
+always eagerly followed up any suggestion Christina made for her
+pleasure.
+
+Much of his time was spent on the child, whose chief nurse and
+playmate he had been throughout her malady; and when she showed him
+the stranger's arrangements, or repeated to him, in a wondering,
+blundering way, with constant appeals to her attendant, the new tales
+she had heard, he used to listen with a pleased awkward amazement at
+his little Ermentrude's astonishing cleverness, joined sometimes with
+real interest, which was evinced by his inquiries of Christina.  He
+certainly did not admire the little, slight, pale bower-maiden, but
+he seemed to look upon her like some strange, almost uncanny, wise
+spirit out of some other sphere, and his manner towards her had none
+of the offensive freedom apparent in even the old man's patronage.
+It was, as Ermentrude once said, laughing, almost as if he feared
+that she might do something to him.
+
+Christina had expected to see a ruffian, and had found a boor; but
+she was to be convinced that the ruffian existed in him.  Notice came
+up to the castle of a convoy of waggons, and all was excitement.
+Men-at-arms were mustered, horses led down the Eagle's Ladder, and an
+ambush prepared in the woods.  The autumn rains were already swelling
+the floods, and the passage of the ford would be difficult enough to
+afford the assailants an easy prey.
+
+The Freiherrinn Kunigunde herself, and all the women of the castle,
+hurried into Ermentrude's room to enjoy the view from her window.
+The young lady herself was full of eager expectation, but she knew
+enough of her maiden to expect no sympathy from her, and loved her
+well enough not to bring down on her her mother's attention; so
+Christina crept into her turret, unable to withdraw her eyes from the
+sight, trembling, weeping, praying, longing for power to give a
+warning signal.  Could they be her own townsmen stopped on the way to
+dear Ulm?
+
+She could see the waggons in mid-stream, the warriors on the bank;
+she heard the triumphant outcries of the mother and daughter in the
+outer room.  She saw the overthrow, the struggle, the flight of a few
+scattered dark figures on the farther side, the drawing out of the
+goods on the nearer.  Oh! were those leaping waves bearing down any
+good men's corpses to the Danube, slain, foully slain by her own
+father and this gang of robbers?
+
+She was glad that Ermentrude went down with her mother to watch the
+return of the victors.  She crouched on the floor, sobbing,
+shuddering with grief and indignation, and telling her beads alike
+for murdered and murderers, till, after the sounds of welcome and
+exultation, she heard Sir Eberhard's heavy tread, as he carried his
+sister up stairs.  Ermentrude went up at once to Christina.
+
+"After all there was little for us!" she said.  "It was only a wain
+of wine barrels; and now will the drunkards down stairs make good
+cheer.  But Ebbo could only win for me this gold chain and medal
+which was round the old merchant's neck."
+
+"Was he slain?" Christina asked with pale lips.
+
+"I only know I did not kill him," returned the baron; "I had him down
+and got the prize, and that was enough for me.  What the rest of the
+fellows may have done, I cannot say."
+
+"But he has brought thee something, Stina," continued Ermentrude.
+"Show it to her, brother."
+
+"My father sends you this for your care of my sister," said Eberhard,
+holding out a brooch that had doubtless fastened the band of the
+unfortunate wine-merchant's bonnet.
+
+"Thanks, sir; but, indeed, I may not take it," said Christina,
+turning crimson, and drawing back.
+
+"So!" he exclaimed, in amaze; then bethinking himself,--"They are no
+townsfolk of yours, but Constance cowards."
+
+"Take it, take it, Stina, or you will anger my father," added
+Ermentrude.
+
+"No, lady, I thank the barons both, but it were sin in me," said
+Christina, with trembling voice.
+
+"Look you," said Eberhard; "we have the full right--'tis a seignorial
+right--to all the goods of every wayfarer that may be overthrown in
+our river--as I am a true knight!" he added earnestly.
+
+"A true knight!" repeated Christina, pushed hard, and very indignant
+in all her terror.  "The true knight's part is to aid, not rob, the
+weak."  And the dark eyes flashed a vivid light.
+
+"Christina!" exclaimed Ermentrude in the extremity of her amazement,
+"know you what you have said?--that Eberhard is no true knight!"
+
+He meanwhile stood silent, utterly taken by surprise, and letting his
+little sister fight his battles.
+
+"I cannot help it, Lady Ermentrude," said Christina, with trembling
+lips, and eyes filling with tears.  "You may drive me from the
+castle--I only long to be away from it; but I cannot stain my soul by
+saying that spoil and rapine are the deeds of a true knight."
+
+"My mother will beat you," cried Ermentrude, passionately, ready to
+fly to the head of the stairs; but her brother laid his hand upon
+her.
+
+"Tush, Trudchen; keep thy tongue still, child!  What does it hurt
+me?"
+
+And he turned on his heels and went down stairs.  Christina crept
+into her turret, weeping bitterly and with many a wild thought.
+Would they visit her offence on her father?  Would they turn them
+both out together?  If so, would not her father hurl her down the
+rocks rather than return her to Ulm?  Could she escape?  Climb down
+the dizzy rocks, it might be, succour the merchant lying half dead on
+the meadows, protect and be protected, be once more among God-fearing
+Christians?  And as she felt her helplessness, the selfish thoughts
+passed into a gush of tears for the murdered man, lying suffering
+there, and for his possible wife and children watching for him.
+Presently Ermentrude peeped in.
+
+"Stina, Stina, don't cry; I will not tell my mother!  Come out, and
+finish my kerchief!  Come out!  No one shall beat you."
+
+"That is not what I wept for, lady," said Christina.  "I do not think
+you would bring harm on me.  But oh!  I would I were at home!  I
+grieve for the bloodshed that I must see and may not hinder, and for
+that poor merchant."
+
+"Oh," said Ermentrude, "you need not fear for him!  I saw his own
+folk return and lift him up.  But what is he to thee or to us?"
+
+"I am a burgher maid, lady," said Christina, recovering herself, and
+aware that it was of little use to bear testimony to such an auditor
+as poor little Ermentrude against the deeds of her own father and
+brother, which had in reality the sort of sanction Sir Eberhard had
+mentioned, much akin to those coast rights that were the temptation
+of wreckers.
+
+Still she could not but tremble at the thought of her speech, and
+went down to supper in greater trepidation than usual, dreading that
+she should be expected to thank the Freiherr for his gift.  But,
+fortunately, manners were too rare at Adlerstein for any such
+omission to be remarkable, and the whole establishment was in a state
+of noisy triumph and merriment over the excellence of the French wine
+they had captured, so that she slipped into her seat unobserved.
+
+Every available drinking-horn and cup was full.  Ermentrude was
+eagerly presented with draughts by both father and brother, and
+presently Sir Eberhard exclaimed, turning towards the shrinking
+Christina with a rough laugh, "Maiden, I trow thou wilt not taste?"
+
+Christina shook her head, and framed a negative with her lips.
+
+"What's this?" asked her father, close to whom she sat.  "Is't a
+fast-day?"
+
+There was a pause.  Many were present who regarded a fast-day much
+more than the lives or goods of their neighbours.  Christina again
+shook her head.
+
+"No matter," said good-natured Sir Eberhard, evidently wishing to
+avert any ill consequence from her.  "'Tis only her loss."
+
+The mirth went on rough and loud, and Christina felt this the worst
+of all the miserable meals she had partaken of in fear and trembling
+at this place of her captivity.  Ermentrude, too, was soon in such a
+state of excitement, that not only was Christina's womanhood bitterly
+ashamed and grieved for her, but there was serious danger that she
+might at any moment break out with some allusion to her maiden's
+recusancy in her reply to Sir Eberhard.
+
+Presently however Ermentrude laid down her head and began to cry--
+violent headache had come on--and her brother took her in his arms to
+carry her up the stairs; but his potations had begun before hers, and
+his step was far from steady; he stumbled more than once on the
+steps, shook and frightened his sister, and set her down weeping
+petulantly.  And then came a more terrible moment; his awe of
+Christina had passed away; he swore that she was a lovely maiden,
+with only too free a tongue, and that a kiss must be the seal of her
+pardon.
+
+A house full of intoxicated men, no living creature who would care to
+protect her, scarce even her father!  But extremity of terror gave
+her strength.  She spoke resolutely--"Sir Eberhard, your sister is
+ill--you are in no state to be here.  Go down at once, nor insult a
+free maiden."
+
+Probably the low-toned softness of the voice, so utterly different
+from the shrill wrangling notes of all the other women he had known,
+took him by surprise.  He was still sober enough to be subdued,
+almost cowed, by resistance of a description unlike all he had ever
+seen; his alarm at Christina's superior power returned in full force,
+he staggered to the stairs, Christina rushed after him, closed the
+heavy door with all her force, fastened it inside, and would have
+sunk down to weep but for Ermentrude's peevish wail of distress.
+
+Happily Ermentrude was still a child, and, neglected as she had been,
+she still had had no one to make her precocious in matters of this
+kind.  She was quite willing to take Christina's view of the case,
+and not resent the exclusion of her brother; indeed, she was unwell
+enough to dread the loudness of his voice and rudeness of his
+revelry.
+
+So the door remained shut, and Christina's resolve was taken that she
+would so keep it while the wine lasted.  And, indeed, Ermentrude had
+so much fever all that night and the next day that no going down
+could be thought of.  Nobody came near the maidens but Ursel, and she
+described one continued orgie that made Christina shudder again with
+fear and disgust.  Those below revelled without interval, except for
+sleep; and they took their sleep just where they happened to sink
+down, then returned again to the liquor.  The old baroness repaired
+to the kitchen when the revelry went beyond even her bearing; but all
+the time the wine held out, the swine in the court were, as Ursel
+averred, better company than the men in the hall.  Yet there might
+have been worse even than this; for old Ursel whispered that at the
+bottom of the stairs there was a trap-door.  Did the maiden know what
+it covered?  It was an oubliette.  There was once a Strasburg
+armourer who had refused ransom, and talked of appealing to the
+Kaiser.  He trod on that door and--Ursel pointed downwards.  "But
+since that time," she said, "my young lord has never brought home a
+prisoner."
+
+No wonder that all this time Christina cowered at the discordant
+sounds below, trembled, and prayed while she waited on her poor young
+charge, who tossed and moaned in fever and suffering.  She was still
+far from recovered when the materials of the debauch failed, and the
+household began to return to its usual state.  She was soon
+restlessly pining for her brother; and when her father came up to see
+her, received him with scant welcome, and entreaties for Ebbo.  She
+knew she should be better if she might only sit on his knee, and lay
+her head on his shoulder.  The old Freiherr offered to accommodate
+her; but she rejected him petulantly, and still called for Ebbo, till
+he went down, promising that her brother should come.
+
+With a fluttering heart Christina awaited the noble whom she had
+perhaps insulted, and whose advances had more certainly insulted her.
+Would he visit her with his anger, or return to that more offensive
+familiarity?  She longed to flee out of sight, when, after a long
+interval, his heavy tread was heard; but she could not even take
+refuge in her turret, for Ermentrude was leaning against her.
+Somehow, the step was less assured than usual; he absolutely knocked
+at the door; and, when he came in, he acknowledged her by a slight
+inclination of the head.  If she only had known it, this was the
+first time that head had ever been bent to any being, human or
+Divine; but all she did perceive was that Sir Eberhard was in neither
+of the moods she dreaded, only desperately shy and sheepish, and
+extremely ashamed, not indeed of his excess, which would have been,
+even to a much tamer German baron, only a happy accident, but of what
+had passed between himself and her.
+
+He was much grieved to perceive how much ground Ermentrude had lost,
+and gave himself up to fondling and comforting her; and in a few days
+more, in their common cares for the sister, Christina lost her newly-
+acquired horror of the brother, and could not but be grateful for his
+forbearance; while she was almost entertained by the increased awe of
+herself shown by this huge robber baron.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV:  SNOW-WREATHS WHEN 'TIS THAW
+
+
+
+Ermentrude had by no means recovered the ground she had lost, before
+the winter set in; and blinding snow came drifting down day and
+night, rendering the whole view, above and below, one expanse of
+white, only broken by the peaks of rock which were too steep to
+sustain the snow.  The waterfall lengthened its icicles daily, and
+the whole court was heaped with snow, up even to the top of the high
+steps to the hall; and thus, Christina was told, would it continue
+all the winter.  What had previously seemed to her a strangely door-
+like window above the porch now became the only mode of egress, when
+the barons went out bear or wolf-hunting, or the younger took his
+crossbow and hound to provide the wild-fowl, which, under Christina's
+skilful hands, would tempt the feeble appetite of Ermentrude when she
+was utterly unable to touch the salted meats and sausages of the
+household.
+
+In spite of all endeavours to guard the windows and keep up the fire,
+the cold withered the poor child like a fading leaf, and she needed
+more and more of tenderness and amusement to distract her attention
+from her ailments.  Christina's resources were unfailing.  Out of the
+softer pine and birch woods provided for the fire, she carved a set
+of draughtsmen, and made a board by ruling squares on the end of a
+settle, and painting the alternate ones with a compound of oil and
+charcoal.  Even the old Baron was delighted with this contrivance,
+and the pleasure it gave his daughter.  He remembered playing at
+draughts in that portion of his youth which had been a shade more
+polished, and he felt as if the game were making Ermentrude more hike
+a lady.  Christina was encouraged to proceed with a set of chessmen,
+and the shaping of their characteristic heads under her dexterous
+fingers was watched by Ermentrude like something magical.  Indeed,
+the young lady entertained the belief that there was no limit to her
+attendant's knowledge or capacity.
+
+Truly there was a greater brightness and clearness beginning to dawn
+even upon poor little Ermentrude's own dull mind.  She took more
+interest in everything:  songs were not solely lullabies, but she
+cared to talk them over; tales to which she would once have been
+incapable of paying attention were eagerly sought after; and, above
+all, the spiritual vacancy that her mind had hitherto presented was
+beginning to be filled up.  Christina had brought her own books--a
+library of extraordinary extent for a maiden of the fifteenth
+century, but which she owed to her uncle's connexion with the arts of
+wood-cutting and printing.  A Vulgate from Dr. Faustus's own press, a
+mass book and breviary, Thomas a Kempis's Imitation and the Nuremburg
+Chronicle all in Latin, and the poetry of the gentle Minnesinger and
+bird lover, Walther von Vogelweide, in the vernacular:  these were
+her stock, which Hausfrau Johanna had viewed as a foolish
+encumbrance, and Hugh Sorel would never have transported to the
+castle unless they had been so well concealed in Christina's kirtles
+that he had taken them for parts of her wardrobe.
+
+Most precious were they now, when, out of the reach of all teaching
+save her own, she had to infuse into the sinking girl's mind the
+great mysteries of life and death, that so she might not leave the
+world without more hope or faith than her heathen forefathers.  For
+that Ermentrude would live Christina had never hoped, since that
+fleeting improvement had been cut short by the fever of the wine-cup;
+the look, voice, and tone had become so completely the same as those
+of Regina Grundt's little sister who had pined and died.  She knew
+she could not cure, but she could, she felt she could, comfort,
+cheer, and soften, and she no longer repined at her enforced sojourn
+at Adlerstein.  She heartily loved her charge, and could not bear to
+think how desolate Ermentrude would be without her.  And now the poor
+girl had become responsive to her care.  She was infinitely softened
+in manner, and treated her parents with forms of respect new to them;
+she had learnt even to thank old Ursel, dropped her imperious tone,
+and struggled with her petulance; and, towards her brother, the
+domineering, uncouth adherence was becoming real, tender affection;
+while the dependent, reverent love she bestowed upon Christina was
+touching and endearing in the extreme.
+
+Freiherr von Adlerstein saw the change, and congratulated himself on
+the effect of having a town-bred bower woman; nay, spoke of the
+advantage it would be to his daughter, if he could persuade himself
+to make the submission to the Kaiser which the late improvements
+decided on at the Diet were rendering more and more inevitable.  NOW
+how happy would be the winner of his gentle Ermentrude!
+
+Freiherrinn von Adlerstein thought the alteration the mere change
+from child to woman, and felt insulted by the supposition that any
+one might not have been proud to match with a daughter of Adlerstein,
+be she what she might.  As to submission to the Kaiser, that was mere
+folly and weakness--kaisers, kings, dukes, and counts had broken
+their teeth against the rock of Adlerstein before now!  What had come
+over her husband and her son to make them cravens?
+
+For Freiherr Eberhard was more strongly convinced than was his father
+of the untenableness of their present position.  Hugh Sorel's reports
+of what he heard at Ulm had shown that the league that had been
+discussed at Regensburg was far more formidable than anything that
+had ever previously threatened Schloss Adlerstein, and that if the
+Graf von Schlangenwald joined in the coalition, there would be
+private malice to direct its efforts against the Adlerstein family.
+Feud-letters or challenges had been made unlawful for ten years, and
+was not Adlerstein at feud with the world?
+
+Nor did Eberhard look on the submission with the sullen rage and
+grief that his father felt in bringing himself to such a declension
+from the pride of his ancestors.  What the young Baron heard up
+stairs was awakening in him a sense of the poorness and narrowness of
+his present life.  Ermentrude never spared him what interested her;
+and, partly from her lips, partly through her appeals to her
+attendant, he had learnt that life had better things to offer than
+independence on these bare rocks, and that homage might open the way
+to higher and worthier exploits than preying upon overturned waggons.
+
+Dietrich of Berne and his two ancestors, whose lengthy legend
+Christina could sing in a low, soft recitative, were revelations to
+him of what she meant by a true knight--the lion in war, the lamb in
+peace; the quaint oft-repeated portraits, and still quainter cities,
+of the Chronicle, with her explanations and translations, opened his
+mind to aspirations for intercourse with his fellows, for an
+honourable name, and for esteem in its degree such as was paid to Sir
+Parzival, to Karl the Great, or to Rodolf of Hapsburgh, once a
+mountain lord like himself.  Nay, as Ermentrude said, stroking his
+cheek, and smoothing the flaxen beard, that somehow had become much
+less rough and tangled than it used to be, "Some day wilt thou be
+another Good Freiherr Eberhard, whom all the country-side loved, and
+who gave bread at the castle-gate to all that hungered."
+
+Her brother believed nothing of her slow declension in strength,
+ascribing all the change he saw to the bitter cold, and seeing but
+little even of that alteration, though he spent many hours in her
+room, holding her in his arms, amusing her, or talking to her and to
+Christina.  All Christina's fear of him was gone.  As long as there
+was no liquor in the house, and he was his true self, she felt him to
+be a kind friend, bound to her by strong sympathy in the love and
+care for his sister.  She could talk almost as freely before him as
+when alone with her young lady; and as Ermentrude's religious
+feelings grew stronger, and were freely expressed to him, surely his
+attention was not merely kindness and patience with the sufferer.
+
+The girl's soul ripened rapidly under the new influences during her
+bodily decay; and, as the days lengthened, and the stern hold of
+winter relaxed upon the mountains, Christina looked with strange
+admiration upon the expression that had dawned upon the features once
+so vacant and dull, and listened with the more depth of reverence to
+the sweet words of faith, hope and love, because she felt that a
+higher, deeper teaching than she could give must have come to mould
+the spirit for the new world to which it was hastening.
+
+
+"Like an army defeated,
+The snow had retreated,"
+
+
+out of the valley, whose rich green shone smiling round the pool into
+which the Debateable Ford spread.  The waterfall had burst its icy
+bonds, and dashed down with redoubled voice, roaring rather than
+babbling.  Blue and pink hepaticas--or, as Christina called them,
+liver-krauts--had pushed up their starry heads, and had even been
+gathered by Sir Eberhard, and laid on his sister's pillow.  The dark
+peaks of rock came out all glistening with moisture, and the snow
+only retained possession of the deep hollows and crevices, into which
+however its retreat was far more graceful than when, in the city, it
+was trodden by horse and man, and soiled with smoke.
+
+Christina dreaded indeed that the roads should be open, but she could
+not love the snow; it spoke to her of dreariness, savagery, and
+captivity, and she watched the dwindling stripes with satisfaction,
+and hailed the fall of the petty avalanches from one Eagle's Step to
+another as her forefathers might have rejoiced in the defeat of the
+Frost giants.
+
+But Ermentrude had a love for the white sheet that lay covering a
+gorge running up from the ravine.  She watched its diminution day by
+day with a fancy that she was melting away with it; and indeed it was
+on the very day that a succession of drifting showers had left the
+sheet alone, and separated it from the masses of white above, that it
+first fully dawned upon the rest of the family that, for the little
+daughter of the house, spring was only bringing languor and sinking
+instead of recovery.
+
+Then it was that Sir Eberhard first really listened to her entreaty
+that she might not die without a priest, and comforted her by passing
+his word to her that, if--he would not say when--the time drew near,
+he would bring her one of the priests who had only come from St.
+Ruprecht's cloister on great days, by a sort of sufferance, to say
+mass at the Blessed Friedmund's hermitage chapel.
+
+The time was slow in coming.  Easter had passed with Ermentrude far
+too ill for Christina to make the effort she had intended of going to
+the church, even if she could get no escort but old Ursel--the sheet
+of snow had dwindled to a mere wreath--the ford looked blue in the
+sunshine--the cascade tinkled merrily down its rock--mountain
+primroses peeped out, when, as Father Norbert came forth from saying
+his ill-attended Pentecostal mass, and was parting with the infirm
+peasant hermit, a tall figure strode up the pass, and, as the
+villagers fell back to make way, stood before the startled priest,
+and said, in a voice choked with grief, "Come with me."
+
+"Who needs me?" began the astonished monk.
+
+"Follow him not, father!" whispered the hermit.  "It is the young
+Freiherr.--Oh have mercy on him, gracious sir; he has done your noble
+lordships no wrong."
+
+"I mean him no ill," replied Eberhard, clearing his voice with
+difficulty; "I would but have him do his office.  Art thou afraid,
+priest?"
+
+"Who needs my office?" demanded Father Norbert.  "Show me fit cause,
+and what should I dread?  Wherefore dost thou seek me?"
+
+"For my sister," replied Eberhard, his voice thickening again.  "My
+little sister lies at the point of death, and I have sworn to her
+that a priest she shall have.  Wilt thou come, or shall I drag thee
+down the pass?"
+
+"I come, I come with all my heart, sir knight," was the ready
+response.  "A few moments and I am at your bidding."
+
+He stepped back into the hermit's cave, whence a stair led up to the
+chapel.  The anchorite followed him, whispering--"Good father,
+escape!  There will be full time ere he misses you.  The north door
+leads to the Gemsbock's Pass; it is open now."
+
+"Why should I baulk him?  Why should I deny my office to the dying?"
+said Norbert.
+
+"Alas! holy father, thou art new to this country, and know'st not
+these men of blood!  It is a snare to make the convent ransom thee,
+if not worse.  The Freiherrinn is a fiend for malice, and the
+Freiherr is excommunicate."
+
+"I know it, my son," said Norbert; "but wherefore should their child
+perish unassoilzied?"
+
+"Art coming, priest?" shouted Eberhard, from his stand at the mouth
+of the cave.
+
+And, as Norbert at once appeared with the pyx and other appliances
+that he had gone to fetch, the Freiherr held out his hand with an
+offer to "carry his gear for him;" and, when the monk refused, with
+an inward shudder at entrusting a sacred charge to such unhallowed
+hands, replied, "You will have work enow for both hands ere the
+castle is reached."
+
+But Father Norbert was by birth a sturdy Switzer, and thought little
+of these Swabian Alps; and he climbed after his guide through the
+most rugged passages of Eberhard's shortest and most perpendicular
+cut without a moment's hesitation, and with agility worthy of a
+chamois.  The young baron turned for a moment, when the level of the
+castle had been gained, perhaps to see whether he were following, but
+at the same time came to a sudden, speechless pause.
+
+On the white masses of vapour that floated on the opposite side of
+the mountain was traced a gigantic shadowy outline of a hermit, with
+head bent eagerly forward, and arm outstretched.
+
+The monk crossed himself.  Eberhard stood still for a moment, and
+then said, hoarsely,--"The Blessed Friedmund!  He is come for her;"
+then strode on towards the postern gate, followed by Brother Norbert,
+a good deal reassured both as to the genuineness of the young Baron's
+message and the probable condition of the object of his journey,
+since the patron saint of her race was evidently on the watch to
+speed her departing spirit.
+
+Sir Eberhard led the way up the turret stairs to the open door, and
+the monk entered the death-chamber.  The elder Baron sat near the
+fire in the large wooden chair, half turned towards his daughter, as
+one who must needs be present, but with his face buried in his hands,
+unable to endure the spectacle.  Nearer was the tall form of his
+wife, standing near the foot of the bed, her stern, harsh features
+somewhat softened by the feelings of the moment.  Ursel waited at
+hand, with tears running down her furrowed cheeks.
+
+For such as these Father Norbert was prepared; but he little expected
+to meet so pure and sweet a gaze of reverential welcome as beamed on
+him from the soft, dark eyes of the little white-checked maiden who
+sat on the bed, holding the sufferer in her arms.  Still less had he
+anticipated the serene blessedness that sat on the wasted features of
+the dying girl, and all the anguish of labouring breath.
+
+She smiled a smile of joy, held up her hand, and thanked her brother.
+Her father scarcely lifted his head, her mother made a rigid curtsey,
+and with a grim look of sorrow coming over her features, laid her
+hand over the old Baron's shoulder.  "Come away, Herr Vater," she
+said; "he is going to hear her confession, and make her too holy for
+the like of us to touch."
+
+The old man rose up, and stepped towards his child.  Ermentrude held
+out her arms to him, and murmured -
+
+"Father, father, pardon me; I would have been a better daughter if I
+had only known--"  He gathered her in his arms; he was quite past
+speaking; and they only heard his heavy breathing, and one more
+whisper from Ermentrude--"And oh! father, one day wilt thou seek to
+be absolved?"  Whether he answered or not they knew not; he only gave
+her repeated kisses, and laid her down on her pillows, then rushed to
+the door, and the passionate sobs of the strong man's uncontrolled
+nature might be heard upon the stair.  The parting with the others
+was not necessarily so complete, as they were not, like him, under
+censure of the Church; but Kunigunde leant down to kiss her; and, in
+return to her repetition of her entreaty for pardon, replied, "Thou
+hast it, child, if it will ease thy mind; but it is all along of
+these new fancies that ever an Adlerstein thought of pardon.  There,
+there, I blame thee not, poor maid; it thou wert to die, it may be
+even best as it is.  Now must I to thy father; he is troubled enough
+about this gear."
+
+But when Eberhard moved towards his sister, she turned to the priest,
+and said, imploringly, "Not far, not far!  Oh! let them," pointing to
+Eberhard and Christina, "let them not be quite out of sight!"
+
+"Out of hearing is all that is needed, daughter," replied the priest;
+and Ermentrude looked content as Christina moved towards the empty
+north turret, where, with the door open, she was in full view, and
+Eberhard followed her thither.  It was indeed fully out of earshot of
+the child's faint, gasping confession.  Gravely and sadly both stood
+there.  Christina looked up the hillside for the snow-wreath.  The
+May sunshine had dissolved it; the green pass lay sparkling without a
+vestige of its white coating.  Her eyes full of tears, she pointed
+the spot out to Eberhard.  He understood; but, leaning towards her,
+told, under his breath, of the phantom he had seen.  Her eyes
+expanded with awe of the supernatural.  "It was the Blessed
+Friedmund," said Eberhard.  "Never hath he so greeted one of our race
+since the pious Freiherrinn Hildegarde.  Maiden, hast thou brought us
+back a blessing?"
+
+"Ah! well may she be blessed--well may the saints stoop to greet
+her," murmured Christina, with strangled voice, scarcely able to
+control her sobs.
+
+Father Norbert came towards them.  The simple confession had been
+heard, and he sought the aid of Christina in performing the last
+rites of the Church.
+
+"Maiden," he said to her, "thou hast done a great and blessed work,
+such as many a priest might envy thee."
+
+Eberhard was not excluded during the final services by which the soul
+was to be dismissed from its earthly dwelling-place.  True, he
+comprehended little of their import, and nothing of the words, but he
+gazed meekly, with uncovered head, and a bewildered look of sadness,
+while Christina made her responses and took her part with full
+intelligence and deep fervour, sorrowing indeed for the companion who
+had become so dear to her, but deeply thankful for the spiritual
+consolation that had come at last.  Ermentrude lay calm, and, as it
+were, already rapt into a higher world, lighting up at the German
+portions of the service, and not wholly devoid of comprehension of
+the spirit even of the Latin, as indeed she had come to the border of
+the region where human tongues and languages are no more.
+
+She was all but gone when the rite of extreme unction was completed,
+and they could only stand round her, Eberhard, Christina, Ursel, and
+the old Baroness, who had returned again, watching the last
+flutterings of the breath, the window thrown wide open that nothing
+might impede the passage of the soul to the blue vault above.
+
+The priest spoke the beautiful commendation, "Depart, O Christian
+soul."  There was a faint gesture in the midst for Christina to lift
+her in her arms--a sign to bend down and kiss her brow--but her last
+look was for her brother, her last murmur, "Come after me; be the
+Good Baron Ebbo."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V:  THE YOUNG FREIHERR
+
+
+
+Ermentrude von Adlerstein slept with her forefathers in the vaults of
+the hermitage chapel, and Christina Sorel's work was done.
+
+Surely it was time for her to return home, though she should be more
+sorry to leave the mountain castle than she could ever have believed
+possible.  She entreated her father to take her home, but she
+received a sharp answer that she did not know what she was talking
+of:  the Schlangenwald Reitern were besetting all the roads; and
+moreover the Ulm burghers had taken the capture of the Constance wine
+in such dudgeon that for a retainer of Adlerstein to show himself in
+the streets would be an absolute asking for the wheel.
+
+But was there any hope for her?  Could he not take her to some
+nunnery midway, and let her write to her uncle to fetch her from
+thence?
+
+He swore at woman's pertinacity, but allowed at last that if the
+plan, talked of by the Barons, of going to make their submission to
+the Emperor at Linz, with a view to which all violence at the ford
+had ceased, should hold good, it might be possible thus to drop her
+on their way.
+
+With this Christina must needs content herself.  Poor child, not only
+had Ermentrude's death deprived her of the sole object of her
+residence at Schloss Adlerstein, but it had infinitely increased the
+difficulties of her position.  No one interfered with her possession
+of the upper room and its turrets; and it was only at meal times that
+she was obliged to mingle with the other inhabitants, who, for the
+most part, absolutely overlooked the little shrinking pale maiden but
+with one exception, and that the most perplexing of all.  She had
+been on terms with Freiherr Eberhard that were not so easily broken
+off as if she had been an old woman of Ursel's age.  All through his
+sister's decline she had been his comforter, assistant, director,
+living in intercourse and sympathy that ought surely to cease when
+she was no longer his sister's attendant, yet which must be more than
+ever missed in the full freshness of the stroke.
+
+Even on the earliest day of bereavement, a sudden thought of Hausfrau
+Johanna flashed upon Christina, and reminded her of the guard she
+must keep over herself if she would return to Ulm the same modest
+girl whom her aunt could acquit of all indiscretion.  Her cheeks
+flamed, as she sat alone, with the very thought, and the next time
+she heard the well-known tread on the stair, she fled hastily into
+her own turret chamber, and shut the door.  Her heart beat fast.  She
+could hear Sir Eberhard moving about the room, and listened to his
+heavy sigh as he threw himself into the large chair.  Presently he
+called her by name, and she felt it needful to open her door and
+answer, respectfully,
+
+"What would you, my lord?"
+
+"What would I?  A little peace, and heed to her who is gone.  To see
+my father and mother one would think that a partridge had but flown
+away.  I have seen my father more sorrowful when his dog had fallen
+over the abyss."
+
+"Mayhap there is more sorrow for a brute that cannot live again,"
+said Christina.  "Our bird has her nest by an Altar that is lovelier
+and brighter than even our Dome Kirk will ever be."
+
+"Sit down, Christina," he said, dragging a chair nearer the hearth.
+"My heart is sore, and I cannot bear the din below.  Tell me where my
+bird is flown."
+
+"Ah! sir; pardon me.  I must to the kitchen," said Christina,
+crossing her hands over her breast, to still her trembling heart, for
+she was very sorry for his grief, but moving resolutely.
+
+"Must?  And wherefore?  Thou hast nought to do there; speak truth!
+Why not stay with me?" and his great light eyes opened wide.
+
+"A burgher maid may not sit down with a noble baron."
+
+"The devil!  Has my mother been plaguing thee, child?"
+
+"No, my lord," said Christina, "she reeks not of me; but"--steadying
+her voice with great difficulty--"it behoves me the more to be
+discreet."
+
+"And you would not have me come here!" he said, with a wistful tone
+of reproach.
+
+"I have no power to forbid you; but if you do, I must betake me to
+Ursel in the kitchen," said Christina, very low, trembling and half
+choked.
+
+"Among the rude wenches there!" he cried, starting up.  "Nay, nay,
+that shall not be!  Rather will I go."
+
+"But this is very cruel of thee, maiden," he added, lingering, "when
+I give thee my knightly word that all should be as when she whom we
+both loved was here," and his voice shook.
+
+"It could not so be, my lord," returned Christina with drooping,
+blushing face; "it would not be maidenly in me.  Oh, my lord, you are
+kind and generous, make it not hard for me to do what other maidens
+less lonely have friends to do for them!"
+
+"Kind and generous?" said Eberhard, leaning over the back of the
+chair as if trying to begin a fresh score.  "This from you, who told
+me once I was no true knight!"
+
+"I shall call you a true knight with all my heart," cried Christina,
+the tears rushing into her eyes, "if you will respect my weakness and
+loneliness."
+
+He stood up again, as if to move away; then paused, and, twisting his
+gold chain, said, "And how am I ever to be what the happy one bade
+me, if you will not show me how?"
+
+"My error would never show you the right," said Christina, with a
+strong effort at firmness, and retreating at once through the door of
+the staircase, whence she made her way to the kitchen, and with great
+difficulty found an excuse for her presence there.
+
+It had been a hard struggle with her compassion and gratitude, and,
+poor little Christina felt with dismay, with something more than
+these.  Else why was it that, even while principle and better sense
+summoned her back to Ulm, she experienced a deadly weariness of the
+city-pent air, of the grave, heavy roll of the river, nay, even of
+the quiet, well-regulated household?  Why did such a marriage as she
+had thought her natural destiny, with some worthy, kind-hearted
+brother of the guild, become so hateful to her that she could only
+aspire to a convent life?  This same burgomaster would be an
+estimable man, no doubt, and those around her were ruffians, but she
+felt utterly contemptuous and impatient of him.  And why was the
+interchange of greetings, the few words at meals, worth all the rest
+of the day besides to her?  Her own heart was the traitor, and to her
+own sensations the poor little thing had, in spirit at least,
+transgressed all Aunt Johanna's precepts against young Barons.  She
+wept apart, and resolved, and prayed, cruelly ashamed of every start
+of joy or pain that the sight of Eberhard cost her.  From almost the
+first he had sat next her at the single table that accommodated the
+whole household at meals, and the custom continued, though on some
+days he treated her with sullen silence, which she blamed herself for
+not rejoicing in, sometimes he spoke a few friendly words; but he
+observed, better than she could have dared to expect, her test of his
+true knighthood, and never again forced himself into her apartment,
+though now and then he came to the door with flowers, with mountain
+strawberries, and once with two young doves.  "Take them, Christina,"
+he said, "they are very like yourself;" and he always delayed so long
+that she was forced to be resolute, and shut the door on him at last.
+
+Once, when there was to be a mass at the chapel, Hugh Sorel, between
+a smile and a growl, informed his daughter that he would take her
+thereto.  She gladly prepared, and, bent on making herself agreeable
+to her father, did not once press on him the necessity of her return
+to Ulm.  To her amazement and pleasure, the young Baron was at
+church, and when on the way home, he walked beside her mule, she
+could see no need of sending him away.
+
+He had been in no school of the conventionalities of life, and, when
+he saw that Hugh Sorel's presence had obtained him this favour, he
+wistfully asked, "Christina, if I bring your father with me, will you
+not let me in?"
+
+"Entreat me not, my lord," she answered, with fluttering breath.
+
+She felt the more that she was right in this decision, when she
+encountered her father's broad grin of surprise and diversion, at
+seeing the young Baron help her to dismount.  It was a look of
+receiving an idea both new, comical, and flattering, but by no means
+the look of a father who would resent the indignity of attentions to
+his daughter from a man whose rank formed an insuperable barrier to
+marriage.
+
+The effect was a new, urgent, and most piteous entreaty, that he
+would find means of sending her home.  It brought upon her the
+hearing put into words what her own feelings had long shrunk from
+confessing to herself.
+
+"Ah!  Why, what now?  What, is the young Baron after thee?  Ha! ha!
+petticoats are few enough up here, but he must have been ill off ere
+he took to a little ghost like thee!  I saw he was moping and
+doleful, but I thought it was all for his sister."
+
+"And so it is, father."
+
+"Tell me that, when he watches every turn of that dark eye of thine--
+the only good thing thou took'st of mine!  Thou art a witch, Stina."
+
+"Hush, oh hush, for pity's sake, father, and let me go home!"
+
+"What, thou likest him not?  Thy mind is all for the mincing
+goldsmith opposite, as I ever told thee."
+
+"My mind is--is to return to my uncle and aunt the true-hearted
+maiden they parted with," said Christina, with clasped hands.  "And
+oh, father, as you were the son of a true and faithful mother, be a
+father to me now!  Jeer not your motherless child, but protect her
+and help her."
+
+Hugh Sorel was touched by this appeal, and he likewise recollected
+how much it was for his own interest that his brother should be
+satisfied with the care he took of his daughter.  He became convinced
+that the sooner she was out of the castle the better, and at length
+bethought him that, among the merchants who frequented the Midsummer
+Fair at the Blessed Friedmund's Wake, a safe escort might be found to
+convey her back to Ulm.
+
+If the truth were known, Hugh Sorel was not devoid of a certain
+feeling akin to contempt, both for his young master's taste, and for
+his forbearance in not having pushed matters further with a being so
+helpless, meek, and timid as Christina, more especially as such
+slackness had not been his wont in other cases where his fancy had
+been caught.
+
+But Sorel did not understand that it was not physical beauty that
+here had been the attraction, though to some persons, the sweet,
+pensive eyes, the delicate, pure skin, the slight, tender form, might
+seem to exceed in loveliness the fully developed animal comeliness
+chiefly esteemed at Adlerstein.  It was rather the strangeness of the
+power and purity of this timid, fragile creature, that had struck the
+young noble.  With all their brutal manners reverence for a lofty
+female nature had been in the German character ever since their
+Velleda prophesied to them, and this reverence in Eberhard bowed at
+the feet of the pure gentle maiden, so strong yet so weak, so wistful
+and entreating even in her resolution, refined as a white flower on a
+heap of refuse, wise and dexterous beyond his slow and dull
+conception, and the first being in whom he had ever seen piety or
+goodness; and likewise with a tender, loving spirit of consolation
+such as he had both beheld and tasted by his sister's deathbed.
+
+There was almost a fear mingled with his reverence.  If he had been
+more familiar with the saints, he would thus have regarded the holy
+virgin martyrs, nay, even Our Lady herself; and he durst not push her
+so hard as to offend her, and excite the anger or the grief that he
+alike dreaded.  He was wretched and forlorn without the resources he
+had found in his sister's room; the new and better cravings of his
+higher nature had been excited only to remain unsupplied and
+disappointed; and the affectionate heart in the freshness of its
+sorrow yearned for the comfort that such conversation had supplied:
+but the impression that had been made on him was still such, that he
+knew that to use rough means of pressing his wishes would no more
+lead to his real gratification than it would to appropriate a snow-
+bell by crushing it in his gauntlet.
+
+And it was on feeble little Christina, yielding in heart, though not
+in will, that it depended to preserve this reverence, and return
+unscathed from this castle, more perilous now than ever.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI:  THE BLESSED FRIEDMUND'S WAKE
+
+
+
+Midsummer-Day arrived, and the village of Adlerstein presented a most
+unusual spectacle.  The wake was the occasion of a grand fair for all
+the mountain-side, and it was an understood thing that the Barons,
+instead of molesting the pedlars, merchants, and others who attended
+it, contented themselves with demanding a toll from every one who
+passed the Kohler's hut on the one side, or the Gemsbock's Pass on
+the other; and this toll, being the only coin by which they came
+honestly in the course of the year, was regarded as a certainty and
+highly valued.  Moreover, it was the only time that any purchases
+could be made, and the flotsam of the ford did not always include all
+even of the few requirements of the inmates of the castle; it was the
+only holiday, sacred or secular, that ever gladdened the Eagle's
+Rock.
+
+So all the inmates of the castle prepared to enjoy themselves, except
+the heads of the house.  The Freiherr had never been at one of these
+wakes since the first after he was excommunicated, when he had
+stalked round to show his indifference to the sentence; and the
+Freiherrinn snarled out such sentences of disdain towards the
+concourse, that it might be supposed that she hated the sight of her
+kind; but Ursel had all the household purchases to make, and the
+kitchen underlings were to take turns to go and come, as indeed were
+the men-at-arms, who were set to watch the toll-bars.
+
+Christina had packed up a small bundle, for the chance of being
+unable to return to the castle without missing her escort, though she
+hoped that the fair might last two days, and that she should thus be
+enabled to return and bring away the rest of her property.  She was
+more and more resolved on going, but her heart was less and less
+inclined to departure.  And bitter had been her weeping through all
+the early light hours of the long morning--weeping that she tried to
+think was all for Ermentrude; and all, amid prayers she could scarce
+trust herself to offer, that the generous, kindly nature might yet
+work free of these evil surroundings, and fulfil the sister's dying
+wish, she should never see it; but, when she should hear that the
+Debateable Ford was the Friendly Ford, then would she know that it
+was the doing of the Good Baron Ebbo.  Could she venture on telling
+him so?  Or were it not better that there were no farewell?  And she
+wept again that he should think her ungrateful.  She could not
+persuade herself to release the doves, but committed the charge to
+Ursel to let them go in case she should not return.
+
+So tear-stained was her face, that, ashamed that it should be seen,
+she wrapped it closely in her hood and veil when she came down and
+joined her father.  The whole scene swam in tears before her eyes
+when she saw the whole green slope from the chapel covered with tents
+and booths, and swarming with pedlars and mountaineers in their
+picturesque dresses.  Women and girls were exchanging the yarn of
+their winter's spinning for bright handkerchiefs; men drove sheep,
+goats, or pigs to barter for knives, spades, or weapons; others were
+gazing at simple shows--a dancing bear or ape--or clustering round a
+Minnesinger; many even then congregating in booths for the sale of
+beer.  Further up, on the flat space of sward above the chapel, were
+some lay brothers, arranging for the representation of a mystery--a
+kind of entertainment which Germany owed to the English who came to
+the Council of Constance, and which the monks of St. Ruprecht's hoped
+might infuse some religious notions into the wild, ignorant
+mountaineers.
+
+First however Christina gladly entered the church.  Crowded though it
+were, it was calmer than the busy scene without.  Faded old tapestry
+was decking its walls, representing apparently some subject entirely
+alien to St. John or the blessed hermit; Christina rather thought it
+was Mars and Venus, but that was all the same to every one else.  And
+there was a terrible figure of St. John, painted life-like, with a
+real hair-cloth round his loins, just opposite to her, on the step of
+the Altar; also poor Friedmund's bones, dressed up in a new serge
+amice and hood; the stone from Nicaea was in a gilded box, ready in
+due time to be kissed; and a preaching friar (not one of the monks of
+St. Ruprecht's) was in the midst of a sermon, telling how St. John
+presided at the Council of Nicaea till the Emperor Maximius cut off
+his head at the instance of Herodius--full justice being done to the
+dancing--and that the blood was sprinkled on this very stone,
+whereupon our Holy Father the Pope decreed that whoever would kiss
+the said stone, and repeat the Credo five times afterwards, should be
+capable of receiving an indulgence for 500 years:  which indulgence
+must however be purchased at the rate of six groschen, to be bestowed
+in alms at Rome.  And this inestimable benefit he, poor Friar Peter,
+had come from his brotherhood of St. Francis at Offingen solely to
+dispense to the poor mountaineers.
+
+It was disappointing to find this profane mummery going on instead of
+the holy services to which Christina had looked forward for strength
+and comfort; she was far too well instructed not to be scandalized at
+the profane deception which was ripening fast for Luther, only thirty
+years later; and, when the stone was held up by the friar in one
+hand, the printed briefs of indulgence in the other, she shrunk back.
+Her father however said, "Wilt have one, child?  Five hundred years
+is no bad bargain."
+
+"My uncle has small trust in indulgences," she whispered.
+
+"All lies, of course," quoth Hugh; "yet they've the Pope's seal, and
+I have more than half a mind to get one.  Five hundred years is no
+joke, and I am sure of purgatory, since I bought this medal at the
+Holy House of Loretto."
+
+And he went forward, and invested six groschen in one of the papers,
+the most religious action poor Christina had ever seen him perform.
+Other purchasers came forward--several, of the castle knappen, and a
+few peasant women who offered yarn or cheeses as equivalents for
+money, but were told with some insolence to go and sell their goods,
+and bring the coin.
+
+After a time, the friar, finding his traffic slack, thought fit to
+remove, with his two lay assistants, outside the chapel, and try the
+effects of an out-of-door sermon.  Hugh Sorel, who had been hitherto
+rather diverted by the man's gestures and persuasions, now decided on
+going out into the fair in quest of an escort for his daughter, but
+as she saw Father Norbert and another monk ascending from the stairs
+leading to the hermit's cell, she begged to be allowed to remain in
+the church, where she was sure to be safe, instead of wandering about
+with him in the fair.
+
+He was glad to be unencumbered, though he thought her taste
+unnatural; and, promising to return for her when he had found an
+escort, he left her.
+
+Father Norbert had come for the very purpose of hearing confessions,
+and Christina's next hour was the most comfortable she had spent
+since Ermentrude's death.
+
+After this however the priests were called away, and long, long did
+Christina first kneel and then sit in the little lonely church,
+hearing the various sounds without, and imagining that her father had
+forgotten her, and that he and all the rest were drinking, and then
+what would become of her?  Why had she quitted old Ursel's
+protection?
+
+Hours of waiting and nameless alarm must have passed, for the sun was
+waxing low, when at length she heard steps coming up the hermit's
+cell, and a head rose above the pavement which she recognized with a
+wild throb of joy, but, repressing her sense of gladness, she only
+exclaimed, "Oh, where is my father!"
+
+"I have sent him to the toll at the Gemsbock's Pass," replied Sir
+Eberhard, who had by this time come up the stairs, followed by
+Brother Peter and the two lay assistants.  Then, as Christina turned
+on him her startled, terrified eyes in dismay and reproach for such
+thoughtlessness, he came towards her, and, bending his head and
+opening his hand, he showed on his palm two gold rings.  "There,
+little one," he said; "now shalt thou never again shut me out."
+
+Her senses grew dizzy.  "Sir," she faintly said, "this is no place to
+delude a poor maiden."
+
+"I delude thee not.  The brother here waits to wed us."
+
+"Impossible!  A burgher maid is not for such as you."
+
+"None but a burgher maid will I wed," returned Sir Eberhard, with all
+the settled resolution of habits of command.  "See, Christina, thou
+art sweeter and better than any lady in the land; thou canst make me
+what she--the blessed one who lies there--would have me.  I love thee
+as never knight loved lady.  I love thee so that I have not spoken a
+word to offend thee when my heart was bursting; and"--as he saw her
+irrepressible tears--"I think thou lovest me a little."
+
+"Ah!" she gasped with a sob, "let me go."
+
+"Thou canst not go home; there is none here fit to take charge of
+thee.  Or if there were, I would slay him rather than let thee go.
+No, not so," he said, as he saw how little those words served his
+cause; "but without thee I were a mad and desperate man.  Christina,
+I will not answer for myself if thou dost not leave this place my
+wedded wife."
+
+"Oh!" implored Christina, "if you would only betroth me, and woo me
+like an honourable maiden from my home at Ulm!"
+
+"Betroth thee, ay, and wed thee at once," replied Eberhard, who, all
+along, even while his words were most pleading, had worn a look and
+manner of determined authority and strength, good-natured indeed, but
+resolved.  "I am not going to miss my opportunity, or baulk the
+friar."
+
+The friar, who had meantime been making a few needful arrangements
+for the ceremony, advanced towards them.  He was a good-humoured,
+easy-going man, who came prepared to do any office that came in his
+way on such festival days at the villages round; and peasant
+marriages at such times were not uncommon.  But something now
+staggered him, and he said anxiously -
+
+"This maiden looks convent-bred!  Herr Reiter, pardon me; but if this
+be the breaking of a cloister, I can have none of it."
+
+"No such thing," said Eberhard; "she is town-bred, that is all."
+
+"You would swear to it, on the holy mass yonder, both of you?" said
+the friar, still suspiciously.
+
+"Yea," replied Eberhard, "and so dost thou, Christina."
+
+This was the time if ever to struggle against her destiny.  The friar
+would probably have listened to her if she had made any vehement
+opposition to a forced marriage, and if not, a few shrieks would have
+brought perhaps Father Norbert, and certainly the whole population;
+but the horror and shame of being found in such a situation, even
+more than the probability that she might meet with vengeance rather
+than protection, withheld her.  Even the friar could hardly have
+removed her, and this was her only chance of safety from the
+Baroness's fury.  Had she hated and loathed Sir Eberhard, perhaps she
+had striven harder, but his whole demeanour constrained and quelled
+her, and the chief effort she made against yielding was the reply, "I
+am no cloister maid, holy father, but--"
+
+The "but" was lost in the friar's jovial speech.  "Oh, then, all is
+well!  Take thy place, pretty one, there, by the door, thou know'st
+it should be in the porch, but--ach, I understand!" as Eberhard
+quietly drew the bolt within.  "No, no, little one, I have no time
+for bride scruples and coyness; I have to train three dull-headed
+louts to be Shem, Ham, and Japhet before dark.  Hast confessed of
+late?"
+
+"This morning, but--" said Christina, and "This morning," to her
+great joy, said Eberhard, and, in her satisfaction thereat, her
+second "but" was not followed up.
+
+The friar asked their names, and both gave the Christian name alone;
+then the brief and simple rite was solemnized in its shortest form.
+Christina had, by very force of surprise and dismay, gone through all
+without signs of agitation, except the quivering of her whole frame,
+and the icy coldness of the hand, where Eberhard had to place the
+ring on each finger in turn.
+
+But each mutual vow was a strange relief to her long-tossed and
+divided mind, and it was rest indeed to let her affection have its
+will, and own him indeed as a protector to be loved instead of
+shunned.  When all was over, and he gathered the two little cold
+hands into his large one, his arm supporting her trembling form, she
+felt for the moment, poor little thing, as if she could never be
+frightened again.
+
+Parish registers were not, even had this been a parish church, but
+Brother Peter asked, when he had concluded, "Well, my son, which of
+his flock am I to report to your Pfarrer as linked together?"
+
+"The less your tongue wags on that matter till I call on you, the
+better," was the stern reply.  "Look you, no ill shall befall you if
+you are wise, but remember, against the day I call you to bear
+witness, that you have this day wedded Baron Eberhard von Adlerstein
+the younger, to Christina, the daughter of Hugh Sorel, the Esquire of
+Ulm."
+
+"Thou hast played me a trick, Sir Baron!" said the friar, somewhat
+dismayed, but more amused, looking up at Eberhard, who, as Christina
+now saw, had divested himself of his gilt spurs, gold chain, silvered
+belt and horn, and eagle's plume, so as to have passed for a simple
+lanzknecht.  "I would have had no such gear as this!"
+
+"So I supposed," said Eberhard coolly.
+
+"Young folks! young folks!" laughed the friar, changing his tone, and
+holding up his finger slyly; "the little bird so cunningly nestled in
+the church to fly out my Lady Baroness!  Well, so thou hast a pretty,
+timid lambkin there, Sir Baron.  Take care you use her mildly."
+
+Eberhard looked into Christina's face with a smile, that to her, at
+least, was answer enough; and he held out half a dozen links of his
+gold chain to the friar, and tossed a coin to each of the lay
+brethren.
+
+"Not for the poor friar himself," explained Brother Peter, on
+receiving this marriage fee; "it all goes to the weal of the
+brotherhood."
+
+"As you please," said Eberhard.  "Silence, that is all!  And thy
+friary--?"
+
+"The poor house of St. Francis at Offingen for the present, noble
+sir," said the priest.  "There will you hear of me, if you find me
+not.  And now, fare thee well, my gracious lady.  I hope one day thou
+wilt have more words to thank the poor brother who has made thee a
+noble Baroness."
+
+"Ah, good father, pardon my fright and confusion," Christina tried to
+murmur, but at that moment a sudden glow and glare of light broke out
+on the eastern rock, illuminating the fast darkening little church
+with a flickering glare, that made her start in terror as if the
+fires of heaven were threatening this stolen marriage; but the friar
+and Eberhard both exclaimed, "The Needfire alight already!"  And she
+recollected how often she had seen these bonfires on Midsummer night
+shining red on every hill around Ulm.  Loud shouts were greeting the
+uprising flame, and the people gathering thicker and thicker on the
+slope.  The friar undid the door to hasten out into the throng, and
+Eberhard said he had left his spurs and belt in the hermit's cell,
+and must return thither, after which he would walk home with his
+bride, moving at the same time towards the stair, and thereby causing
+a sudden scuffle and fall.  "So, master hermit," quoth Eberhard, as
+the old man picked himself up, looking horribly frightened; "that's
+your hermit's abstraction, is it?  No whining, old man, I am not
+going to hurt thee, so thou canst hold thy tongue.  Otherwise I will
+smoke thee out of thy hole like a wild cat!  What, thou aiding me
+with my belt, my lovely one?  Thanks; the snap goes too hard for thy
+little hands.  Now, then, the fire will light us gaily down the
+mountain side."
+
+But it soon appeared that to depart was impossible, unless by forcing
+a way through the busy throng in the full red glare of the firelight,
+and they were forced to pause at the opening of the hermit's cave,
+Christina leaning on her husband's arm, and a fold of his mantle
+drawn round her to guard her from the night-breeze of the mountain,
+as they waited for a quiet space in which to depart unnoticed.  It
+was a strange, wild scene!  The fire was on a bare, flat rock, which
+probably had been yearly so employed ever since the Kelts had brought
+from the East the rite that they had handed on to the Swabians--the
+Beltane fire, whose like was blazing everywhere in the Alps, in the
+Hartz, nay, even in England, Scotland, and on the granite points of
+Ireland.  Heaped up for many previous days with faggots from the
+forest, then apparently inexhaustible, the fire roared and crackled,
+and rose high, red and smoky, into the air, paling the moon, and
+obscuring the stars.  Round it, completely hiding the bonfire itself,
+were hosts of dark figures swarming to approach it--all with a
+purpose.  All held old shoes or superannuated garments in their hands
+to feed the flame; for it was esteemed needful that every villager
+should contribute something from his house--once, no doubt, as an
+offering to Bel, but now as a mere unmeaning observance.  And shrieks
+of merriment followed the contribution of each too well-known article
+of rubbish that had been in reserve for the Needfire!  Girls and boys
+had nuts to throw in, in pairs, to judge by their bounces of future
+chances of matrimony.  Then came a shouting, tittering, and falling
+back, as an old boor came forward like a priest with something heavy
+and ghastly in his arms, which was thrown on with a tremendous shout,
+darkened the glow for a moment, then hissed, cracked, and emitted a
+horrible odour.
+
+It was a horse's head, the right owner of which had been carefully
+kept for the occasion, though long past work.  Christina shuddered,
+and felt as if she had fallen upon a Pagan ceremony; as indeed was
+true enough, only that the Adlersteiners attached no meaning to the
+performance, except a vague notion of securing good luck.
+
+With the same idea the faggots were pulled down, and arranged so as
+to form a sort of lane of fire.  Young men rushed along it, and then
+bounded over the diminished pile, amid loud shouts of laughter and
+either admiration or derision; and, in the meantime, a variety of
+odd, recusant noises, grunts, squeaks, and lowings proceeding from
+the darkness were explained to the startled little bride by her
+husband to come from all the cattle of the mountain farms around, who
+were to have their weal secured by being driven through the Needfire.
+
+It may well be imagined that the animals were less convinced of the
+necessity of this performance than their masters.  Wonderful was the
+clatter and confusion, horrible the uproar raised behind to make the
+poor things proceed at all, desperate the shout when some half-
+frantic creature kicked or attempted a charge wild the glee when a
+persecuted goat or sheep took heart of grace, and flashed for one
+moment between the crackling, flaring, smoking walls.  When one cow
+or sheep off a farm went, all the others were pretty sure to follow
+it, and the owner had then only to be on the watch at the other end
+to turn them back, with their flame-dazzled eyes, from going unawares
+down the precipice, a fate from which the passing through the fire
+was evidently not supposed to ensure them.  The swine, those special
+German delights, were of course the most refractory of all.  Some, by
+dint of being pulled away from the lane of fire, were induced to rush
+through it; but about half-way they generally made a bolt, either
+sidelong through the flaming fence or backwards among the legs of
+their persecutors, who were upset amid loud imprecations.  One huge,
+old, lean, high-backed sow, with a large family, truly feminine in
+her want of presence of mind, actually charged into the midst of the
+bonfire itself, scattering it to the right and left with her snout,
+and emitting so horrible a smell of singed bacon, that it might
+almost be feared that some of her progeny were anticipating the
+invention of Chinese roasting-pigs.  However, their proprietor,
+Jobst, counted them out all safe on the other side, and there only
+resulted some sighs and lamentations among the seniors, such as Hatto
+and Ursel, that it boded ill to have the Needfire trodden out by an
+old sow.
+
+All the castle live-stock were undergoing the same ceremony.
+Eberhard concerned himself little about the vagaries of the sheep and
+pigs, and only laughed a little as the great black goat, who had seen
+several Midsummer nights, and stood on his guard, made a sudden short
+run and butted down old Hatto, then skipped off like a chamois into
+the darkness, unheeding, the old rogue, the whispers that connected
+his unlucky hue with the doings of the Walpurgisnacht.  But when it
+came to the horses, Eberhard could not well endure the sight of the
+endeavours to force them, snorting, rearing, and struggling, through
+anything so abhorrent to them as the hedge of fire.
+
+The Schneiderlein, with all the force of his powerful arm, had hold
+of Eberhard's own young white mare, who, with ears turned back,
+nostrils dilated, and wild eyes, her fore-feet firmly planted wide
+apart, was using her whole strength for resistance; and, when a heavy
+blow fell on her, only plunged backwards, and kicked without
+advancing.  It was more than Eberhard could endure, and Christina's
+impulse was to murmur, "O do not let him do it;" but this he scarcely
+heard, as he exclaimed, "Wait for me here!" and, as he stepped
+forward, sent his voice before him, forbidding all blows to the mare.
+
+The creature's extreme terror ceased at once upon hearing his voice,
+and there was an instant relaxation of all violence of resistance as
+he came up to her, took her halter from the Schneiderlein, patted her
+glossy neck, and spoke to her.  But the tumult of warning voices
+around him assured him that it would be a fatal thing to spare the
+steed the passage through the fire, and he strove by encouragements
+and caresses with voice and hand to get her forward, leading her
+himself; but the poor beast trembled so violently, and, though making
+a few steps forward, stopped again in such exceeding horror of the
+flame, that Eberhard had not the heart to compel her, turned her head
+away, and assured her that she should not be further tormented.
+
+"The gracious lordship is wrong," said public opinion, by the voice
+of old Bauer Ulrich, the sacrificer of the horse's head.  "Heaven
+forfend that evil befall him and that mare in the course of the
+year."
+
+And the buzz of voices concurred in telling of the recusant pigs who
+had never developed into sausages, the sheep who had only escaped to
+be eaten by wolves, the mule whose bones had been found at the bottom
+of an abyss.
+
+Old Ursel was seriously concerned, and would have laid hold on her
+young master to remonstrate, but a fresh notion had arisen--Would the
+gracious Freiherr set a-rolling the wheel, which was already being
+lighted in the fire, and was to conclude the festivities by being
+propelled down the hill--figuring, only that no one present knew it,
+the sun's declension from his solstitial height?  Eberhard made no
+objection; and Christina, in her shelter by the cave, felt no little
+dismay at being left alone there, and moreover had a strange, weird
+feeling at the wild, uncanny ceremony he was engaged in, not knowing
+indeed that it was sun-worship, but afraid that it could be no other
+than unholy sorcery.
+
+The wheel, flaring or reddening in all its spokes, was raised from
+the bonfire, and was driven down the smoothest piece of green sward,
+which formed an inclined plane towards the stream.  If its course was
+smooth, and it only became extinguished by leaping into the water,
+the village would flourish; and prosperity above all was expected if
+it should spring over the narrow channel, and attempt to run up the
+other side.  Such things had happened in the days of the good
+Freiherren Ebbo and Friedel, though the wheel had never gone right
+since the present baron had been excommunicated; but his heir having
+been twice seen at mass in this last month great hopes were founded
+upon him.
+
+There was a shout to clear the slope.  Eberhard, in great earnest and
+some anxiety, accepted the gauntlet that he was offered to protect
+his hand, steadied the wheel therewith, and, with a vigorous impulse
+from hand and foot, sent it bounding down the slope, among loud cries
+and a general scattering of the idlers who had crowded full into the
+very path of the fiery circle, which flamed up brilliantly for the
+moment as it met the current of air.  But either there was an
+obstacle in the way, or the young Baron's push had not been quite
+straight:  the wheel suddenly swerved aside, its course swerved to
+the right, maugre all the objurgations addressed to it as if it had
+been a living thing, and the next moment it had disappeared, all but
+a smoky, smouldering spot of red, that told where it lay, charring
+and smoking on its side, without having fulfilled a quarter of its
+course.
+
+People drew off gravely and silently, and Eberhard himself was
+strangely discomfited when he came back to the hermitage, and,
+wrapping Christina in his cloak, prepared to return, so soon as the
+glare of the fire should have faded from his eyesight enough to make
+it safe to tread so precipitous a path.  He had indeed this day made
+a dangerous venture, and both he and Christina could not but feel
+disheartened by the issue of all the omens of the year, the more
+because she had a vague sense of wrong in consulting or trusting
+them.  It seemed to her all one frightened, uncomprehended dream ever
+since her father had left her in the chapel; and, though conscious of
+her inability to have prevented her marriage, yet she blamed herself,
+felt despairing as she thought of the future, and, above all, dreaded
+the Baron and the Baroness and their anger.  Eberhard, after his
+first few words, was silent, and seemed solely absorbed in leading
+her safely along the rocky path, sometimes lifting her when he
+thought her in danger of stumbling.  It was one of the lightest,
+shortest nights of the year, and a young moon added to the brightness
+in open places, while in others it made the rocks and stones cast
+strange elvish shadows.  The distance was not entirely lost; other
+Beltane fires could be seen, like beacons, on every hill, and the few
+lights in the castle shone out like red fiery eyes in its heavy dark
+pile of building.
+
+Before entering, Eberhard paused, pulled off his own wedding-ring,
+and put it into his bosom, and taking his bride's hand in his, did
+the same for her, and bade her keep the ring till they could wear
+them openly.
+
+"Alas! then," said Christina, "you would have this secret?"
+
+"Unless I would have to seek thee down the oubliette, my little one,"
+said Eberhard "or, what might even be worse, see thee burnt on the
+hillside for bewitching me with thine arts!  No, indeed, my darling.
+Were it only my father, I could make him love thee; but my mother--I
+could not trust her where she thought the honour of our house
+concerned.  It shall not be for long.  Thou know'st we are to make
+peace with the Kaiser, and then will I get me employment among
+Kurfurst Albrecht's companies of troops, and then shalt thou prank it
+as my Lady Freiherrinn, and teach me the ways of cities."
+
+"Alas!  I fear me it has been a great sin!" sighed the poor little
+wife.
+
+"For thee--thou couldst not help it," said Eberhard; "for me--who
+knows how many deadly ones it may hinder?  Cheer up, little one; no
+one can harm thee while the secret is kept."
+
+Poor Christina had no choice but submission; but it was a sorry
+bridal evening, to enter her husband's home in shrinking terror; with
+the threat of the oubliette before her, and with a sense of shame and
+deception hanging upon her, making the wonted scowl of the old
+baroness cut her both with remorse and dread.
+
+She did indeed sit beside her bridegroom at the supper, but how
+little like a bride! even though he pushed the salt-cellar, as if by
+accident, below her place.  She thought of her myrtle, tended in vain
+at home by Barbara Schmidt; she thought of Ulm courtships, and how
+all ought to have been; the solemn embassage to her uncle, the
+stately negotiations; the troth plight before the circle of
+ceremonious kindred and merry maidens, of whom she had often been
+one--the subsequent attentions of the betrothed on all festival days,
+the piles of linen and all plenishings accumulated since babyhood,
+and all reviewed and laid out for general admiration (Ah! poor Aunt
+Johanna still spinning away to add to the many webs in her walnut
+presses!)--then the grand procession to fetch home the bride, the
+splendid festival with the musicians, dishes, and guest-tables to the
+utmost limit that was allowed by the city laws, and the bride's hair
+so joyously covered by her matron's curch amid the merriment of her
+companion maidens.
+
+Poor child!  After she had crept away to her own room, glad that her
+father was not yet returned, she wept bitterly over the wrong that
+she felt she had done to the kind uncle and aunt, who must now look
+in vain for their little Christina, and would think her lost to them,
+and to all else that was good.  At least she had had the Church's
+blessing--but that, strange to say, was regarded, in burgher life
+before the Reformation, as rather the ornament of a noble marriage
+than as essential to the civil contract; and a marriage by a priest
+was regarded by the citizens rather as a means of eluding the need of
+obtaining the parent's consent, than as a more regular and devout
+manner of wedding.  However, Christina felt this the one drop of
+peace.  The blessings and prayers were warm at her heart, and gave
+her hope.  And as to drops of joy, of them there was no lack, for had
+not she now a right to love Eberhard with all her heart and
+conscience, and was not it a wonderful love on his part that had made
+him stoop to the little white-faced burgher maid, despised even by
+her own father?  O better far to wear the maiden's uncovered head for
+him than the myrtle wreath for any one else!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII:  THE SCHNEIDERLEIN'S RETURN
+
+
+
+The poor little unowned bride had more to undergo than her
+imagination had conceived at the first moment.
+
+When she heard that the marriage was to be a secret, she had not
+understood that Eberhard was by no means disposed to observe much
+more caution than mere silence.  A rough, though kindly man, he did
+not thoroughly comprehend the shame and confusion that he was
+bringing upon her by departing from his former demeanour.  He knew
+that, so enormous was the distance then supposed to exist between the
+noble and the burgher, there was no chance of any one dreaming of the
+true state of the case, and that as long as Christina was not taken
+for his wife, there was no personal danger for her from his mother,
+who--so lax were the morals of the German nobility with regard to all
+of inferior rank--would tolerate her with complacency as his
+favourite toy; and he was taken by surprise at the agony of grief and
+shame with which she slowly comprehended his assurance that she had
+nothing to fear.
+
+There was no help for it.  The oubliette would probably be the
+portion of the low-born girl who had interfered with the sixteen
+quarterings of the Adlerstein shield, and poor Christina never
+stepped across its trap-door without a shudder lest it should open
+beneath her.  And her father would probably have been hung from the
+highest tower, in spite of his shrewd care to be aware of nothing.
+Christina consoled herself with the hope that he knew all the time
+why he had been sent out of the way, for, with a broad grin that had
+made her blush painfully, he had said he knew she would be well taken
+care of, and that he hoped she was not breaking her heart for want of
+an escort.  She tried to extort Eberhard's permission to let him at
+least know how it was; but Eberhard laughed, saying he believed the
+old fox knew just as much as he chose; and, in effect, Sorel, though
+now and then gratifying his daughter's scruples, by serving as a
+shield to her meetings with the young Baron, never allowed himself to
+hear a hint of the true state of affairs.
+
+Eberhard's love and reverence were undiminished, and the time spent
+with him would have been perfectly happy could she ever have divested
+herself of anxiety and alarm; but the periods of his absence from the
+castle were very terrible to her, for the other women of the
+household, quick to perceive that she no longer repelled him, had
+lost that awe that had hitherto kept them at a distance from her, and
+treated her with a familiarity, sometimes coarse, sometimes spiteful,
+always hateful and degrading.  Even old Ursel had become half-
+pitying, half-patronizing; and the old Baroness, though not molesting
+her, took not the slightest notice of her.
+
+This state of things lasted much longer than there had been reason to
+expect at the time of the marriage.  The two Freiherren then intended
+to set out in a very short time to make their long talked-of
+submission to the Emperor at Ratisbon; but, partly from their German
+tardiness of movement, partly from the obstinate delays interposed by
+the proud old Freiherrinn, who was as averse as ever to the measure,
+partly from reports that the Court was not yet arrived at Ratisbon,
+the expedition was again and again deferred, and did not actually
+take place till September was far advanced.
+
+Poor Christina would have given worlds to go with them, and even
+entreated to be sent to Ulm with an avowal of her marriage to her
+uncle and aunt, but of this Eberhard would not hear.  He said the
+Ulmers would thus gain an hostage, and hamper his movements; and, if
+her wedding was not to be confessed--poor child!--she could better
+bear to remain where she was than to face Hausfrau Johanna.  Eberhard
+was fully determined to enrol himself in some troop, either Imperial,
+or, if not, among the Free Companies, among whom men of rank were
+often found, and he would then fetch or send for his wife and avow
+her openly, so soon as she should be out of his mother's reach.  He
+longed to leave her father at home, to be some protection to her, but
+Hugh Sorel was so much the most intelligent and skilful of the
+retainers as to be absolutely indispensable to the party--he was
+their only scribe; and moreover his new suit of buff rendered him a
+creditable member of a troop that had been very hard to equip.  It
+numbered about ten men-at-arms, only three being left at home to
+garrison the castle--namely, Hatto, who was too old to take; Hans,
+who had been hopelessly lame and deformed since the old Baron had
+knocked him off a cliff in a passion; and Squinting Matz, a runaway
+servant, who had murdered his master, the mayor of Strasburg, and
+might be caught and put to death if any one recognized him.  If
+needful the villagers could always be called in to defend the castle:
+but of this there was little or no danger--the Eagle's Steps were
+defence enough in themselves, and the party were not likely to be
+absent more than a week or ten days--a grievous length of time, poor
+Christina thought, as she stood straining her eyes on the top of the
+watch-tower, to watch them as far as possible along the plain.  Her
+heart was very sad, and the omen of the burning wheel so continually
+haunted her that even in her sleep that night she saw its brief
+course repeated, beheld its rapid fall and extinction, and then
+tracked the course of the sparks that darted from it, one rising and
+gleaming high in air till it shone like a star, another pursuing a
+fitful and irregular, but still bright course amid the dry grass on
+the hillside, just as she had indeed watched some of the sparks on
+that night, minding her of the words of the Allhallow-tide legend:
+"Fulgebunt justi et tanquam scintillae in arundinete discurrent"--a
+sentence which remained with her when awake, and led her to seek it
+out in her Latin Bible in the morning.
+
+Reluctantly had she gone down to the noontide meal, feeling, though
+her husband and father were far less of guardians than they should
+have been, yet that there was absolute rest, peace, and protection in
+their presence compared with what it was to be alone with Freiherrinn
+Kunigunde and her rude women without them.  A few sneers on her
+daintiness and uselessness had led her to make an offer of assisting
+in the grand chopping of sausage meat and preparation of winter
+stores, and she had been answered with contempt that my young lord
+would not have her soil her delicate hands, when one of the maids who
+had been sent to fetch beer from the cellar came back with startled
+looks, and the exclamation, "There is the Schneiderlein riding up the
+Eagle's Ladder upon Freiherr Ebbo's white mare!"
+
+All the women sprang up together, and rushed to the window, whence
+they could indeed recognize both man and horse; and presently it
+became plain that both were stained with blood, weary, and spent;
+indeed, nothing but extreme exhaustion would have induced the man-at-
+arms to trust the tired, stumbling horse up such a perilous path.
+
+Loud were the exclamations, "Ah! no good could come of not leading
+that mare through the Johannisfeuer."
+
+"This shameful expedition!  Only harm could befall.  This is thy
+doing, thou mincing city-girl."
+
+"All was certain to go wrong when a pale mist widow came into the
+place."
+
+The angry and dismayed cries all blended themselves in confusion in
+the ears of the only silent woman present; the only one that sounded
+distinctly on her brain was that of the last speaker, "A pale, mist
+widow," as, holding herself a little in the rear of the struggling,
+jostling little mob of women, who hardly made way even for their
+acknowledged lady, she followed with failing limbs the universal rush
+to the entrance as soon as man and horse had mounted the slope and
+were lost sight of.
+
+A few moments more, and the throng of expectants was at the foot of
+the hall steps, just as the lanzknecht reached the arched entrance.
+His comrade Hans took his bridle, and almost lifted him from his
+horse; he reeled and stumbled as, pale, battered, and bleeding, he
+tried to advance to Freiherinn Kunigunde, and, in answer to her hasty
+interrogation, faltered out, "Ill news, gracious lady.  We have been
+set upon by the accursed Schlangenwaldern, and I am the only living
+man left."
+
+Christina scarce heard even these last words; senses and powers alike
+failed her, and she sank back on the stone steps in a deathlike
+swoon.
+
+When she came to herself she was lying on her bed, Ursel and Else,
+another of the women, busy over her, and Ursel's voice was saying,
+"Ah, she is coming round.  Look up, sweet lady, and fear not.  You
+are our gracious Lady Baroness."
+
+"Is he here?  O, has he said so?  O, let me see him--Sir Eberhard,"
+faintly cried Christina with sobbing breath.
+
+"Ah, no, no," said the old woman; "but see here," and she lifted up
+Christina's powerless, bloodless hand, and showed her the ring on the
+finger.  Her bosom had been evidently searched when her dress was
+loosened in her swoon, and her ring found and put in its place.
+"There, you can hold up your head with the best of them; he took care
+of that--my dear young Freiherr, the boy that I nursed," and the old
+woman's burst of tears brought back the truth to Christina's s
+reviving senses.
+
+"Oh, tell me," she said, trying to raise herself, "was it indeed so?
+O say it was not as he said!"
+
+"Ah, woe's me, woe's me, that it was even so," lamented Ursel; "but
+oh, be still, look not so wild, dear lady.  The dear, true-hearted
+young lord, he spent his last breath in owning you for his true lady,
+and in bidding us cherish you and our young baron that is to be.  And
+the gracious lady below--she owns you; there is no fear of her now;
+so vex not yourself, dearest, most gracious lady."
+
+Christina did not break out into the wailing and weeping that the old
+nurse expected; she was still far too much stunned and overwhelmed,
+and she entreated to be told all, lying still, but gazing at Ursel
+with piteous bewildered eyes.  Ursel and Else helping one another
+out, tried to tell her, but they were much confused; all they knew
+was that the party had been surprised at night in a village hostel by
+the Schlangenwaldern, and all slain, though the young Baron had lived
+long enough to charge the Schneiderlein with his commendation of his
+wife to his mother; but all particulars had been lost in the general
+confusion.
+
+"Oh, let me see the Schneiderlein," implored Christina, by this time
+able to rise and cross the room to the large carved chair; and Ursel
+immediately turned to her underling, saying, "Tell the Schneiderlein
+that the gracious Lady Baroness desires his presence."
+
+Else's wooden shoes clattered down stairs, but the next moment she
+returned.  "He cannot come; he is quite spent, and he will let no one
+touch his arm till Ursel can come, not even to get off his doublet."
+
+"I will go to him," said Christina, and, revived by the sense of
+being wanted, she moved at once to the turret, where she kept some
+rag and some ointment, which she had found needful in the latter
+stages of Ermentrude's illness--indeed, household surgery was a part
+of regular female education, and Christina had had plenty of practice
+in helping her charitable aunt, so that the superiority of her skill
+to that of Ursel had long been avowed in the castle.  Ursel made no
+objection further than to look for something that could be at once
+converted into a widow's veil--being in the midst of her grief quite
+alive to the need that no matronly badge should be omitted--but
+nothing came to hand in time, and Christina was descending the
+stairs, on her way to the kitchen, where she found the fugitive man-
+at-arms seated on a rough settle, his head and wounded arm resting on
+the table, while groans of pain, weariness, and impatience were
+interspersed with imprecations on the stupid awkward girls who
+surrounded him.
+
+Pity and the instinct of affording relief must needs take the
+precedence even of the desire to hear of her husband's fate; and, as
+the girls hastily whispered, "Here she is," and the lanzknecht
+hastily tried to gather himself up, and rise with tokens of respect;
+she bade him remain still, and let her see what she could do for him.
+In fact, she at once perceived that he was in no condition to give a
+coherent account of anything, he was so completely worn out, and in
+so much suffering.  She bade at once that some water should be
+heated, and some of the broth of the dinner set on the fire; then
+with the shears at her girdle, and her soft, light fingers, she
+removed the torn strip of cloth that had been wound round the arm,
+and cut away the sleeve, showing the arm not broken, but gashed at
+the shoulder, and thence the whole length grazed and wounded by the
+descent of the sword down to the wrist.  So tender was her touch,
+that he scarcely winced or moaned under her hand; and, when she
+proceeded, with Ursel's help, to bathe the wound with the warm water,
+the relief was such that the wearied man absolutely slumbered during
+the process, which Christina protracted on that very account.  She
+then dressed and bandaged the arm, and proceeded to skim--as no one
+else in the castle would do--the basin of soup, with which she then
+fed her patient as he leant back in the corner of the settle, at
+first in the same somnolent, half-conscious state in which he had
+been ever since the relief from the severe pain; but after a few
+spoonfuls the light and life came back to his eye, and he broke out,
+"Thanks, thanks, gracious lady!  This is the Lady Baroness for me!
+My young lord was the only wise man!  Thanks, lady; now am I my own
+man again.  It had been long ere the old Freiherrinn had done so much
+for me!  I am your man, lady, for life or death!"  And, before she
+knew what he was about, the gigantic Schneiderlein had slid down on
+his knees, seized her hand, and kissed it--the first act of homage to
+her rank, but most startling and distressing to her.  "Nay," she
+faltered, "prithee do not; thou must rest.  Only if--if thou canst
+only tell me if he, my own dear lord, sent me any greeting, I would
+wait to hear the rest till thou hast slept."
+
+"Ah! the dog of Schlangenwald!" was the first answer; then, as he
+continued, "You see, lady, we had ridden merrily as far as Jacob
+Muller's hostel, the traitor," it became plain that he meant to begin
+at the beginning.  She allowed Ursel to seat her on the bench
+opposite to his settle, and, leaning forward, heard his narrative
+like one in a dream.  There, the Schneiderlein proceeded to say, they
+put up for the night, entirely unsuspicious of evil; Jacob Muller,
+who was known to himself, as well as to Sorel and to the others,
+assuring them that the way was clear to Ratisbon, and that he heard
+the Emperor was most favourably disposed to any noble who would
+tender his allegiance.  Jacob's liquors were brought out, and were
+still in course of being enjoyed, when the house was suddenly
+surrounded by an overpowering number of the retainers of
+Schlangenwald, with their Count himself at their head.  He had been
+evidently resolved to prevent the timely submission of the enemies of
+his race, and suddenly presenting himself before the elder Baron, had
+challenged him to instantaneous battle, claiming credit to himself
+for not having surprised them when asleep.  The disadvantage had been
+scarcely less than if this had been the case, for the Adlersteinern
+were all half-intoxicated, and far inferior in numbers--at least, on
+the showing of the Schneiderlein--and a desperate fight had ended by
+his being flung aside in a corner, bound fast by the ankles and
+wrists, the only living prisoner, except his young lord, who, having
+several terrible wounds, the worst in his chest, was left unbound.
+
+Both lay helpless, untended, and silent, while the revel that had
+been so fatal to them was renewed by their captors, who finally all
+sunk into a heavy sleep.  The torches were not all spent, and the
+moonlight shone into the room, when the Schneiderlein, desperate from
+the agony caused by the ligature round his wounded arm, sat up and
+looked about him.  A knife thrown aside by one of the drunkards lay
+near enough to be grasped by his bound hands, and he had just reached
+it when Sir Eberhard made a sign to him to put it into his hand, and
+therewith contrived to cut the rope round both hands and feet--then
+pointed to the door.
+
+There was nothing to hinder an escape; the men slept the sleep of the
+drunken; but the Schneiderlein, with the rough fidelity of a
+retainer, would have lingered with a hope of saving his master.  But
+Eberhard shook his head, and signed again to escape; then, making him
+bend down close to him, he used all his remaining power to whisper,
+as he pressed his sword into the retainer's hand, -
+
+"Go home; tell my mother--all the world--that Christina Sorel is my
+wife, wedded on the Friedmund Wake by Friar Peter of Offingen, and if
+she should bear a child, he is my true and lawful heir.  My sword for
+him--my love to her.  And if my mother would not be haunted by me,
+let her take care of her."
+
+These words were spoken with extreme difficulty, for the nature of
+the wound made utterance nearly impossible, and each broken sentence
+cost a terrible effusion of blood.  The final words brought on so
+choking and fatal a gush that, said the Schneiderlein, "he fell back
+as I tried to hold him up, and I saw that it was all at an end, and a
+kind and friendly master and lord gone from me.  I laid him down, and
+put his cross on his breast that I had seen him kissing many a time
+that evening; and I crossed his hands, and wiped the blood from them
+and his face.  And, lady, he had put on his ring; I trust the robber
+caitiff's may have left it to him in his grave.  And so I came forth,
+walking soft, and opening the door in no small dread, not of the
+snoring swine, but of the dogs without.  But happily they were still,
+and even by the door I saw all our poor fellows stark and stiff."
+
+"My father?" asked Christina.
+
+"Ay! with his head cleft open by the Graf himself.  He died like a
+true soldier, lady, and we have lost the best head among us in him.
+Well, the knave that should have watched the horses was as drunken as
+the rest of them, and I made a shift to put the bridle on the white
+mare and ride off."
+
+Such was the narrative of the Schneiderlein, and all that was left to
+Christina was the picture of her husband's dying effort to guard her,
+and the haunting fancy of those long hours of speechless agony on the
+floor of the hostel, and how direful must have been his fears for
+her.  Sad and overcome, yet not sinking entirely while any work of
+comfort remained, her heart yearned over her companion in misfortune,
+the mother who had lost both husband and son; and all her fears of
+the dread Freiherrinn could not prevent her from bending her steps,
+trembling and palpitating as she was, towards the hall, to try
+whether the daughter-in-law's right might be vouchsafed to her, of
+weeping with the elder sufferer.
+
+The Freiherrinn sat by the chimney, rocking herself to and fro, and
+holding consultation with Hatto.  She started as she saw Christina
+approaching, and made a gesture of repulsion; but, with the feeling
+of being past all terror in this desolate moment, Christina stepped
+nearer, knelt, and, clasping her hands, said, "Your pardon, lady."
+
+"Pardon!" returned the harsh voice, even harsher for very grief,
+"thou hast naught to fear, girl.  As things stand, thou canst not
+have thy deserts.  Dost hear?"
+
+"Ah, lady, it was not such pardon that I meant.  If you would let me
+be a daughter to you."
+
+"A daughter!  A wood-carver's girl to be a daughter of Adlerstein!"
+half laughed the grim Baroness.  "Come here, wench," and Christina
+underwent a series of sharp searching questions on the evidences of
+her marriage.
+
+"So," ended the old lady, "since better may not be, we must own thee
+for the nonce.  Hark ye all, this is the Frau Freiherrinn, Freiherr
+Eberhard's widow, to be honoured as such," she added, raising her
+voice.  "There, girl, thou hast what thou didst strive for.  Is not
+that enough?"
+
+"Alas! lady," said Christina, her eyes swimming in tears, "I would
+fain have striven to be a comforter, or to weep together."
+
+"What! to bewitch me as thou didst my poor son and daughter, and
+well-nigh my lord himself!  Girl!  Girl!  Thou know'st I cannot burn
+thee now; but away with thee; try not my patience too far."
+
+And, more desolate than ever, the crushed and broken-hearted
+Christina, a widow before she had been owned a wife, returned to the
+room that was now so full of memories as to be even more home than
+Master Gottfried's gallery at Ulm.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII:  PASSING THE OUBLIETTE
+
+
+
+Who can describe the dreariness of being snowed-up all the winter
+with such a mother-in-law as Freiherrinn Kunigunde?
+
+Yet it was well that the snow came early, for it was the best defence
+of the lonely castle from any attack on the part of the
+Schlangenwaldern, the Swabian League, or the next heir, Freiherr
+Kasimir von Adlerstein Wildschloss.  The elder Baroness had, at
+least, the merit of a stout heart, and, even with her sadly-reduced
+garrison, feared none of them.  She had been brought up in the faith
+that Adlerstein was impregnable, and so she still believed; and, if
+the disaster that had cut off her husband and son was to happen at
+all, she was glad that it had befallen before the homage had been
+paid.  Probably the Schlangenwald Count knew how tough a morsel the
+castle was like to prove, and Wildschloss was serving at a distance,
+for nothing was heard of either during the short interval while the
+roads were still open.  During this time an attempt had been made
+through Father Norbert to ascertain what had become of the corpses of
+the two Barons and their followers, and it had appeared that the
+Count had carried them all off from the inn, no doubt to adorn his
+castle with their limbs, or to present them to the Emperor in
+evidence of his zeal for order.  The old Baron could not indeed have
+been buried in consecrated ground, nor have masses said for him; but
+for the weal of her son's soul Dame Kunigunde gave some of her few
+ornaments, and Christina added her gold earrings, and all her scanty
+purse, that both her husband and father might be joined in the
+prayers of the Church--trying with all her might to put confidence in
+Hugh Sorel's Loretto relic, and the Indulgence he had bought, and
+trusting with more consolatory thoughts to the ever stronger dawnings
+of good she had watched in her own Eberhard.
+
+She had some consoling intercourse with the priest while all this was
+pending; but throughout the winter she was entirely cut off from
+every creature save the inmates of the castle, where, as far as the
+old lady was concerned, she only existed on sufferance, and all her
+meekness and gentleness could not win for her more than the barest
+toleration.
+
+That Eberhard had for a few hours survived his father, and that thus
+the Freiherrinn Christina was as much the Dowager Baroness as
+Kunigunde herself, was often insisted on in the kitchen by Ursel,
+Hatto, and the Schneiderlein, whom Christina had unconsciously
+rendered her most devoted servant, not only by her daily care of his
+wound, but by her kind courteous words, and by her giving him his
+proper name of Heinz, dropping the absurd nom de guerre of the
+Schneiderlein, or little tailor, which had been originally conferred
+on him in allusion to the valiant Tailorling who boasted of having
+killed seven flies at a blow, and had been carried on chiefly because
+of the contradiction between such a title and his huge brawny
+strength and fierce courage.  Poor Eberhard, with his undaunted
+bravery and free reckless good-nature, a ruffian far more by
+education than by nature, had been much loved by his followers.  His
+widow would have reaped the benefit of that affection even if her
+exceeding sweetness had not gained it on her own account; and this
+giant was completely gained over to her, when, amid all her sorrow
+and feebleness, she never failed to minister to his sufferings to the
+utmost, while her questions about his original home, and revival of
+the name of his childhood, softened him, and awoke in him better
+feelings.  He would have died to serve her, and she might have headed
+an opposition party in the castle, had she not been quite indifferent
+to all save her grief; and, except by sitting above the salt at the
+empty table, she laid no claim to any honours or authority, and was
+more seldom than ever seen beyond what was now called her own room.
+
+At last, when for the second time she was seeing the snow wreaths
+dwindle, and the drops shine forth in moisture again, while the
+mountain paths were set free by the might of the springtide sun, she
+spoke almost for the first time with authority, as she desired Heinz
+to saddle her mule, and escort her to join in the Easter mass at the
+Blessed Friedmund's Chapel.  Ursel heaped up objections; but so
+urgent was Christina for confession and for mass, that the old woman
+had not the heart to stop her by a warning to the elder Baroness, and
+took the alternative of accompanying her.  It was a glorious
+sparkling Easter Day, lovely blue sky above, herbage and flowers
+glistening below, snow dazzling in the hollows, peasants assembling
+in holiday garb, and all rejoicing.  Even the lonely widow, in her
+heavy veil and black mufflings, took hope back to her heart, and
+smiled when at the church door a little child came timidly up to her
+with a madder-tinted Easter egg--a gift once again like the happy
+home customs of Ulm.  She gave the child a kiss--she had nothing else
+to give, but the sweet face sent it away strangely glad.
+
+The festival mass in all its exultation was not fully over, when
+anxious faces began to be seen at the door, and whisperings went
+round and many passed out.  Nobody at Adlerstein was particular about
+silence in church, and, when the service was not in progress, voices
+were not even lowered, and, after many attempts on the part of the
+Schneiderlein to attract the attention of his mistress, his voice
+immediately succeeded the Ite missa est, "Gracious lady, we must
+begone.  Your mule is ready.  There is a party at the Debateable
+Ford, whether Schlangenwald or Wildschloss we know not yet, but
+either way you must be the first thing placed in safety."
+
+Christina turned deadly pale.  She had long been ready to welcome
+death as a peaceful friend; but, sheltered as her girlhood had been
+in the quiet city, she had never been brought in contact with
+warfare, and her nervous, timid temperament made the thought most
+appalling and frightful to her, certain as she was that the old
+Baroness would resist to the uttermost.  Father Norbert saw her
+extreme terror, and, with the thought that he might comfort and
+support her, perhaps mediate between the contending parties, plead
+that it was holy-tide, and proclaim the peace of the church, or at
+the worst protect the lady herself, he offered his company; but,
+though she thanked him, it was as if she scarcely understood his
+kindness, and a shudder passed over her whenever the serfs, hastily
+summoned to augment the garrison, came hurrying down the path, or
+turned aside into the more rugged and shorter descents.  It was
+strange, the good father thought, that so timorous and fragile a
+being should have her lot cast amid these rugged places and scenes of
+violence, with no one to give her the care and cherishing she so much
+required.
+
+Even when she crept up the castle stairs, she was met with an angry
+rebuke, not so much for the peril she had incurred as for having
+taken away the Schneiderlein, by far the most availing among the
+scanty remnant of the retainers of Adlerstein.  Attempting no answer,
+and not even daring to ask from what quarter came the alarm,
+Christina made her way out of the turmoil to that chamber of her own,
+the scene of so much fear and sorrow, and yet of some share of peace
+and happiness.  But from the window, near the fast subsiding waters
+of the Debateable Ford, could plainly be seen the small troop of
+warriors, of whom Jobst the Kohler had brought immediate
+intelligence.  The sun glistened on their armour, and a banner
+floated gaily on the wind; but they were a fearful sight to the
+inmates of the lonely castle.
+
+A stout heart was however Kunigunde's best endowment; and, with the
+steadiness and precision of a general, her commands rang out, as she
+arranged and armed her garrison, perfectly resolved against any
+submission, and confident in the strength of her castle; nay, not
+without a hope of revenge either against Schlangenwald or
+Wildschloss, whom, as a degenerate Adlerstein, she hated only less
+than the slayer of her husband and son.
+
+The afternoon of Easter Day however passed away without any movement
+on the part of the enemy, and it was not till the following day that
+they could be seen struggling through the ford, and preparing to
+ascend the mountain.  Attacks had sometimes been disconcerted by
+posting men in the most dangerous passes; but, in the lack of
+numbers, and of trustworthy commanders, the Freiherrinn had judged it
+wiser to trust entirely to her walls, and keep her whole force within
+them.
+
+The new comers could hardly have had any hostile intentions, for,
+though well armed and accoutred, their numbers did not exceed twenty-
+five.  The banner borne at their head was an azure one, with a white
+eagle, and their leader could be observed looking with amazement at
+the top of the watch-tower, where the same eagle had that morning
+been hoisted for the first time since the fall of the two Freiherren.
+
+So soon as the ascent had been made, the leader wound his horn, and,
+before the echoes had died away among the hills, Hatto, acting as
+seneschal, was demanding his purpose.
+
+"I am Kasimir von Adlerstein Wildschloss," was the reply.  "I have
+hitherto been hindered by stress of weather from coming to take
+possession of my inheritance.  Admit me, that I may arrange with the
+widowed Frau Freiherrinn as to her dower and residence."
+
+"The widowed Frau Freiherrinn, born of Adlerstein," returned Hatto,
+"thanks the Freiherr von Adlerstein Wildschloss; but she holds the
+castle as guardian to the present head of the family, the Freiherr
+von Adlerstein."
+
+"It is false, old man," exclaimed the Wildschloss; "the Freiherr had
+no other son."
+
+"No," said Hatto, "but Freiherr Eberhard hath left us twin heirs, our
+young lords, for whom we hold this castle."
+
+"This trifling will not serve!" sternly spoke the knight.  "Eberhard
+von Adlerstein died unmarried."
+
+"Not so," returned Hatto, "our gracious Frau Freiherrinn, the
+younger, was wedded to him at the last Friedmund Wake, by the special
+blessing of our good patron, who would not see our house extinct."
+
+"I must see thy lady, old man," said Sir Kasimir, impatiently, not in
+the least crediting the story, and believing his cousin Kunigunde
+quite capable of any measure that could preserve to her the rule in
+Schloss Adlerstein, even to erecting some passing love affair of her
+son's into a marriage.  And he hardly did her injustice, for she had
+never made any inquiry beyond the castle into the validity of
+Christina's espousals, nor sought after the friar who had performed
+the ceremony.  She consented to an interview with the claimant of the
+inheritance, and descended to the gateway for the purpose.  The court
+was at its cleanest, the thawing snow having newly washed away its
+impurities, and her proud figure, under her black hood and veil, made
+an imposing appearance as she stood tall and defiant in the archway.
+
+Sir Kasimir was a handsome man of about thirty, of partly Polish
+descent, and endowed with Slavonic grace and courtesy, and he had
+likewise been employed in negotiations with Burgundy, and had
+acquired much polish and knowledge of the world.
+
+"Lady," he said, "I regret to disturb and intrude on a mourning
+family, but I am much amazed at the tidings I have heard; and I must
+pray of you to confirm them."
+
+"I thought they would confound you," composedly replied Kunigunde.
+
+"And pardon me, lady, but the Diet is very nice in requiring full
+proofs.  I would be glad to learn what lady was chosen by my deceased
+cousin Eberhard."
+
+"The lady is Christina, daughter of his esquire, Hugh Sorel, of an
+honourable family at Ulm."
+
+"Ha!  I know who and what Sorel was!" exclaimed Wildschloss.  "Lady
+cousin, thou wouldst not stain the shield of Adlerstein with owning
+aught that cannot bear the examination of the Diet!"
+
+"Sir Kasimir," said Kunigunde proudly, "had I known the truth ere my
+son's death, I had strangled the girl with mine own hands!  But I
+learnt it only by his dying confession; and, had she been a beggar's
+child, she was his wedded wife, and her babes are his lawful heirs."
+
+"Knowest thou time--place--witnesses?" inquired Sir Kasimir.
+
+"The time, the Friedmund Wake; the place, the Friedmund Chapel,"
+replied the Baroness.  "Come hither, Schneiderlein.  Tell the knight
+thy young lord's confession."
+
+He bore emphatic testimony to poor Eberhard's last words; but as to
+the point of who had performed the ceremony, he knew not,--his mind
+had not retained the name.
+
+"I must see the Frau herself," said Wildschloss, feeling certain that
+such a being as he expected in a daughter of the dissolute lanzknecht
+Sorel would soon, by dexterous questioning, be made to expose the
+futility of her pretensions so flagrantly that even Kunigunde could
+not attempt to maintain them.
+
+For one moment Kunigunde hesitated, but suddenly a look of malignant
+satisfaction crossed her face.  She spoke a few words to Squinting
+Matz, and then replied that Sir Kasimir should be allowed to satisfy
+himself, but that she could admit no one else into the castle; hers
+was a widow's household, the twins were only a few hours old, and she
+could not open her gates to admit any person besides himself.
+
+So resolved on judging for himself was Adlerstein Wildschloss that
+all this did not stagger him; for, even if he had believed more than
+he did of the old lady's story, there would have been no sense of
+intrusion or impropriety in such a visit to the mother.  Indeed, had
+Christina been living in the civilized world, her chamber would have
+been hung with black cloth, black velvet would have enveloped her up
+to the eyes, and the blackest of cradles would have stood ready for
+her fatherless babe; two steps, in honour of her baronial rank, would
+have led to her bed, and a beaufet with the due baronial amount of
+gold and silver plate would have held the comfits and caudle to be
+dispensed to all visitors.  As it was, the two steps built into the
+floor of the room, and the black hood that Ursel tied over her young
+mistress's head, were the only traces that such etiquette had ever
+been heard of.
+
+But when Baron Kasimir had clanked up the turret stairs, each step
+bringing to her many a memory of him who should have been there, and
+when he had been led to the bedside, he was completely taken by
+surprise.
+
+Instead of the great, flat-faced, coarse comeliness of a German
+wench, treated as a lady in order to deceive him, he saw a delicate,
+lily-like face, white as ivory, and the soft, sweet brown eyes under
+their drooping lashes, so full of innocence and sad though thankful
+content, that he felt as if the inquiries he came to make were almost
+sacrilege.
+
+He had seen enough of the world to know that no agent in a clumsy
+imposition would look like this pure white creature, with her arm
+encircling the two little swaddled babes, whose red faces and bald
+heads alone were allowed to appear above their mummy-like wrappings;
+and he could only make an obeisance lower and infinitely more
+respectful than that with which he had favoured the Baroness nee von
+Adlerstein, with a few words of inquiry and apology.
+
+But Christina had her sons' rights to defend now, and she had far
+more spirit to do so than ever she had had in securing her own
+position, and a delicate rose tint came into her cheek as she said in
+her soft voice, "The Baroness tells me, that you, noble sir, would
+learn who wedded me to my dear and blessed lord, Sir Eberhard.  It
+was Friar Peter of the Franciscan brotherhood of Offingen, an agent
+for selling indulgences.  Two of his lay brethren were present.  My
+dear lord gave his own name and mine in full after the holy rite; the
+friar promising his testimony if it were needed.  He is to be found,
+or at least heard of, at his own cloister; and the hermit at the
+chapel likewise beheld a part of the ceremony."
+
+"Enough, enough, lady," replied Sir Kasimir; "forgive me for having
+forced the question upon you."
+
+"Nay," replied Christina, with her blush deepening, "it is but just
+and due to us all;" and her soft eyes had a gleam of exultation, as
+she looked at the two little mummies that made up the US--"I would
+have all inquiries made in full."
+
+"They shall be made, lady, as will be needful for the establishment
+of your son's right as a free Baron of the empire, but not with any
+doubt on my part, or desire to controvert that right.  I am fully
+convinced, and only wish to serve you and my little cousins.  Which
+of them is the head of our family?" he added, looking at the two
+absolutely undistinguishable little chrysalises, so exactly alike
+that Christina herself was obliged to look for the black ribbon, on
+which a medal had been hung, round the neck of the elder.  Sir
+Kasimir put one knee to the ground as he kissed the red cheek of the
+infant and the white hand of the mother.
+
+"Lady cousin," he said to Kunigunde, who had stood by all this time
+with an anxious, uneasy, scowling expression on her face, "I am
+satisfied.  I own this babe as the true Freiherr von Adlerstein, and
+far be it from me to trouble his heritage.  Rather point out the way
+in which I may serve you and him.  Shall I represent all to the
+Emperor, and obtain his wardship, so as to be able to protect you
+from any attacks by the enemies of the house?"
+
+"Thanks, sir," returned the elder lady, severely, seeing Christina's
+gratified, imploring face.  "The right line of Adlerstein can take
+care of itself without greedy guardians appointed by usurpers.  Our
+submission has never been made, and the Emperor cannot dispose of our
+wardship."
+
+And Kunigunde looked defiant, regarding herself and her grandson as
+quite as good as the Emperor, and ready to blast her daughter-in-law
+with her eyes for murmuring gratefully and wistfully, "Thanks, noble
+sir, thanks!"
+
+"Let me at least win a friendly right in my young cousins," said Sir
+Kasimir, the more drawn by pitying admiration towards their mother,
+as he perceived more of the grandmother's haughty repulsiveness and
+want of comprehension of the dangers of her position.  "They are not
+baptized?  Let me become their godfather."
+
+Christina's face was all joy and gratitude, and even the grandmother
+made no objection; in fact, it was the babes' only chance of a noble
+sponsor; and Father Norbert, who had already been making ready for
+the baptism, was sent for from the hall.  Kunigunde, meantime, moved
+about restlessly, went half-way down the stairs, and held council
+with some one there; Ursel likewise, bustled about, and Sir Kasimir
+remained seated on the chair that had been placed for him near
+Christina's bed.
+
+She was able again to thank him, and add, "It may be that you will
+have more cause than the lady grandmother thinks to remember your
+offer of protection to my poor orphans.  Their father and grandfather
+were, in very deed, on their way to make submission."
+
+"That is well known to me," said Sir Kasimir.  "Lady, I will do all
+in my power for you.  The Emperor shall hear the state of things;
+and, while no violence is offered to travellers," he added, lowering
+his tone, "I doubt not he will wait for full submission till this
+young Baron be of age to tender it."
+
+"We are scarce in force to offer violence," said Christina sighing.
+"I have no power to withstand the Lady Baroness.  I am like a
+stranger here; but, oh! sir, if the Emperor and Diet will be patient
+and forbearing with this desolate house, my babes, if they live,
+shall strive to requite their mercy by loyalty.  And the blessing of
+the widow and fatherless will fall on you, most generous knight," she
+added, fervently, holding out her hand.
+
+"I would I could do more for you," said the knight.  "Ask, and all I
+can do is at your service."
+
+"Ah, sir," cried Christina, her eyes brightening, "there is one most
+inestimable service you could render me--to let my uncle, Master
+Gottfried, the wood-carver of Ulm, know where I am, and of my state,
+and of my children."
+
+Sir Kasimir repeated the name.
+
+"Yes," she said.  "There was my home, there was I brought up by my
+dear uncle and aunt, till my father bore me away to attend on the
+young lady here.  It is eighteen months since they had any tidings
+from her who was as a daughter to them."
+
+"I will see them myself," said Kasimir; "I know the name.  Carved not
+Master Gottfried the stall-work at Augsburg?"
+
+"Yes, indeed!  In chestnut leaves!  And the Misereres all with fairy
+tales!" exclaimed Christina.  "Oh, sir, thanks indeed!  Bear to the
+dear, dear uncle and aunt their child's duteous greetings, and tell
+them she loves them with all her heart, and prays them to forgive
+her, and to pray for her and her little ones!  And," she added, "my
+uncle may not have learnt how his brother, my father, died by his
+lord's side.  Oh! pray him, if ever he loved his little Christina, to
+have masses sung for my father and my own dear lord."
+
+As she promised, Ursel came to make the babes ready for their
+baptism, and Sir Kasimir moved away towards the window.  Ursel was
+looking uneasy and dismayed, and, as she bent over her mistress, she
+whispered, "Lady, the Schneiderlein sends you word that Matz has
+called him to help in removing the props of the door you wot of when
+HE yonder steps across it.  He would know if it be your will?"
+
+"The oubliette!"  This was Frau Kunigunde's usage of the relative who
+was doing his best for the welfare of her grandsons!  Christina's
+whole countenance looked so frozen with horror, that Ursel felt as if
+she had killed her on the spot; but the next moment a flash of relief
+came over the pale features, and the trembling lip commanded itself
+to say, "My best thanks to good Heinz.  Say to him that I forbid it.
+If he loves the life of his master's children, he will abstain!  Tell
+him so.  My blessings on him if this knight leave the castle safe,
+Ursel." And her terrified earnest eyes impelled Ursel to hasten to do
+her bidding; but whether it had been executed, there was no knowing,
+for almost immediately the Freiherrinn and Father Norbert entered,
+and Ursel returned with them.  Nay, the message given, who could tell
+if Heinz would be able to act upon it?  In the ordinary condition of
+the castle, he was indeed its most efficient inmate; Matz did not
+approach him in strength, Hans was a cripple, Hatto would be on the
+right side; but Jobst the Kohler, and the other serfs who had been
+called in for the defence, were more likely to hold with the elder
+than the younger lady.  And Frau Kunigunde herself, knowing well that
+the five-and-twenty men outside would be incompetent to avenge their
+master, confident in her narrow-minded, ignorant pride that no one
+could take Schloss Adlerstein, and incapable of understanding the
+changes in society that were rendering her isolated condition
+untenable, was certain to scout any representation of the dire
+consequences that the crime would entail.  Kasimir had no near
+kindred, and private revenge was the only justice the Baroness
+believed in; she only saw in her crime the satisfaction of an old
+feud, and the union of the Wildschloss property with the parent stem.
+
+Seldom could such a christening have taken place as that of which
+Christina's bed-room was the scene--the mother scarcely able even to
+think of the holy sacrament for the horror of knowing that the one
+sponsor was already exulting in the speedy destruction of the other;
+and, poor little feeble thing, rallying the last remnants of her
+severely-tried powers to prevent the crime at the most terrible of
+risks.
+
+The elder babe received from his grandmother the hereditary name of
+Eberhard, but Sir Kasimir looked at the mother inquiringly, ere he
+gave the other to the priest.  Christina had well-nigh said,
+"Oubliette," but, recalling herself in time, she feebly uttered the
+name she had longed after from the moment she had known that two sons
+had been her Easter gift, "Gottfried," after her beloved uncle.  But
+Kunigunde caught the sound, and exclaimed, "No son of Adlerstein
+shall bear abase craftsman's name.  Call him Racher (the avenger);"
+and in the word there already rang a note of victory and revenge that
+made Christina's blood run cold.  Sir Kasimir marked her trouble.
+"The lady mother loves not the sound," he said, kindly.  "Lady, have
+you any other wish?  Then will I call him Friedmund."
+
+Christina had almost smiled.  To her the omen was of the best.  Baron
+Friedmund had been the last common ancestor of the two branches of
+the family, the patron saint was so called, his wake was her wedding-
+day, the sound of the word imported peace, and the good Barons Ebbo
+and Friedel had ever been linked together lovingly by popular memory.
+And so the second little Baron received the name of Friedmund, and
+then the knight of Wildschloss, perceiving, with consideration rare
+in a warrior, that the mother looked worn out and feverish, at once
+prepared to kiss her hand and take leave.
+
+"One more favour, Sir Knight," she said, lifting up her head, while a
+burning spot rose on either cheek.  "I beg of you to take my two
+babes down--yes, both, both, in your own arms, and show them to your
+men, owning them as your kinsmen and godsons."
+
+Sir Kasimir looked exceedingly amazed, as if he thought the lady's
+senses taking leave of her, and Dame Kunigunde broke out into
+declarations that it was absurd, and she did not know what she was
+talking of; but she repeated almost with passion, "Take them, take
+them, you know not how much depends on it."  Ursel, with unusual
+readiness of wit, signed and whispered that the young mother must be
+humoured, for fear of consequences; till the knight, in a good-
+natured, confused way, submitted to receive the two little bundles in
+his arms, while he gave place to Kunigunde, who hastily stepped
+before him in a manner that made Christina trust that her precaution
+would be effectual.
+
+The room was reeling round with her.  The agony of those few minutes
+was beyond all things unspeakable.  What had seemed just before like
+a certain way of saving the guest without real danger to her
+children, now appeared instead the most certain destruction to all,
+and herself the unnatural mother who had doomed her new-born babes
+for a stranger's sake.  She could not even pray; she would have
+shrieked to have them brought back, but her voice was dead within
+her, her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth, ringings in her ears
+hindered her even from listening to the descending steps.  She lay as
+one dead, when ten minutes afterwards the cry of one of her babes
+struck on her ear, and the next moment Ursel stood beside her, laying
+them down close to her, and saying exultingly, "Safe! safe out at the
+gate, and down the hillside, and my old lady ready to gnaw off her
+hands for spite!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX:  THE EAGLETS
+
+
+
+Christina's mental and bodily constitution had much similarity--
+apparently most delicate, tender, and timid, yet capable of a vigour,
+health, and endurance that withstood shocks that might have been
+fatal to many apparently stronger persons.  The events of that
+frightful Easter Monday morning did indeed almost kill her; but the
+effects, though severe, were not lasting; and by the time the last of
+Ermentrude's snow-wreath had vanished, she was sunning her babes at
+the window, happier than she had ever thought to be--above all, in
+the possession of both the children.  A nurse had been captured for
+the little Baron from the village on the hillside; but the woman had
+fretted, the child had pined, and had been given back to his mother
+to save his life; and ever since both had thriven perfectly under her
+sole care, so that there was very nearly joy in that room.
+
+Outside it, there was more bitterness than ever.  The grandmother had
+softened for a few moments at the birth of the children, with
+satisfaction at obtaining twice as much as she had hoped; but the
+frustration of her vengeance upon Kasimir of Adlerstein Wildschloss
+had renewed all her hatred, and she had no scruple in abusing "the
+burgher-woman" to the whole household for her artful desire to
+captivate another nobleman.  She, no doubt, expected that degenerate
+fool of a Wildschlosser to come wooing after her; "if he did he
+should meet his deserts."  It was the favourite reproach whenever she
+chose to vent her fury on the mute, blushing, weeping young widow,
+whose glance at her babies was her only appeal against the cruel
+accusation.
+
+On Midsummer eve, Heinz the Schneiderlein, who had all day been
+taking toll from the various attendants at the Friedmund Wake, came
+up and knocked at the door.  He had a bundle over his shoulder and a
+bag in his hand, which last he offered to her.
+
+"The toll!  It is for the Lady Baroness."
+
+"You are my Lady Baroness.  I levy toll for this my young lord."
+
+"Take it to her, good Heinz, she must have the charge, and needless
+strife I will not breed."
+
+The angry notes of Dame Kunigunde came up:  "How now, knave
+Schneiderlein!  Come down with the toll instantly.  It shall not be
+tampered with!  Down, I say, thou thief of a tailor."
+
+"Go; prithee go, vex her not," entreated Christina.
+
+"Coming, lady!" shouted Heinz, and, disregarding all further
+objurgations from beneath, he proceeded to deposit his bundle, and
+explain that it had been entrusted to him by a pedlar from Ulm, who
+would likewise take charge of anything she might have to send in
+return, and he then ran down just in time to prevent a domiciliary
+visit from the old lady.
+
+From Ulm!  The very sound was joy; and Christina with trembling hands
+unfastened the cords and stitches that secured the canvas covering,
+within which lay folds on folds of linen, and in the midst a rich
+silver goblet, long ago brought by her father from Italy, a few of
+her own possessions, and a letter from her uncle secured with black
+floss silk, with a black seal.
+
+She kissed it with transport, but the contents were somewhat chilling
+by their grave formality.  The opening address to the "honour-worthy
+Lady Baroness and love-worthy niece," conveyed to her a doubt on good
+Master Gottfried's part whether she were still truly worthy of love
+or honour.  The slaughter at Jacob Muller's had been already known to
+him, and he expressed himself as relieved, but greatly amazed, at the
+information he had received from the Baron of Adlerstein Wildschloss,
+who had visited him at Ulm, after having verified what had been
+alleged at Schloss Adlerstein by application to the friar at
+Offingen.
+
+Freiherr von Adlerstein Wildschloss had further requested him to make
+known that, feud-briefs having regularly passed between Schlangenwald
+and Adlerstein, and the two Barons not having been within the peace
+of the empire, no justice could be exacted for their deaths; yet, in
+consideration of the tender age of the present heirs, the question of
+forfeiture or submission should be waived till they could act for
+themselves, and Schlangenwald should be withheld from injuring them
+so long as no molestation was offered to travellers.  It was plain
+that Sir Kasimir had well and generously done his best to protect the
+helpless twins, and he sent respectful but cordial greetings to their
+mother.  These however were far less heeded by her than the coldness
+of her uncle's letter.  She had drifted beyond the reckoning of her
+kindred, and they were sending her her property and bridal linen, as
+if they had done with her, and had lost their child in the robber-
+baron's wife.  Yet at the end there was a touch of old times in
+offering a blessing, should she still value it, and the hopes that
+heaven and the saints would comfort her; "for surely, thou poor
+child, thou must have suffered much, and, if thou wiliest still to
+write to thy city kin, thine aunt would rejoice to hear that thou and
+thy babes were in good health."
+
+Precise grammarian and scribe as was Uncle Gottfried, the lapse from
+the formal Sie to the familiar Du went to his niece's heart.
+Whenever her little ones left her any leisure, she spent this her
+first wedding-day in writing so earnest and loving a letter as, in
+spite of mediaeval formality, must assure the good burgomaster that,
+except in having suffered much and loved much, his little Christina
+was not changed since she had left him.
+
+No answer could be looked for till another wake-day; but, when it
+came, it was full and loving, and therewith were sent a few more of
+her favourite books, a girdle, and a richly-scented pair of gloves,
+together with two ivory boxes of comfits, and two little purple silk,
+gold-edged, straight, narrow garments and tight round brimless lace
+caps, for the two little Barons.  Nor did henceforth a wake-day pass
+by without bringing some such token, not only delightful as
+gratifying Christina's affection by the kindness that suggested them,
+but supplying absolute wants in the dire stress of poverty at Schloss
+Adlerstein.
+
+Christina durst not tell her mother-in-law of the terms on which they
+were unmolested, trusting to the scantiness of the retinue, and to
+her own influence with the Schneiderlein to hinder any serious
+violence.  Indeed, while the Count of Schlangenwald was in the
+neighbourhood, his followers took care to secure all that could be
+captured at the Debateable Ford, and the broken forces of Adlerstein
+would have been insane had they attempted to contend with such
+superior numbers.  That the castle remained unattacked was attributed
+by the elder Baroness to its own merits; nor did Christina undeceive
+her.  They had no intercourse with the outer world, except that once
+a pursuivant arrived with a formal intimation from their kinsman, the
+Baron of Adlerstein Wildschloss, of his marriage with the noble
+Fraulein, Countess Valeska von Trautbach, and a present of a gay
+dagger for each of his godsons.  Frau Kunigunde triumphed a good deal
+over the notion of Christina's supposed disappointment; but the
+tidings were most welcome to the younger lady, who trusted they would
+put an end to all future taunts about Wildschloss.  Alas! the handle
+for abuse was too valuable to be relinquished.
+
+The last silver cup the castle had possessed had to be given as a
+reward to the pursuivant, and mayhap Frau Kunigunde reckoned this as
+another offence of her daughter-in-law, since, had Sir Kasimir been
+safe in the oubliette, the twins might have shared his broad lands on
+the Danube, instead of contributing to the fees of his pursuivant.
+The cup could indeed be ill spared.  The cattle and swine, the dues
+of the serfs, and the yearly toll at the wake were the sole resources
+of the household; and though there was no lack of meat, milk, and
+black bread, sufficient garments could scarce be come by, with all
+the spinning of the household, woven by the village webster, of whose
+time the baronial household, by prescriptive right, owned the lion's
+share.
+
+These matters little troubled the two beings in whom Christina's
+heart was wrapped up.  Though running about barefooted and
+bareheaded, they were healthy, handsome, straight-limbed, noble-
+looking creatures, so exactly alike, and so inseparable, that no one
+except herself could tell one from the other save by the medal of Our
+Lady worn by the elder, and the little cross carved by the mother for
+the younger; indeed, at one time, the urchins themselves would feel
+for cross or medal, ere naming themselves "Ebbo," or "Friedel."  They
+were tall for their age, but with the slender make of their foreign
+ancestry; and, though their fair rosy complexions were brightened by
+mountain mists and winds, their rapidly darkening hair, and large
+liquid brown eyes, told of their Italian blood.  Their grandmother
+looked on their colouring as a taint, and Christina herself had hoped
+to see their father's simple, kindly blue eyes revive in his boys;
+but she could hardly have desired anything different from the
+dancing, kindling, or earnest glances that used to flash from under
+their long black lashes when they were nestling in her lap, or
+playing by her knee, making music with their prattle, or listening to
+her answers with faces alive with intelligence.  They scarcely left
+her time for sorrow or regret.
+
+They were never quarrelsome.  Either from the influence of her
+gentleness, or from their absolute union, they could do and enjoy
+nothing apart, and would as soon have thought of their right and left
+hands falling out as of Ebbo and Friedel disputing.  Ebbo however was
+always the right hand.  THE Freiherr, as he had been called from the
+first, had, from the time he could sit at the table at all, been put
+into the baronial chair with the eagle carved at the back; every
+member of the household, from his grandmother downwards, placed him
+foremost, and Friedel followed their example, at the less loss to
+himself, as his hand was always in Ebbo's, and all their doings were
+in common.  Sometimes however the mother doubted whether there would
+have been this perfect absence of all contest had the medal of the
+firstborn chanced to hang round Friedmund's neck instead of
+Eberhard's.  At first they were entirely left to her.  Their
+grandmother heeded them little as long as they were healthy, and
+evidently regarded them more as heirs of Adlerstein than as
+grandchildren; but, as they grew older, she showed anxiety lest their
+mother should interfere with the fierce, lawless spirit proper to
+their line.
+
+One winter day, when they were nearly six years old, Christina,
+spinning at her window, had been watching them snowballing in the
+castle court, smiling and applauding every large handful held up to
+her, every laughing combat, every well-aimed hit, as the hardy little
+fellows scattered the snow in showers round them, raising their merry
+fur-capped faces to the bright eyes that "rained influence and judged
+the prize."
+
+By and by they stood still; Ebbo--she knew him by the tossed head and
+commanding air--was proposing what Friedel seemed to disapprove; but,
+after a short discussion, Ebbo flung away from him, and went towards
+a shed where was kept a wolf-cub, recently presented to the young
+Barons by old Ulrich's son.  The whelp was so young as to be quite
+harmless, but it was far from amiable; Friedel never willingly
+approached it, and the snarling and whining replies to all advances
+had begun to weary and irritate Ebbo.  He dragged it out by its
+chain, and, tethering it to a post, made it a mark for his snowballs,
+which, kneaded hard, and delivered with hearty good-will by his
+sturdy arms, made the poor little beast yelp with pain and terror,
+till the more tender-hearted Friedel threw himself on his brother to
+withhold him, while Matz stood by laughing and applauding the Baron.
+Seeing Ebbo shake Friedel off with unusual petulance, and pitying the
+tormented animal, Christina flung a cloak round her head and hastened
+down stairs, entering the court just as the terrified whelp had made
+a snap at the boy, which was returned by angry, vindictive pelting,
+not merely with snow, but with stones.  Friedel sprang to her crying,
+and her call to Ebbo made him turn, though with fury in his face,
+shouting, "He would bite me! the evil beast!"
+
+"Come with me, Ebbo," she said.
+
+"He shall suffer for it, the spiteful, ungrateful brute!  Let me
+alone, mother!" cried Ebbo, stamping on the snow, but still from
+habit yielding to her hand on his shoulder.
+
+"What now?" demanded the old Baroness, appearing on the scene.  "Who
+is thwarting the Baron?"
+
+"She; she will not let me deal with yonder savage whelp," cried the
+boy.
+
+"She!  Take thy way, child," said the old lady.  "Visit him well for
+his malice.  None shall withstand thee here.  At thy peril!" she
+added, turning on Christina.  "What, art not content to have brought
+base mechanical blood into a noble house?  Wouldst make slaves and
+cowards of its sons?"
+
+"I would teach them true courage, not cruelty," she tried to say.
+
+"What should such as thou know of courage?  Look here, girl:  another
+word to daunt the spirit of my grandsons, and I'll have thee scourged
+down the mountain-side!  On!  At him, Ebbo!  That's my gallant young
+knight!  Out of the way, girl, with thy whining looks!  What,
+Friedel, be a man, and aid thy brother!  Has she made thee a puling
+woman already?"  And Kunigunde laid an ungentle grasp upon Friedmund,
+who was clinging to his mother, hiding his face in her gown.  He
+struggled against the clutch, and would not look up or be detached.
+
+"Fie, poor little coward!" taunted the old lady; "never heed him,
+Ebbo, my brave Baron!"
+
+Cut to the heart, Christina took refuge in her room, and gathered her
+Friedel to her bosom, as he sobbed out, "Oh, mother, the poor little
+wolf!  Oh, mother, are you weeping too?  The grandmother should not
+so speak to the sweetest, dearest motherling," he added, throwing his
+arms round her neck.
+
+"Alas, Friedel, that Ebbo should learn that it is brave to hurt the
+weak!"
+
+"It is not like Walther of Vogelwiede," said Friedel, whose mind had
+been much impressed by the Minnesinger's bequest to the birds.
+
+"Nor like any true Christian knight.  Alas, my poor boys, must you be
+taught foul cruelty and I too weak and cowardly to save you?"
+
+"That never will be," said Friedel, lifting his head from her
+shoulder.  "Hark! what a howl was that!"
+
+"Listen not, dear child; it does but pain thee."
+
+"But Ebbo is not shouting.  Oh, mother, he is vexed--he is hurt!"
+cried Friedel, springing from her lap; but, ere either could reach
+the window, Ebbo had vanished from the scene.  They only saw the
+young wolf stretched dead on the snow, and the same moment in burst
+Ebbo, and flung himself on the floor in a passion of weeping.
+Stimulated by the applause of his grandmother and of Matz, he had
+furiously pelted the poor animal with all missiles that came to hand,
+till a blow, either from him or Matz, had produced such a howl and
+struggle of agony, and then such terrible stillness, as had gone to
+the young Baron's very heart, a heart as soft as that of his father
+had been by nature.  Indeed, his sobs were so piteous that his mother
+was relieved to hear only, "The wolf! the poor wolf!" and to find
+that he himself was unhurt; and she was scarcely satisfied of this
+when Dame Kunigunde came up also alarmed, and thus turned his grief
+to wrath.  "As if I would cry in that way for a bite!" he said.  "Go,
+grandame; you made me do it, the poor beast!" with a fresh sob.
+
+"Ulrich shall get thee another cub, my child."
+
+"No, no; I never will have another cub!  Why did you let me kill it?"
+
+"For shame, Ebbo!  Weep for a spiteful brute!  That's no better than
+thy mother or Friedel."
+
+"I love my mother!  I love Friedel!  They would have withheld me.
+Go, go; I hate you!"
+
+"Peace, peace, Ebbo," exclaimed his mother; "you know not what you
+say.  Ask your grandmother's pardon."
+
+"Peace, thou fool!" screamed the old lady.  "The Baron speaks as he
+will in his own castle.  He is not to be checked here, and thwarted
+there, and taught to mince his words like a cap-in-hand pedlar.
+Pardon!  When did an Adlerstein seek pardon?  Come with me, my Baron;
+I have still some honey-cakes."
+
+"Not I," replied Ebbo; "honey-cakes will not cure the wolf whelp.
+Go:  I want my mother and Friedel."
+
+Alone with them his pride and passion were gone; but alas! what
+augury for the future of her boys was left with the mother!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X:  THE EAGLE'S PREY
+
+
+
+"It fell about the Lammas tide,
+When moor men win their hay,"
+
+that all the serfs of Adlerstein were collected to collect their
+lady's hay to be stored for the winter's fodder of the goats, and of
+poor Sir Eberhard's old white mare, the only steed as yet ridden by
+the young Barons.
+
+The boys were fourteen years old.  So monotonous was their mother's
+life that it was chiefly their growth that marked the length of her
+residence in the castle.  Otherwise there had been no change, except
+that the elder Baroness was more feeble in her limbs, and still more
+irritable and excitable in temper.  There were no events, save a few
+hunting adventures of the boys, or the yearly correspondence with
+Ulm; and the same life continued, of shrinking in dread from the old
+lady's tyrannous dislike, and of the constant endeavour to infuse
+better principles into the boys, without the open opposition for
+which there was neither power nor strength.
+
+The boys' love was entirely given to their mother.  Far from
+diminishing with their dependence on her, it increased with the sense
+of protection; and, now that they were taller than herself, she
+seemed to be cherished by them more than ever.  Moreover, she was
+their oracle.  Quick-witted and active-minded, loving books the more
+because their grandmother thought signing a feud-letter the utmost
+literary effort becoming to a noble, they never rested till they had
+acquired all that their mother could teach them; or, rather, they
+then became more restless than ever.  Long ago had her whole store of
+tales and ballads become so familiar, by repetition, that the boys
+could correct her in the smallest variation; reading and writing were
+mastered as for pleasure; and the Nuremberg Chronicle, with its
+wonderful woodcuts, excited such a passion of curiosity that they
+must needs conquer its Latin and read it for themselves.  This World
+History, with Alexander and the Nine Worthies, the cities and
+landscapes, and the oft-repeated portraits, was Eberhard's study; but
+Friedmund continued--constant to Walther of Vogelweide.  Eberhard
+cared for no character in the Vulgate so much as for Judas the
+Maccabee; but Friedmund's heart was all for King David; and to both
+lads, shut up from companionship as they were, every acquaintance in
+their books was a living being whose like they fancied might be met
+beyond their mountain.  And, when they should go forth, like Dietrich
+of Berne, in search of adventures, doughty deeds were chiefly to fall
+to the lot of Ebbo's lance; while Friedel was to be their
+Minnesinger; and indeed certain verses, that he had murmured in his
+brother's ear, had left no doubt in Ebbo's mind that the exploits
+would be worthily sung.
+
+The soft dreamy eye was becoming Friedel's characteristic, as fire
+and keenness distinguished his brother's glance.  When at rest, the
+twins could be known apart by their expression, though in all other
+respects they were as alike as ever; and let Ebbo look thoughtful or
+Friedel eager and they were again undistinguishable; and indeed they
+were constantly changing looks.  Had not Friedel been beside him,
+Ebbo would have been deemed a wondrous student for his years; had not
+Ebbo been the standard of comparison, Friedel would have been in high
+repute for spirit and enterprise and skill as a cragsman, with the
+crossbow, and in all feats of arms that the Schneiderlein could
+impart.  They shared all occupations; and it was by the merest shade
+that Ebbo excelled with the weapon, and Friedel with the book or
+tool.  For the artist nature was in them, not intentionally excited
+by their mother, but far too strong to be easily discouraged.  They
+had long daily gazed at Ulm in the distance, hoping to behold the
+spire completed; and the illustrations in their mother's books
+excited a strong desire to imitate them.  The floor had often been
+covered with charcoal outlines even before Christina was persuaded to
+impart the rules she had learnt from her uncle; and her carving-tools
+were soon seized upon.  At first they were used only upon knobs of
+sticks; but one day when the boys, roaming on the mountain, had lost
+their way, and coming to the convent had been there hospitably
+welcomed by Father Norbert, they came home wild to make carvings like
+what they had seen in the chapel.  Jobst the Kohler was continually
+importuned for soft wood; the fair was ransacked for knives; and even
+the old Baroness could not find great fault with the occupation, base
+and mechanical though it were, which disposed of the two restless
+spirits during the many hours when winter storms confined them to the
+castle.  Rude as was their work, the constant observation and choice
+of subjects were an unsuspected training and softening.  It was not
+in vain that they lived in the glorious mountain fastness, and saw
+the sun descend in his majesty, dyeing the masses of rock with purple
+and crimson; not in vain that they beheld peak and ravine clothed in
+purest snow, flushed with rosy light at morn and eve, or contrasted
+with the purple blue of the sky; or that they stood marvelling at ice
+caverns with gigantic crystal pendants shining with the most magical
+pure depths of sapphire and emerald, "as if," said Friedel, "winter
+kept in his service all the jewel-forging dwarfs of the motherling's
+tales." And, when the snow melted and the buds returned, the ivy
+spray, the smiling saxifrage, the purple gentian bell, the feathery
+rowan leaf, the symmetrical lady's mantle, were hailed and loved
+first as models, then for themselves.
+
+One regret their mother had, almost amounting to shame.  Every
+virtuous person believed in the efficacy of the rod, and, maugre her
+own docility, she had been chastised with it almost as a religious
+duty; but her sons had never felt the weight of a blow, except once
+when their grandmother caught them carving a border of eagles and
+doves round the hall table, and then Ebbo had returned the blow with
+all his might.  As to herself, if she ever worked herself up to
+attempt chastisement, the Baroness was sure to fall upon her for
+insulting the noble birth of her sons, and thus gave them a triumph
+far worse for them than impunity.  In truth, the boys had their own
+way, or rather the Baron had his way, and his way was Baron
+Friedmund's.  Poor, bare, and scanty as were all the surroundings of
+their life, everything was done to feed their arrogance, with only
+one influence to counteract their education in pride and violence--a
+mother's influence, indeed, but her authority was studiously taken
+from her, and her position set at naught, with no power save what she
+might derive from their love and involuntary honour, and the sight of
+the pain caused her by their wrong-doings.
+
+And so the summer's hay-harvest was come.  Peasants clambered into
+the green nooks between the rocks to cut down with hook or knife the
+flowery grass, for there was no space for the sweep of a scythe.  The
+best crop was on the bank of the Braunwasser, by the Debateable Ford,
+but this was cut and carried on the backs of the serfs, much earlier
+than the mountain grass, and never without much vigilance against the
+Schlangenwaldern; but this year the Count was absent at his Styrian
+castle, and little had been seen or heard of his people.
+
+The full muster of serfs appeared, for Frau Kunigunde admitted of no
+excuses, and the sole absentee was a widow who lived on the ledge of
+the mountain next above that on which the castle stood.  Her son
+reported her to be very ill, and with tears in his eyes entreated
+Baron Friedel to obtain leave for him to return to her, since she was
+quite alone in her solitary hut, with no one even to give her a drink
+of water.  Friedel rushed with the entreaty to his grandmother, but
+she laughed it to scorn.  Lazy Koppel only wanted an excuse, or, if
+not, the woman was old and useless, and men could not be spared.
+
+"Ah! good grandame," said Friedel, "his father died with ours."
+
+"The more honour for him!  The more he is bound to work for us.  Off,
+junker, make no loiterers."
+
+Grieved and discomfited, Friedel betook himself to his mother and
+brother.
+
+"Foolish lad not to have come to me!" said the young Baron.  "Where
+is he?  I'll send him at once."
+
+But Christina interposed an offer to go and take Koppel's place
+beside his mother, and her skill was so much prized over all the
+mountain-side, that the alternative was gratefully accepted, and she
+was escorted up the steep path by her two boys to the hovel, where
+she spent the day in attendance on the sick woman.
+
+Evening came on, the patient was better, but Koppel did not return,
+nor did the young Barons come to fetch their mother home.  The last
+sunbeams were dying off the mountain-tops, and, beginning to suspect
+something amiss, she at length set off, and half way down met Koppel,
+who replied to her question, "Ah, then, the gracious lady has not
+heard of our luck.  Excellent booty, and two prisoners!  The young
+Baron has been a hero indeed, and has won himself a knightly steed."
+And, on her further interrogation, he added, that an unusually rich
+but small company had been reported by Jobst the Kohler to be on the
+way to the ford, where he had skilfully prepared a stumbling-block.
+The gracious Baroness had caused Hatto to jodel all the hay-makers
+together, and they had fallen on the travellers by the straight path
+down the crag.  "Ach! did not the young Baron spring like a young
+gemsbock?  And in midstream down came their pack-horses and their
+wares!  Some of them took to flight, but, pfui, there were enough for
+my young lord to show his mettle upon.  Such a prize the saints have
+not sent since the old Baron's time."
+
+Christina pursued her walk in dismay at this new beginning of
+freebooting in its worst form, overthrowing all her hopes.  The best
+thing that could happen would be the immediate interference of the
+Swabian League, while her sons were too young to be personally held
+guilty.  Yet this might involve ruin and confiscation; and, apart
+from all consequences, she bitterly grieved that the stain of robbery
+should have fallen on her hitherto innocent sons.
+
+Every peasant she met greeted her with praises of their young lord,
+and, when she mounted the hall-steps, she found the floor strewn with
+bales of goods.
+
+"Mother," cried Ebbo, flying up to her, "have you heard?  I have a
+horse! a spirited bay, a knightly charger, and Friedel is to ride him
+by turns with me.  Where is Friedel?  And, mother, Heinz said I
+struck as good a stroke as any of them, and I have a sword for
+Friedel now.  Why does he not come?  And, motherling, this is for
+you, a gown of velvet, a real black velvet, that will make you fairer
+than our Lady at the Convent.  Come to the window and see it, mother
+dear."
+
+The boy was so joyously excited that she could hardly withstand his
+delight, but she did not move.
+
+"Don't you like the velvet?" he continued.  "We always said that, the
+first prize we won, the motherling should wear velvet.  Do but look
+at it."
+
+"Woe is me, my Ebbo!" she sighed, bending to kiss his brow.
+
+He understood her at once, coloured, and spoke hastily and in
+defiance.  "It was in the river, mother, the horses fell; it is our
+right."
+
+"Fairly, Ebbo?" she asked in a low voice.
+
+"Nay, mother, if Jobst DID hide a branch in midstream, it was no
+doing of mine; and the horses fell.  The Schlangenwaldern don't even
+wait to let them fall.  We cannot live, if we are to be so nice and
+dainty."
+
+"Ah! my son, I thought not to hear you call mercy and honesty mere
+niceness."
+
+"What do I hear?" exclaimed Frau Kunigunde, entering from the
+storeroom, where she had been disposing of some spices, a much
+esteemed commodity.  "Are you chiding and daunting this boy, as you
+have done with the other?"
+
+"My mother may speak to me!" cried Ebbo, hotly, turning round.
+
+"And quench thy spirit with whining fooleries!  Take the Baron's
+bounty, woman, and vex him not after his first knightly exploit."
+
+"Heaven knows, and Ebbo knows," said the trembling Christina, "that,
+were it a knightly exploit, I were the first to exult."
+
+"Thou! thou craftsman's girl! dost presume to call in question the
+knightly deeds of a noble house!  There!" cried the furious Baroness,
+striking her face.  Now! dare to be insolent again."  Her hand was
+uplifted for another blow, when it was grasped by Eberhard, and, the
+next moment, he likewise held the other hand, with youthful strength
+far exceeding hers.  She had often struck his mother before, but not
+in his presence, and the greatness of the shock seemed to make him
+cool and absolutely dignified.
+
+"Be still, grandame," he said.  "No, mother, I am not hurting her,"
+and indeed the surprise seemed to have taken away her rage and
+volubility, and unresistingly she allowed him to seat her in a chair.
+Still holding her arm, he made his clear boyish voice resound through
+the hall, saying, "Retainers all, know that, as I am your lord and
+master, so is my honoured mother lady of the castle, and she is never
+to be gainsay'ed, let her say or do what she will."
+
+"You are right, Herr Freiherr," said Heinz.  "The Frau Christina is
+our gracious and beloved dame.  Long live the Freiherrinn Christina!"
+And the voices of almost all the serfs present mingled in the cry.
+
+"And hear you all," continued Eberhard, "she shall rule all, and
+never be trampled on more.  Grandame, you understand?"
+
+The old woman seemed confounded, and cowered in her chair without
+speaking.  Christina, almost dismayed by this silence, would have
+suggested to Ebbo to say something kind or consoling; but at that
+moment she was struck with alarm by his renewed inquiry for his
+brother.
+
+"Friedel!  Was not he with thee?"
+
+"No; I never saw him!"
+
+Ebbo flew up the stairs, and shouted for his brother; then, coming
+down, gave orders for the men to go out on the mountain-side, and
+search and jodel.  He was hurrying with them, but his mother caught
+his arm.  "O Ebbo, how can I let you go?  It is dark, and the crags
+are so perilous!"
+
+"Mother, I cannot stay!" and the boy flung his arms round her neck,
+and whispered in her ear, "Friedel said it would be a treacherous
+attack, and I called him a craven.  Oh, mother, we never parted thus
+before!  He went up the hillside.  Oh, where is he?"
+
+Infected by the boy's despairing voice, yet relieved that Friedel at
+least had withstood the temptation, Christina still held Ebbo's hand,
+and descended the steps with him.  The clear blue sky was fast
+showing the stars, and into the evening stillness echoed the loud
+wide jodeln, cast back from the other side of the ravine.  Ebbo tried
+to raise his voice, but broke down in the shout, and, choked with
+agitation, said, "Let me go, mother.  None know his haunts as I do!"
+
+"Hark!" she said, only grasping him tighter.
+
+Thinner, shriller, clearer came a far-away cry from the heights, and
+Ebbo thrilled from head to foot, then sent up another pealing
+mountain shout, responded to by a jodel so pitched as to be plainly
+not an echo.  "Towards the Red Eyrie," said Hans.
+
+"He will have been to the Ptarmigan's Pool," said Ebbo, sending up
+his voice again, in hopes that the answer would sound less distant;
+but, instead of this, its intonations conveyed, to these adepts in
+mountain language, that Friedel stood in need of help.
+
+"Depend upon it," said the startled Ebbo, "that he has got up amongst
+those rocks where the dead chamois rolled down last summer; then, as
+Christina uttered a faint cry of terror, Heinz added, "Fear not,
+lady, those are not the jodeln of one who has met with a hurt.  Baron
+Friedel has the sense to be patient rather than risk his bones if he
+cannot move safely in the dark."
+
+"Up after him!" said Ebbo, emitting a variety of shouts intimating
+speedy aid, and receiving a halloo in reply that reassured even his
+mother.  Equipped with a rope and sundry torches of pinewood, Heinz
+and two of the serfs were speedily ready, and Christina implored her
+son to let her come so far as where she should not impede the others.
+He gave her his arm, and Heinz held his torch so as to guide her up a
+winding path, not in itself very steep, but which she could never
+have climbed had daylight shown her what it overhung.  Guided by the
+constant exchange of jodeln, they reached a height where the wind
+blew cold and wild, and Ebbo pointed to an intensely black shadow
+overhung by a peak rising like the gable of a house into the sky.
+"Yonder lies the tarn," he said.  "Don't stir.  This way lies the
+cliff.  Fried-mund!" exchanging the jodel for the name.
+
+"Here!--this way!  Under the Red Eyrie," called back the wanderer;
+and steering their course round the rocks above the pool, the
+rescuers made their way towards the base of the peak, which was in
+fact the summit of the mountain, the top of the Eagle's Ladder, the
+highest step of which they had attained.  The peak towered over them,
+and beneath, the castle lights seemed as if it would be easy to let a
+stone fall straight down on them.
+
+Friedel's cry seemed to come from under their feet.  "I am here!  I
+am safe; only it grew so dark that I durst not climb up or down."
+
+The Schneiderlein explained that he would lower down a rope, which,
+when fastened round Friedel's waist, would enable him to climb safely
+up; and, after a breathless space, the torchlight shone upon the
+longed-for face, and Friedel springing on the path, cried, "The
+mother!--and here!" -
+
+"Oh, Friedel, where have you been?  What is this in your arms?"
+
+He showed them the innocent face of a little white kid.
+
+"Whence is it, Friedel?"
+
+He pointed to the peak, saying, "I was lying on my back by the tarn,
+when my lady eagle came sailing overhead, so low that I could see
+this poor little thing, and hear it bleat."
+
+"Thou hast been to the Eyrie--the inaccessible Eyrie!" exclaimed
+Ebbo, in amazement.
+
+"That's a mistake.  It is not hard after the first" said Friedel.  "I
+only waited to watch the old birds out again."
+
+"Robbed the eagles!  And the young ones?"
+
+"Well," said Friedmund, as if half ashamed, "they were twin eaglets,
+and their mother had left them, and I felt as though I could not harm
+them; so I only bore off their provisions, and stuck some feathers in
+my cap.  But by that time the sun was down, and soon I could not see
+my footing; and, when I found that I had missed the path, I thought I
+had best nestle in the nook where I was, and wait for day.  I grieved
+for my mother's fear; but oh, to see her here!"
+
+"Ah, Friedel! didst do it to prove my words false?" interposed Ebbo,
+eagerly.
+
+"What words?"
+
+"Thou knowest.  Make me not speak them again."
+
+"Oh, those!" said Friedel, only now recalling them.  "No, verily;
+they were but a moment's anger.  I wanted to save the kid.  I think
+it is old mother Rika's white kid.  But oh, motherling!  I grieve to
+have thus frightened you."
+
+Not a single word passed between them upon Ebbo's exploits.  Whether
+Friedel had seen all from the heights, or whether he intuitively
+perceived that his brother preferred silence, he held his peace, and
+both were solely occupied in assisting their mother down the pass,
+the difficulties of which were far more felt now than in the
+excitement of the ascent; only when they were near home, and the boys
+were walking in the darkness with arms round one another's necks,
+Christina heard Friedel say low and rather sadly, "I think I shall be
+a priest, Ebbo."
+
+To which Ebbo only answered, "Pfui!'
+
+Christina understood that Friedel meant that robbery must be a
+severance between the brothers.  Alas! had the moment come when their
+paths must diverge?  Could Ebbo's step not be redeemed?
+
+Ursel reported that Dame Kunigunde had scarcely spoken again, but had
+retired, like one stunned, into her bed.  Friedel was half asleep
+after the exertions of the day; but Ebbo did not speak, and both soon
+betook themselves to their little turret chamber within their
+mother's.
+
+Christina prayed long that night, her heart full of dread of the
+consequence of this transgression.  Rumours of freebooting castles
+destroyed by the Swabian League had reached her every wake day, and,
+if this outrage were once known, the sufferance that left Adlerstein
+unmolested must be over.  There was hope indeed in the weakness and
+uncertainty of the Government; but present safety would in reality be
+the ruin of Ebbo, since he would be encouraged to persist in the
+career of violence now unhappily begun.  She knew not what to ask,
+save that her sons might be shielded from evil, and might fulfil that
+promise of her dream, the star in heaven, the light on earth.  And
+for the present!--the good God guide her and her sons through the
+difficult morrow, and turn the heart of the unhappy old woman below!
+
+When, exhausted with weeping and watching, she rose from her knees,
+she stole softly into her sons' turret for a last look at them.
+Generally they were so much alike in their sleep that even she was at
+fault between them; but that night there was no doubt.  Friedel, pale
+after the day's hunger and fatigue, slept with relaxed features in
+the most complete calm; but though Ebbo's eyes were closed, there was
+no repose in his face--his hair was tossed, his colour flushed, his
+brow contracted, the arm flung across his brother had none of the
+ease of sleep.  She doubted whether he were not awake; but, knowing
+that he would not brook any endeavour to force confidence he did not
+offer, she merely hung over them both, murmured a prayer and
+blessing, and left them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI:  THE CHOICE IN LIFE
+
+
+
+"Friedel, wake!"
+
+"Is it day?" said Friedel, slowly wakening, and crossing himself as
+he opened his eyes.  "Surely the sun is not up--?"
+
+"We must be before the sun!" said Ebbo, who was on his feet,
+beginning to dress himself.  "Hush, and come!  Do not wake the
+mother.  It must be ere she or aught else be astir!  Thy prayers--I
+tell thee this is a work as good as prayer."
+
+Half awake, and entirely bewildered, Friedel dipped his finger in the
+pearl mussel shell of holy water over their bed, and crossed his own
+brow and his brother's; then, carrying their shoes, they crossed
+their mother's chamber, and crept down stairs.  Ebbo muttered to his
+brother, "Stand thou still there, and pray the saints to keep her
+asleep;" and then, with bare feet, moved noiselessly behind the
+wooden partition that shut off his grandmother's box-bedstead from
+the rest of the hall.  She lay asleep with open mouth, snoring
+loudly, and on her pillow lay the bunch of castle keys, that was
+always carried to her at night.  It was a moment of peril when Ebbo
+touched it; but he had nerved himself to be both steady and
+dexterous, and he secured it without a jingle, and then, without
+entering the hall, descended into a passage lit by a rough opening
+cut in the rock.  Friedel, who began to comprehend, followed him
+close and joyfully, and at the first door he fitted in, and with some
+difficulty turned, a key, and pushed open the door of a vault, where
+morning light, streaming through the grated window, showed two
+captives, who had started to their feet, and now stood regarding the
+pair in the doorway as if they thought their dreams were multiplying
+the young Baron who had led the attack.
+
+"Signori--" began the principal of the two; but Ebbo spoke.
+
+"Sir, you have been brought here by a mistake in the absence of my
+mother, the lady of the castle.  If you will follow me, I will
+restore all that is within my reach, and put you on your way."
+
+The merchant's knowledge of German was small, but the purport of the
+words was plain, and he gladly left the damp, chilly vault.  Ebbo
+pointed to the bales that strewed the hall.  "Take all that can be
+carried," he said.  "Here is your sword, and your purse," he said,
+for these had been given to him in the moment of victory.  "I will
+bring out your horse and lead you to the pass."
+
+"Give him food," whispered Friedel; but the merchant was too anxious
+to have any appetite.  Only he faltered in broken German a proposal
+to pay his respects to the Signora Castellana, to whom he owed so
+much.
+
+"No!  Dormit in lecto," said Ebbo, with a sudden inspiration caught
+from the Latinized sound of some of the Italian words, but colouring
+desperately as he spoke.
+
+The Latin proved most serviceable, and the merchant understood that
+his property was restored, and made all speed to gather it together,
+and transport it to the stable.  One or two of his beasts of burden
+had been lost in the fray, and there were more packages than could
+well be carried by the merchant, his servant, and his horse.  Ebbo
+gave the aid of the old white mare--now very white indeed--and in
+truth the boys pitied the merchant's fine young bay for being put to
+base trading uses, and were rather shocked to hear that it had been
+taken in payment for a knight's branched velvet gown, and would be
+sold again at Ulm.
+
+"What a poor coxcomb of a knight!" said they to one another, as they
+patted the creature's neck with such fervent admiration that the
+merchant longed to present it to them, when he saw that the old white
+mare was the sole steed they possessed, and watched their tender
+guidance both of her and of the bay up the rocky path so familiar to
+them.
+
+"But ah, signorini miei, I am an infelice infelicissimo, ever
+persecuted by le Fate."
+
+"By whom?  A count like Schlangenwald?" asked Ebbo.
+
+"Das Schicksal," whispered Friedel.
+
+"Three long miserable years did I spend as a captive among the Moors,
+having lost all, my ships and all I had, and being forced to row
+their galleys, gli scomunicati."
+
+"Galleys!" exclaimed Ebbo; "there are some pictured in our World
+History before Carthage.  Would that I could see one!"
+
+"The signorino would soon have seen his fill, were he between the
+decks, chained to the bench for weeks together, without ceasing to
+row for twenty-four hours together, with a renegade standing over to
+lash us, or to put a morsel into our mouths if we were fainting."
+
+"The dogs!  Do they thus use Christian men?" cried Friedel.
+
+"Si, si--ja wohl.  There were a good fourscore of us, and among them
+a Tedesco, a good man and true, from whom I learnt la lingua loro."
+
+"Our tongue!--from whom?" asked one twin of the other.
+
+"A Tedesco, a fellow-countryman of sue eccellenze."
+
+"Deutscher!" cried both boys, turning in horror, "our Germans so
+treated by the pagan villains?"
+
+"Yea, truly, signorini miei.  This fellow-captive of mine was a
+cavaliere in his own land, but he had been betrayed and sold by his
+enemies, and he mourned piteously for la sposa sua--his bride, as
+they say here.  A goodly man and a tall, piteously cramped in the
+narrow deck, I grieved to leave him there when the good confraternita
+at Genoa paid my ransom.  Having learnt to speak il Tedesco, and
+being no longer able to fit out a vessel, I made my venture beyond
+the Alps; but, alas! till this moment fortune has still been adverse.
+My mules died of the toil of crossing the mountains; and, when with
+reduced baggage I came to the river beneath there--when my horses
+fell and my servants fled, and the peasants came down with their
+hayforks--I thought myself in hands no better than those of the Moors
+themselves."
+
+"It was wrongly done," said Ebbo, in an honest, open tone, though
+blushing.  "I have indeed a right to what may be stranded on the
+bank, but never more shall foul means be employed for the overthrow."
+
+The boys had by this time led the traveller through the Gemsbock's
+Pass, within sight of the convent.  "There," said Ebbo, "will they
+give you harbourage, food, a guide, and a beast to carry the rest of
+your goods.  We are now upon convent land, and none will dare to
+touch your bales; so I will unload old Schimmel."
+
+"Ah, signorino, if I might offer any token of gratitude--"
+
+"Nay," said Ebbo, with boyish lordliness, "make me not a spoiler."
+
+"If the signorini should ever come to Genoa," continued the trader,
+"and would honour Gian Battista dei Battiste with a call, his whole
+house would be at their feet."
+
+"Thanks; I would that we could see strange lands!" said Ebbo.  "But
+come, Friedel, the sun is high, and I locked them all into the castle
+to make matters safe."
+
+"May the liberated captive know the name of his deliverers, that he
+may commend it to the saints?" asked the merchant.
+
+"I am Eberhard, Freiherr von Adlerstein, and this is Freiherr
+Friedmund, my brother.  Farewell, sir."
+
+"Strange," muttered the merchant, as he watched the two boys turn
+down the pass, "strange how like one barbarous name is to another.
+Eberardo!  That was what we called il Tedesco, and, when he once told
+me his family name, it ended in stino; but all these foreign names
+sound alike.  Let us speed on, lest these accursed peasants should
+wake, and be beyond the control of the signorino."
+
+"Ah!" sighed Ebbo, as soon as he had hurried out of reach of the
+temptation, "small use in being a baron if one is to be no better
+mounted!"
+
+"Thou art glad to have let that fair creature go free, though," said
+Friedel.
+
+"Nay, my mother's eyes would let me have no rest in keeping him.
+Otherwise--Talk not to me of gladness, Friedel!  Thou shouldst know
+better.  How is one to be a knight with nothing to ride but a beast
+old enough to be his grandmother?"
+
+"Knighthood of the heart may be content to go afoot," said Friedel.
+"Oh, Ebbo, what a brother thou art!  How happy the mother will be!"
+
+"Pfui, Friedel; what boots heart without spur?  I am sick of being
+mewed up here within these walls of rock!  No sport, not even with
+falling on a traveller.  I am worse off than ever were my
+forefathers!"
+
+"But how is it?  I cannot understand," asked Friedel.  "What has
+changed thy mind?"
+
+"Thou, and the mother, and, more than all, the grandame.  Listen,
+Friedel:  when thou camest up, in all the whirl of eagerness and glad
+preparation, with thy grave face and murmur that Jobst had put forked
+stakes in the stream, it was past man's endurance to be baulked of
+the fray.  Thou hast forgotten what I said to thee then, good
+Friedel?"
+
+"Long since.  No doubt I thrust in vexatiously."
+
+"Not so," said Ebbo; "and I saw thou hadst reason, for the stakes
+were most maliciously planted, with long branches hid by the current;
+but the fellows were showing fight, and I could not stay to think
+then, or I should have seemed to fear them!  I can tell you we made
+them run!  But I never meant the grandmother to put yon poor fellow
+in the dungeon, and use him worse than a dog.  I wot that he was my
+captive, and none of hers.  And then came the mother; and oh,
+Friedel, she looked as if I were slaying her when she saw the spoil;
+and, ere I had made her see right and reason, the old lady came
+swooping down in full malice and spite, and actually came to blows.
+She struck the motherling--struck her on the face, Friedel!"
+
+"I fear me it has so been before," said Friedel, sadly.
+
+"Never will it be so again," said Ebbo, standing still.  "I took the
+old hag by the hands, and told her she had ruled long enough!  My
+father's wife is as good a lady of the castle as my grandfather's,
+and I myself am lord thereof; and, since my Lady Kunigunde chooses to
+cross me and beat my mother about this capture, why she has seen the
+last of it, and may learn who is master, and who is mistress!"
+
+"Oh, Ebbo!  I would I had seen it!  But was not she outrageous?  Was
+not the mother shrinking and ready to give back all her claims at
+once?"
+
+"Perhaps she would have been, but just then she found thou wast not
+with me, and I found thou wast not with her, and we thought of nought
+else.  But thou must stand by me, Friedel, and help to keep the
+grandmother in her place, and the mother in hers."
+
+"If the mother WILL be kept," said Friedel.  "I fear me she will only
+plead to be left to the grandame's treatment, as before."
+
+"Never, Friedel!  I will never see her so used again.  I released
+this man solely to show that she is to rule here.--Yes, I know all
+about freebooting being a deadly sin, and moreover that it will bring
+the League about our ears; and it was a cowardly trick of Jobst to
+put those branches in the stream.  Did I not go over it last night
+till my brain was dizzy?  But still, it is but living and dying like
+our fathers, and I hate tameness or dullness, and it is like a fool
+to go back from what one has once begun."
+
+"No; it is like a brave man, when one has begun wrong," said Friedel.
+
+"But then I thought of the grandame triumphing over the gentle
+mother--and I know the mother wept over her beads half the night.
+She SHALL find she has had her own way for once this morning."
+
+Friedel was silent for a few moments, then said, "Let me tell thee
+what I saw yesterday, Ebbo."
+
+"So," answered the other brother.
+
+"I liked not to vex my mother by my tidings, so I climbed up to the
+tarn.  There is something always healing in that spot, is it not so,
+Ebbo?  When the grandmother has been raving" (hitherto Friedel's
+worst grievance) "it is like getting up nearer the quiet sky in the
+stillness there, when the sky seems to have come down into the deep
+blue water, and all is so still, so wondrous still and calm.  I
+wonder if, when we see the great Dome Kirk itself, it will give one's
+spirit wings, as does the gazing up from the Ptarmigan's Pool."
+
+"Thou minnesinger, was it the blue sky thou hadst to tell me of?"
+
+"No, brother, it was ere I reached it that I saw this sight.  I had
+scaled the peak where grows the stunted rowan, and I sat down to look
+down on the other side of the gorge.  It was clear where I sat, but
+the ravine was filled with clouds, and upon them--"
+
+"The shape of the blessed Friedmund, thy patron?"
+
+"OUR patron," said Friedel; "I saw him, a giant form in gown and
+hood, traced in grey shadow upon the dazzling white cloud; and oh,
+Ebbo! he was struggling with a thinner, darker, wilder shape bearing
+a club.  He strove to withhold it; his gestures threatened and
+warned!  I watched like one spell-bound, for it was to me as the
+guardian spirit of our race striving for thee with the enemy."
+
+"How did it end?"
+
+"The cloud darkened, and swallowed them; nor should I have known the
+issue, if suddenly, on the very cloud where the strife had been,
+there had not beamed forth a rainbow--not a common rainbow, Ebbo, but
+a perfect ring, a soft-glancing, many-tinted crown of victory.  Then
+I knew the saint had won, and that thou wouldst win."
+
+"I!  What, not thyself--his own namesake?"
+
+"I thought, Ebbo, if the fight went very hard--nay, if for a time the
+grandame led thee her way--that belike I might serve thee best by
+giving up all, and praying for thee in the hermit's cave, or as a
+monk."
+
+"Thou!--thou, my other self!  Aid me by burrowing in a hole like a
+rat!  What foolery wilt say next?  No, no, Friedel, strike by my
+side, and I will strike with thee; pray by my side, and I will pray
+with thee; but if thou takest none of the strokes, then will I none
+of the prayers!"
+
+"Ebbo, thou knowest not what thou sayest."
+
+"No one knows better!  See, Friedel, wouldst thou have me all that
+the old Adlersteinen were, and worse too? then wilt thou leave me and
+hide thine head in some priestly cowl.  Maybe thou thinkest to pray
+my soul into safety at the last moment as a favour to thine own
+abundant sanctity; but I tell thee, Friedel, that's no manly way to
+salvation.  If thou follow'st that track, I'll take care to get past
+the border-line within which prayer can help."
+
+Friedel crossed himself, and uttered an imploring exclamation of
+horror at these wild words.
+
+"Stay," said Ebbo; "I said not I meant any such thing--so long as
+thou wilt be with me.  My purpose is to be a good man and true, a
+guard to the weak, a defence against the Turk, a good lord to my
+vassals, and, if it may not be otherwise, I will take my oath to the
+Kaiser, and keep it.  Is that enough for thee, Friedel, or wouldst
+thou see me a monk at once?"
+
+"Oh, Ebbo, this is what we ever planned.  I only dreamed of the other
+when--when thou didst seem to be on the other track."
+
+"Well, what can I do more than turn back?  I'll get absolution on
+Sunday, and tell Father Norbert that I will do any penance he
+pleases; and warn Jobst that, if he sets any more traps in the river,
+I will drown him there next!  Only get this priestly fancy away,
+Friedel, once and for ever!"
+
+"Never, never could I think of what would sever us," cried Friedel,
+"save--when--" he added, hesitating, unwilling to harp on the former
+string.  Ebbo broke in imperiously,
+
+"Friedmund von Adlerstein, give me thy solemn word that I never again
+hear of this freak of turning priest or hermit.  What! art slow to
+speak?  Thinkest me too bad for thee?"
+
+"No, Ebbo.  Heaven knows thou art stronger, more resolute than I.  I
+am more likely to be too bad for thee.  But so long as we can be
+true, faithful God-fearing Junkern together, Heaven forbid that we
+should part!"
+
+"It is our bond!" said Ebbo; "nought shall part us."
+
+"Nought but death," said Friedmund, solemnly.
+
+"For my part," said Ebbo, with perfect seriousness, "I do not believe
+that one of us can live or die without the other.  But, hark! there's
+an outcry at the castle!  They have found out that they are locked
+in!  Ha! ho! hilloa, Hatto, how like you playing prisoner?"
+
+Ebbo would have amused himself with the dismay of his garrison a
+little longer, had not Friedel reminded him that their mother might
+be suffering for their delay, and this suggestion made him march in
+hastily.  He found her standing drooping under the pitiless storm
+which Frau Kunigunde was pouring out at the highest pitch of her
+cracked, trembling voice, one hand uplifted and clenched, the other
+grasping the back of a chair, while her whole frame shook with rage
+too mighty for her strength.
+
+"Grandame," said Ebbo, striding up to the scene of action, "cease.
+Remember my words yestereve."
+
+"She has stolen the keys!  She has tampered with the servants!  She
+has released the prisoner--thy prisoner, Ebbo!  She has cheated us as
+she did with Wildschloss!  False burgherinn!  I trow she wanted
+another suitor!  Bane--pest of Adlerstein!"
+
+Friedmund threw a supporting arm round his mother, but Ebbo
+confronted the old lady.  "Grandmother," he said, "I freed the
+captive.  I stole the keys--I and Friedel!  No one else knew my
+purpose.  He was my captive, and I released him because he was foully
+taken.  I have chosen my lot in life," he added; and, standing in the
+middle of the hall, he took off his cap, and spoke gravely:- "I will
+not be a treacherous robber-outlaw, but, so help me God, a faithful,
+loyal, godly nobleman."
+
+His mother and Friedel breathed an "Amen" with all their hearts; and
+he continued,
+
+"And thou, grandame, peace!  Such reverence shalt thou have as befits
+my father's mother; but henceforth mine own lady-mother is the
+mistress of this castle, and whoever speaks a rude word to her
+offends the Freiherr von Adlerstein."
+
+That last day's work had made a great step in Ebbo's life, and there
+he stood, grave and firm, ready for the assault; for, in effect, he
+and all besides expected that the old lady would fly at him or at his
+mother like a wild cat, as she would assuredly have done in a like
+case a year earlier; but she took them all by surprise by collapsing
+into her chair and sobbing piteously.  Ebbo, much distressed, tried
+to make her understand that she was to have all care and honour; but
+she muttered something about ingratitude, and continued to exhaust
+herself with weeping, spurning away all who approached her; and
+thenceforth she lived in a gloomy, sullen acquiescence in her
+deposition.
+
+Christina inclined to the opinion that she must have had some slight
+stroke in the night, for she was never the same woman again; her
+vigour had passed away, and she would sit spinning, or rocking
+herself in her chair, scarcely alive to what passed, or scolding and
+fretting like a shadow of her old violence.  Nothing pleased her but
+the attentions of her grandsons, and happily she soon ceased to know
+them apart, and gave Ebbo credit for all that was done for her by
+Friedel, whose separate existence she seemed to have forgotten.
+
+As long as her old spirit remained she would not suffer the approach
+of her daughter-in-law, and Christina could only make suggestions for
+her comfort to be acted on by Ursel; and though the reins of
+government fast dropped from the aged hands, they were but gradually
+and cautiously assumed by the younger Baroness.
+
+Only Elsie remained of the rude, demoralized girls whom she had found
+in the castle, and their successors, though dull and uncouth, were
+meek and manageable; the men of the castle had all, except Matz, been
+always devoted to the Frau Christina; and Matz, to her great relief,
+ran away so soon as he found that decency and honesty were to be the
+rule.  Old Hatto, humpbacked Hans, and Heinz the Schneiderlein, were
+the whole male establishment, and had at least the merit of
+attachment to herself and her sons; and in time there was a shade of
+greater civilization about the castle, though impeded both by dire
+poverty and the doggedness of the old retainers.  At least the court
+was cleared of the swine, and, within doors, the table was spread
+with dainty linen out of the parcels from Ulm, and the meals served
+with orderliness that annoyed the boys at first, but soon became a
+subject of pride and pleasure.
+
+Frau Kunigunde lingered long, with increasing infirmities.  After the
+winter day, when, running down at a sudden noise, Friedel picked her
+up from the hearthstone, scorched, bruised, almost senseless, she
+accepted Christina's care with nothing worse than a snarl, and
+gradually seemed to forget the identity of her nurse with the
+interloping burgher girl.  Thanks or courtesy had been no part of her
+nature, least of all towards her own sex, and she did little but
+grumble, fret, and revile her attendant; but she soon depended so
+much on Christina's care, that it was hardly possible to leave her.
+At her best and strongest, her talk was maundering abuse of her son's
+low-born wife; but at times her wanderings showed black gulfs of
+iniquity and coarseness of soul that would make the gentle listener
+tremble, and be thankful that her sons were out of hearing.  And thus
+did Christina von Adlerstein requite fifteen years of persecution.
+
+The old lady's first failure had been in the summer of 1488; it was
+the Advent season of 1489, when the snow was at the deepest, and the
+frost at the hardest, that the two hardy mountaineer grandsons
+fetched over the pass Father Norbert, and a still sturdier, stronger
+monk, to the dying woman.
+
+"Are we in time, mother?" asked Ebbo, from the door of the upper
+chamber, where the Adlersteins began and ended life, shaking the snow
+from his mufflings.  Ruddy with exertion in the sharp wind, what a
+contrast he was to all within the room!
+
+"Who is that?" said a thin, feeble voice.
+
+"It is Ebbo.  It is the Baron," said Christina.  "Come in, Ebbo.  She
+is somewhat revived."
+
+"Will she be able to speak to the priest?" asked Ebbo.
+
+"Priest!" feebly screamed the old woman.  "No priest for me!  My lord
+died unshriven, unassoilzied.  Where he is, there will I be.  Let a
+priest approach me at his peril!"
+
+Stony insensibility ensued; nor did she speak again, though life
+lasted many hours longer.  The priests did their office; for,
+impenitent as the life and frantic as the words had been, the
+opinions of the time deemed that their rites might yet give the
+departing soul a chance, though the body was unconscious.
+
+When all was over, snow was again falling, shifting and drifting, so
+that it was impossible to leave the castle, and the two monks were
+kept there for a full fortnight, during which Christmas solemnities
+were observed in the chapel, for the first time since the days of
+Friedmund the Good.  The corpse of Kunigunde, preserved--we must say
+the word--salted, was placed in a coffin, and laid in that chapel to
+await the melting of the snows, when the vault at the Hermitage could
+be opened.  And this could not be effected till Easter had nearly
+come round again, and it was within a week of their sixteenth
+birthday that the two young Barons stood together at the coffin's
+head, serious indeed, but more with the thought of life than of
+death.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII:  BACK TO THE DOVECOTE
+
+
+
+For the first time in her residence at Adlerstein, now full half her
+life, the Freiherrinn Christina ventured to send a messenger to Ulm,
+namely, a lay brother of the convent of St. Ruprecht, who undertook
+to convey to Master Gottfried Sorel her letter, informing him of the
+death of her mother-in-law, and requesting him to send the same
+tidings to the Freiherr von Adlerstein Wildschloss, the kinsman and
+godfather of her sons.
+
+She was used to wait fifty-two weeks for answers to her letters, and
+was amazed when, at the end of three, two stout serving-men were
+guided by Jobst up the pass; but her heart warmed to their flat caps
+and round jerkins, they looked so like home.  They bore a letter of
+invitation to her and her sons to come at once to her uncle's house.
+The King of the Romans, and perhaps the Emperor, were to come to the
+city early in the summer, and there could be no better opportunity of
+presenting the young Barons to their sovereign.  Sir Kasimir of
+Adlerstein Wildschloss would meet them there for the purpose, and
+would obtain their admission to the League, in which all Swabian
+nobles had bound themselves to put down robbery and oppression, and
+outside which there was nothing but outlawry and danger.
+
+"So must it be?" said Ebbo, between his teeth, as he leant moodily
+against the wall, while his mother was gone to attend to the fare to
+be set before the messengers.
+
+"What! art not glad to take wing at last?" exclaimed Friedel, cut
+short in an exclamation of delight.
+
+"Take wing, forsooth!  To be guest of a greasy burgher, and call
+cousin with him!  Fear not, Friedel; I'll not vex the motherling.
+Heaven knows she has had pain, grief, and subjection enough in her
+lifetime, and I would not hinder her visit to her home; but I would
+she could go alone, nor make us show our poverty to the swollen city
+folk, and listen to their endearments.  I charge thee, Friedel, do as
+I do; be not too familiar with them.  Could we but sprain an ankle
+over the crag--"
+
+"Nay, she would stay to nurse us," said Friedel, laughing; "besides,
+thou art needed for the matter of homage."
+
+"Look, Friedel," said Ebbo, sinking his voice, "I shall not lightly
+yield my freedom to king or Kaiser.  Maybe, there is no help for it;
+but it irks me to think that I should be the last Lord of Adlerstein
+to whom the title of Freiherr is not a mockery.  Why dost bend thy
+brow, brother?  What art thinking of?"
+
+"Only a saying in my mother's book, that well-ordered service is true
+freedom," said Friedel.  "And methinks there will be freedom in
+rushing at last into the great far-off!"--the boy's eye expanded and
+glistened with eagerness.  "Here are we prisoners--to ourselves, if
+you like--but prisoners still, pent up in the rocks, seeing no one,
+hearing scarce an echo from the knightly or the poet world, nor from
+all the wonders that pass.  And the world has a history going on
+still, like the Chronicle.  Oh, Ebbo, think of being in the midst of
+life, with lance and sword, and seeing the Kaiser--the Kaiser of the
+holy Roman Empire!"
+
+"With lance and sword, well and good; but would it were not at the
+cost of liberty!"
+
+However Ebbo forbore to damp his mother's joy, save by the one
+warning--"Understand, mother, that I will not be pledged to anything.
+I will not bend to the yoke ere I have seen and judged for myself."
+
+The manly sound of the words gave a sweet sense of exultation to the
+mother, even while she dreaded the proud spirit, and whispered, "God
+direct thee, my son."
+
+Certainly Ebbo, hitherto the most impetuous and least thoughtful of
+the two lads, had a gravity and seriousness about him, that, but for
+his naturally sweet temper, would have seemed sullen.  His
+aspirations for adventure had hitherto been more vehement than
+Friedel's; but, when the time seemed at hand, his regrets at what he
+might have to yield overpowered his hopes of the future.  The fierce
+haughtiness of the old Adlersteins could not brook the descent from
+the crag, even while the keen, clear burgher wit that Ebbo inherited
+from the other side of the house taught him that the position was
+untenable, and that his isolated glory was but a poor mean thing
+after all.  And the struggle made him sad and moody.
+
+Friedel, less proud, and with nothing to yield, was open to blithe
+anticipations of what his fancy pictured as the home of all the
+beauty, sacred or romantic, that he had glimpsed at through his
+mother.  Religion, poetry, learning, art, refinement, had all come to
+him through her; and though he had a soul that dreamt and soared in
+the lonely grandeur of the mountain heights, it craved further
+aliment for its yearnings for completeness and perfection.  Long ago
+had Friedel come to the verge of such attainments as he could work
+out of his present materials, and keen had been his ardour for the
+means of progress, though only the mountain tarn had ever been
+witness to the full outpouring of the longings with which he gazed
+upon the dim, distant city like a land of enchantment.
+
+The journey was to be at once, so as to profit by the escort of
+Master Sorel's men.  Means of transport were scanty, but Ebbo did not
+choose that the messengers should report the need, and bring back a
+bevy of animals at the burgher's expense; so the mother was mounted
+on the old white mare, and her sons and Heinz trusted to their feet.
+By setting out early on a May morning, the journey could be performed
+ere night, and the twilight would find them in the domains of the
+free city, where their small numbers would be of no importance.  As
+to their appearance, the mother wore a black woollen gown and mantle,
+and a black silk hood tied under her chin, and sitting loosely round
+the stiff frame of her white cap--a nun-like garb, save for the soft
+brown hair, parted over her brow, and more visible than she sometimes
+thought correct, but her sons would not let her wear it out of sight.
+
+The brothers had piece by piece surveyed the solitary suit of armour
+remaining in the castle; but, though it might serve for defence, it
+could not be made fit for display, and they must needs be contented
+with blue cloth, spun, woven, dyed, fashioned, and sewn at home,
+chiefly by their mother, and by her embroidered on the breast with
+the white eagle of Adlerstein.  Short blue cloaks and caps of the
+same, with an eagle plume in each, and leggings neatly fashioned of
+deerskin, completed their equipments.  Ebbo wore his father's sword,
+Friedel had merely a dagger and crossbow.  There was not a gold
+chain, not a brooch, not an approach to an ornament among the three,
+except the medal that had always distinguished Ebbo, and the coral
+rosary at Christina's girdle.  Her own trinkets had gone in masses
+for the souls of her father and husband; and though a few costly
+jewels had been found in Frau Kunigunde's hoards, the mode of their
+acquisition was so doubtful, that it had seemed fittest to bestow
+them in alms and masses for the good of her soul.
+
+"What ornament, what glory could any one desire better than two such
+sons?" thought Christina, as for the first time for eighteen years
+she crossed the wild ravine where her father had led her, a trembling
+little captive, longing for wings like a dove's to flutter home
+again.  Who would then have predicted that she should descend after
+so long and weary a time, and with a gallant boy on either side of
+her, eager to aid her every step, and reassure her at each giddy
+pass, all joy and hope before her and them?  Yet she was not without
+some dread and misgiving, as she watched her elder son, always
+attentive to her, but unwontedly silent, with a stern gravity on his
+young brow, a proud sadness on his lip.  And when he had come to the
+Debateable Ford, and was about to pass the boundaries of his own
+lands, he turned and gazed back on the castle and mountain with a
+silent but passionate ardour, as though he felt himself doing them a
+wrong by perilling their independence.
+
+The sun had lately set, and the moon was silvering the Danube, when
+the travellers came full in view of the imperial free city, girt in
+with mighty walls and towers--the vine-clad hill dominated by its
+crowning church; the irregular outlines of the unfinished spire of
+the cathedral traced in mysterious dark lacework against the pearly
+sky; the lofty steeple-like gate-tower majestically guarding the
+bridge.  Christina clasped her hands in thankfulness, as at the
+familiar face of a friend; Friedel glowed like a minstrel introduced
+to his fair dame, long wooed at a distance; Ebbo could not but
+exclaim, "Yea, truly, a great city is a solemn and a glorious sight!"
+
+The gates were closed, and the serving-men had to parley at the
+barbican ere the heavy door was opened to admit the party to the
+bridge, between deep battlemented stone walls, with here and there
+loopholes, showing the shimmering of the river beneath.  The slow,
+tired tread of the old mare sounded hollow; the river rushed below
+with the full swell of evening loudness; a deep-toned convent-bell
+tolled gravely through the stillness, while, between its
+reverberations, clear, distinct notes of joyous music were borne on
+the summer wind, and a nightingale sung in one of the gardens that
+bordered the banks.
+
+"Mother, it is all that I dreamt!" breathlessly murmured Friedel, as
+they halted under the dark arch of the great gateway tower.
+
+Not however in Friedel's dreams had been the hearty voice that
+proceeded from the lighted guard-room in the thickness of the
+gateway.  "Freiherrinn von Adlerstein!  Is it she?  Then must I greet
+my old playmate!"  And the captain of the watch appeared among
+upraised lanterns and torches that showed a broad, smooth, plump face
+beneath a plain steel helmet.
+
+"Welcome, gracious lady, welcome to your old city.  What! do you not
+remember Lippus Grundt, your poor Valentine?"
+
+"Master Philip Grundt!" exclaimed Christina, amazed at the breadth of
+visage and person; "and how fares it with my good Regina?"
+
+"Excellent well, good lady.  She manages her trade and house as well
+as the good man Bartolaus Fleischer himself.  Blithe will she be to
+show you her goodly ten, as I shall my eight," he continued, walking
+by her side; "and Barbara--you remember Barbara Schmidt, lady--"
+
+"My dear Barbara?--That do I indeed!  Is she your wife?"
+
+"Ay, truly, lady," he answered, in an odd sort of apologetic tone;
+"you see, you returned not, and the housefathers, they would have it
+so--and Barbara is a good housewife."
+
+"Truly do I rejoice!" said Christina, wishing she could convey to him
+how welcome he had been to marry any one he liked, as far as she was
+concerned--he, in whom her fears of mincing goldsmiths had always
+taken form--then signing with her hand, "I have my sons likewise to
+show her."
+
+"Ah, on foot!" muttered Grundt, as a not well-conceived apology for
+not having saluted the young gentlemen.  "I greet you well, sirs,"
+with a bow, most haughtily returned by Ebbo, who was heartily wishing
+himself on his mountain.  "Two lusty, well-grown Junkern indeed, to
+whom my Martin will be proud to show the humours of Ulm.  A fair good
+night, lady!  You will find the old folks right cheery."
+
+Well did Christina know the turn down the street, darkened by the
+overhanging brows of the tall houses, but each lower window laughing
+with the glow of light within that threw out the heavy mullions and
+the circles and diamonds of the latticework, and here and there the
+brilliant tints of stained glass sparkled like jewels in the upper
+panes, pictured with Scripture scene, patron saint, or trade emblem.
+The familiar porch was reached, the familiar knock resounded on the
+iron-studded door.  Friedel lifted his mother from her horse, and
+felt that she was quivering from head to foot, and at the same moment
+the light streamed from the open door on the white horse, and the two
+young faces, one eager, the other with knit brows and uneasy eyes.  A
+kind of echo pervaded the house, "She is come! she is come!" and as
+one in a dream Christina entered, crossed the well-known hall, looked
+up to her uncle and aunt on the stairs, perceived little change on
+their countenances, and sank upon her knees, with bowed head and
+clasped hands.
+
+"My child! my dear child!" exclaimed her uncle, raising her with one
+hand, and crossing her brow in benediction with the other.  "Art thou
+indeed returned?" and he embraced her tenderly.
+
+"Welcome, fair niece!" said Hausfrau Johanna, more formally.  "I am
+right glad to greet you here."
+
+"Dear, dear mother!" cried Christina, courting her fond embrace by
+gestures of the most eager affection, "how have I longed for this
+moment! and, above all, to show you my boys!  Herr Uncle, let me
+present my sons--my Eberhard, my Friedmund.  O Housemother, are not
+my twins well-grown lads?"  And she stood with a hand on each, proud
+that their heads were so far above her own, and looking still so
+slight and girlish in figure that she might better have been their
+sister than their mother.  The cloud that the sudden light had
+revealed on Ebbo's brow had cleared away, and he made an inclination
+neither awkward nor ungracious in its free mountain dignity and
+grace, but not devoid of mountain rusticity and shy pride, and far
+less cordial than was Friedel's manner.  Both were infinitely
+relieved to detect nothing of the greasy burgher, and were greatly
+struck with the fine venerable head before them; indeed, Friedel
+would, like his mother, have knelt to ask a blessing, had he not been
+under command not to outrun his brother's advances towards her
+kindred.
+
+"Welcome, fair Junkern!" said Master Gottfried; "welcome both for
+your mother's sake and your own!  These thy sons, my little one?" he
+added, smiling.  "Art sure I neither dream nor see double!  Come to
+the gallery, and let me see thee better."
+
+And, ceremoniously giving his hand, he proceeded to lead his niece up
+the stairs, while Ebbo, labouring under ignorance of city forms and
+uncertainty of what befitted his dignity, presented his hand to his
+aunt with an air that half-amused, half-offended the shrewd dame.
+
+"All is as if I had left you but yesterday!" exclaimed Christina.
+"Uncle, have you pardoned me?  You bade me return when my work was
+done."
+
+"I should have known better, child.  Such return is not to be sought
+on this side the grave.  Thy work has been more than I then thought
+of."
+
+"Ah! and now will you deem it begun--not done!" softly said
+Christina, though with too much heartfelt exultation greatly to doubt
+that all the world must be satisfied with two such boys, if only Ebbo
+would be his true self.
+
+The luxury of the house, the wainscoted and tapestried walls, the
+polished furniture, the lamps and candles, the damask linen, the rich
+array of silver, pewter, and brightly-coloured glass, were a great
+contrast to the bare walls and scant necessaries of Schloss
+Adlerstein; but Ebbo was resolved not to expose himself by
+admiration, and did his best to stifle Friedel's exclamations of
+surprise and delight.  Were not these citizens to suppose that
+everything was tenfold more costly at the baronial castle?  And truly
+the boy deserved credit for the consideration for his mother, which
+made him merely reserved, while he felt like a wild eagle in a
+poultry-yard.  It was no small proof of his affection to forbear more
+interference with his mother's happiness than was the inevitable
+effect of that intuition which made her aware that he was chafing and
+ill at ease.  For his sake, she allowed herself to be placed in the
+seat of honour, though she longed, as of old, to nestle at her
+uncle's feet, and be again his child; but, even while she felt each
+acceptance of a token of respect as almost an injury to them, every
+look and tone was showing how much the same Christina she had
+returned.
+
+In truth, though her life had been mournful and oppressed, it had not
+been such as to age her early.  It had been all submission, without
+wear and tear of mind, and too simple in its trials for care and
+moiling; so the fresh, lily-like sweetness of her maiden bloom was
+almost intact, and, much as she had undergone, her once frail health
+had been so braced by the mountain breezes, that, though delicacy
+remained, sickliness was gone from her appearance.  There was still
+the exquisite purity and tender modesty of expression, but with
+greater sweetness in the pensive brown eyes.
+
+"Ah, little one!" said her uncle, after duly contemplating her; "the
+change is all for the better!  Thou art grown a wondrously fair dame.
+There will scarce be a lovelier in the Kaiserly train."
+
+Ebbo almost pardoned his great-uncle for being his great-uncle.
+
+"When she is arrayed as becomes the Frau Freiherrinn," said the
+housewife aunt, looking with concern at the coarse texture of her
+black sleeve.  "I long to see our own lady ruffle it in her new gear.
+I am glad that the lofty pointed cap has passed out; the coif becomes
+my child far better, and I see our tastes still accord as to
+fashion."
+
+"Fashion scarce came above the Debateable Ford," said Christina,
+smiling.  "I fear my boys look as if they came out of the
+Weltgeschichte, for I could only shape their garments after my
+remembrance of the gallants of eighteen years ago."
+
+"Their garments are your own shaping!" exclaimed the aunt, now in an
+accent of real, not conventional respect.
+
+"Spinning and weaving, shaping and sewing," said Friedel, coming near
+to let the housewife examine the texture.
+
+"Close woven, even threaded, smooth tinted!  Ah, Stina, thou didst
+learn something!  Thou wert not quite spoilt by the housefather's
+books and carvings."
+
+"I cannot tell whose teachings have served me best, or been the most
+precious to me," said Christina, with clasped hands, looking from one
+to another with earnest love.
+
+"Thou art a good child.  Ah! little one, forgive me; you look so like
+our child that I cannot bear in mind that you are the Frau
+Freiherrinn."
+
+"Nay, I should deem myself in disgrace with you, did you keep me at a
+distance, and not THOU me, as your little Stina," she fondly
+answered, half regretting her fond eager movement, as Ebbo seemed to
+shrink together with a gesture perceived by her uncle.
+
+"It is my young lord there who would not forgive the freedom," he
+said, good-humouredly, though gravely.
+
+"Not so," Ebbo forced himself to say; "not so, if it makes my mother
+happy."
+
+He held up his head rather as if he thought it a fool's paradise, but
+Master Gottfried answered:  "The noble Freiherr is, from all I have
+heard, too good a son to grudge his mother's duteous love even to
+burgher kindred."
+
+There was something in the old man's frank, dignified tone of grave
+reproof that at once impressed Ebbo with a sense of the true
+superiority of that wise and venerable old age to his own petulant
+baronial self-assertion.  He had both head and heart to feel the
+burgher's victory, and with a deep blush, though not without dignity,
+he answered, "Truly, sir, my mother has ever taught us to look up to
+you as her kindest and best--"
+
+He was going to say "friend," but a look into the grand benignity of
+the countenance completed the conquest, and he turned it into
+"father."  Friedel at the same instant bent his knee, exclaiming, "It
+is true what Ebbo says!  We have both longed for this day.  Bless us,
+honoured uncle, as you have blessed my mother."
+
+For in truth there was in the soul of the boy, who had never had any
+but women to look up to, a strange yearning towards reverence, which
+was called into action with inexpressible force by the very aspect
+and tone of such a sage elder and counsellor as Master Gottfried
+Sorel, and he took advantage of the first opening permitted by his
+brother.  And the sympathy always so strong between the two quickened
+the like feeling in Ebbo, so that the same movement drew him on his
+knee beside Friedel in oblivion or renunciation of all lordly pride
+towards a kinsman such as he had here encountered.
+
+"Truly and heartily, my fair youths," said Master Gottfried, with the
+same kind dignity, "do I pray the good God to bless you, and render
+you faithful and loving sons, not only to your mother, but to your
+fatherland."
+
+He was unable to distinguish between the two exactly similar forms
+that knelt before him, yet there was something in the quivering of
+Friedel's head, which made him press it with a shade more of
+tenderness than the other.  And in truth tears were welling into the
+eyes veiled by the fingers that Friedel clasped over his face, for
+such a blessing was strange and sweet to him.
+
+Their mother was ready to weep for joy.  There was now no drawback to
+her bliss, since her son and her uncle had accepted one another; and
+she repaired to her own beloved old chamber a happier being than she
+had been since she had left its wainscoted walls.
+
+Nay, as she gazed out at the familiar outlines of roof and tower, and
+felt herself truly at home, then knelt by the little undisturbed
+altar of her devotions, with the cross above and her own patron saint
+below in carved wood, and the flowers which the good aunt had ever
+kept as a freshly renewed offering, she felt that she was happier,
+more fully thankful and blissful than even in the girlish calm of her
+untroubled life.  Her prayer that she might come again in peace had
+been more than fulfilled; nay, when she had seen her boys kneel
+meekly to receive her uncle's blessing, it was in some sort to her as
+if the work was done, as if the millstone had been borne up for her,
+and had borne her and her dear ones with it.
+
+But there was much to come.  She knew full well that, even though her
+sons' first step had been in the right direction, it was in a path
+beset with difficulties; and how would her proud Ebbo meet them?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII:  THE EAGLETS IN THE CITY
+
+
+
+After having once accepted Master Gottfried, Ebbo froze towards him
+and Dame Johanna no more, save that a naturally imperious temper now
+and then led to fitful stiffnesses and momentary haughtiness, which
+were easily excused in one so new to the world and afraid of
+compromising his rank.  In general he could afford to enjoy himself
+with a zest as hearty as that of the simpler-minded Friedel.
+
+They were early afoot, but not before the heads of the household were
+coming forth for the morning devotions at the cathedral; and the
+streets were stirring into activity, and becoming so peopled that the
+boys supposed that it was a great fair day.  They had never seen so
+many people together even at the Friedmund Wake, and it was several
+days before they ceased to exclaim at every passenger as a new
+curiosity.
+
+The Dome Kirk awed and hushed them.  They had looked to it so long
+that perhaps no sublunary thing could have realized their
+expectations, and Friedel avowed that he did not know what he thought
+of it.  It was not such as he had dreamt, and, like a German as he
+was, he added that he could not think, he could only feel, that there
+was something ineffable in it; yet he was almost disappointed to find
+his visions unfulfilled, and the hues of the painted glass less pure
+and translucent than those of the ice crystals on the mountains.
+However after his eye had become trained, the deep influence of its
+dim solemn majesty, and of the echoes of its organ tones, and chants
+of high praise or earnest prayer, began to enchain his spirit; and,
+if ever he were missing, he was sure to be found among the mysteries
+of the cathedral aisles, generally with Ebbo, who felt the spell of
+the same grave fascination, since whatever was true of the one
+brother was generally true of the other.  They were essentially
+alike, though some phases of character and taste were more developed
+in the one or the other.
+
+Master Gottfried was much edified by their perfect knowledge of the
+names and numbers of his books.  They instantly, almost resentfully,
+missed the Cicero's Offices that he had parted with, and joyfully
+hailed his new acquisitions, often sitting with heads together over
+the same book, reading like active-minded youths who were used to
+out-of-door life and exercise in superabundant measure, and to study
+as a valued recreation, with only food enough for the intellect to
+awaken instead of satisfying it.
+
+They were delighted to obtain instruction from a travelling student,
+then attending the schools of Ulm--a meek, timid lad who, for love of
+learning and desire of the priesthood, had endured frightful tyranny
+from the Bacchanten or elder scholars, and, having at length attained
+that rank, had so little heart to retaliate on the juniors that his
+contemporaries despised him, and led him a cruel life until he
+obtained food and shelter from Master Gottfried at the pleasant cost
+of lessons to the young Barons.  Poor Bastien! this land of quiet,
+civility, and books was a foretaste of Paradise to him after the hard
+living, barbarity, and coarse vices of his comrades, of whom he now
+and then disclosed traits that made his present pupils long to give
+battle to the big shaggy youths who used to send out the lesser lads
+to beg and steal for them, and cruelly maltreated such as failed in
+the quest.
+
+Lessons in music and singing were gladly accepted by both lads, and
+from their uncle's carving they could not keep their hands.  Ebbo had
+begun by enjoining Friedel to remember that the work that had been
+sport in the mountains would be basely mechanical in the city, and
+Friedel as usual yielded his private tastes; but on the second day
+Ebbo himself was discovered in the workshop, watching the magic touch
+of the deft workman, and he was soon so enticed by the perfect
+appliances as to take tool in hand and prove himself not unadroit in
+the craft.  Friedel however excelled in delicacy of touch and grace
+and originality of conception, and produced such workmanship that
+Master Gottfried could not help stroking his hair and telling him it
+was a pity he was not born to belong to the guild.
+
+"I cannot spare him, sir," cried Ebbo; "priest, scholar, minstrel,
+artist--all want him."
+
+"What, Hans of all streets, Ebbo?" interrupted Friedel.
+
+"And guildmaster of none," said Ebbo, "save as a warrior; the rest
+only enough for a gentleman!  For what I am thou must be!"
+
+But Ebbo did not find fault with the skill Friedel was bestowing on
+his work--a carving in wood of a dove brooding over two young eagles-
+-the device that both were resolved to assume.  When their mother
+asked what their lady-loves would say to this, Ebbo looked up, and
+with the fullest conviction in his lustrous eyes declared that no
+love should ever rival his motherling in his heart.  For truly her
+tender sweetness had given her sons' affection a touch of romance,
+for which Master Gottfried liked them the better, though his wife
+thought their familiarity with her hardly accordant with the
+patriarchal discipline of the citizens.
+
+The youths held aloof from these burghers, for Master Gottfried
+wisely desired to give them time to be tamed before running risk of
+offence, either to, or by, their wild shy pride; and their mother
+contrived to time her meetings with her old companions when her sons
+were otherwise occupied.  Master Gottfried made it known that the
+marriage portion he had designed for his niece had been intrusted to
+a merchant trading in peltry to Muscovy, and the sum thus realized
+was larger than any bride had yet brought to Adlerstein.  Master
+Gottfried would have liked to continue the same profitable
+speculations with it; but this would have been beyond the young
+Baron's endurance, and his eyes sparkled when his mother spoke of
+repairing the castle, refitting the chapel, having a resident
+chaplain, cultivating more land, increasing the scanty stock of
+cattle, and attempting the improvements hitherto prevented by lack of
+means.  He fervently declared that the motherling was more than equal
+to the wise spinning Queen Bertha of legend and lay; and the first
+pleasant sense of wealth came in the acquisition of horses, weapons,
+and braveries.  In his original mood, Ebbo would rather have stood
+before the Diet in his home-spun blue than have figured in cloth of
+gold at a burgher's expense; but he had learned to love his uncle, he
+regarded the marriage portion as family property, and moreover he
+sorely longed to feel himself and his brother well mounted, and
+scarcely less to see his mother in a velvet gown.
+
+Here was his chief point of sympathy with the housemother, who,
+herself precluded from wearing miniver, velvet, or pearls, longed to
+deck her niece therewith, in time to receive Sir Kasimir of
+Adlerstein Wildschloss, as he had promised to meet his godsons at
+Ulm.  The knight's marriage had lasted only a few years, and had left
+him no surviving children except one little daughter, whom he had
+placed in a nunnery at Ulm, under the care of her mother's sister.
+His lands lay higher up the Danube, and he was expected at Ulm
+shortly before the Emperor's arrival.  He had been chiefly in
+Flanders with the King of the Romans, and had only returned to
+Germany when the Netherlanders had refused the regency of Maximilian,
+and driven him out of their country, depriving him of the custody of
+his children.
+
+Pfingsttag, or Pentecost-day, was the occasion of Christina's first
+full toilet, and never was bride more solicitously or exultingly
+arrayed than she, while one boy held the mirror and the other
+criticized and admired as the aunt adjusted the pearl-bordered coif,
+and long white veil floating over the long-desired black velvet
+dress.  How the two lads admired and gazed, caring far less for their
+own new and noble attire!  Friedel was indeed somewhat concerned that
+the sword by his side was so much handsomer than that which Ebbo
+wore, and which, for all its dinted scabbard and battered hilt, he
+was resolved never to discard.
+
+It was a festival of brilliant joy.  Wreaths of flowers hung from the
+windows; rich tapestries decked the Dome Kirk, and the relics were
+displayed in shrines of wonderful costliness of material and beauty
+of workmanship; little birds, with thin cakes fastened to their feet,
+were let loose to fly about the church, in strange allusion to the
+event of the day; the clergy wore their most gorgeous robes; and the
+exulting music of the mass echoed from the vaults of the long-drawn
+aisles, and brought a rapt look of deep calm ecstasy over Friedel's
+sensitive features.  The beggars evidently considered a festival as a
+harvest-day, and crowded round the doors of the cathedral.  As the
+Lady of Adlerstein came out leaning on Ebbo's arm, with Friedel on
+her other side, they evidently attracted the notice of a woman whose
+thin brown face looked the darker for the striped red and yellow silk
+kerchief that bound the dark locks round her brow, as, holding out a
+beringed hand, she fastened her glittering jet black eyes on them,
+and exclaimed, "Alms! if the fair dame and knightly Junkern would
+hear what fate has in store for them."
+
+"We meddle not with the future, I thank thee," said Christina, seeing
+that her sons, to whom gipsies were an amazing novelty, were in
+extreme surprise at the fortune-telling proposal.
+
+"Yet could I tell much, lady," said the woman, still standing in the
+way.  "What would some here present give to know that the locks that
+were shrouded by the widow's veil ere ever they wore the matron's
+coif shall yet return to the coif once more?"
+
+Ebbo gave a sudden start of dismay and passion; his mother held him
+fast.  "Push on, Ebbo, mine; heed her not; she is a mere Bohemian."
+
+"But how knew she your history, mother?" asked Friedel, eagerly.
+
+"That might be easily learnt at our Wake," began Christina; but her
+steps were checked by a call from Master Gottfried just behind.
+"Frau Freiherrinn, Junkern, not so fast.  Here is your noble
+kinsman."
+
+A tall, fine-looking person, in the long rich robe worn on peaceful
+occasions, stood forth, doffing his eagle-plumed bonnet, and, as the
+lady turned and curtsied low, he put his knee to the ground and
+kissed her hand, saying, "Well met, noble dame; I felt certain that I
+knew you when I beheld you in the Dome."
+
+"He was gazing at her all the time," whispered Ebbo to his brother;
+while their mother, blushing, replied, "You do me too much honour,
+Herr Freiherr."
+
+"Once seen, never to be forgotten," was the courteous answer:  "and
+truly, but for the stately height of these my godsons I would not
+believe how long since our meeting was."
+
+Thereupon, in true German fashion, Sir Kasimir embraced each youth in
+the open street, and then, removing his long, embroidered Spanish
+glove, he offered his hand, or rather the tips of his fingers, to
+lead the Frau Christina home.
+
+Master Sorel had invited him to become his guest at a very elaborate
+ornamental festival meal in honour of the great holiday, at which
+were to be present several wealthy citizens with their wives and
+families, old connections of the Sorel family.  Ebbo had resolved
+upon treating them with courteous reserve and distance; but he was
+surprised to find his cousin of Wildschloss comporting himself among
+the burgomasters and their dames as freely as though they had been
+his equals, and to see that they took such demeanour as perfectly
+natural.  Quick to perceive, the boy gathered that the gulf between
+noble and burgher was so great that no intimacy could bridge it over,
+no reserve widen it, and that his own bashful hauteur was almost a
+sign that he knew that the gulf had been passed by his own parents;
+but shame and consciousness did not enable him to alter his manner
+but rather added to its stiffness.
+
+"The Junker is like an Englishman," said Sir Kasimir, who had met
+many of the exiles of the Roses at the court of Mary of Burgundy; and
+then he turned to discuss with the guildmasters the interruption to
+trade caused by Flemish jealousies.
+
+After the lengthy meal, the tables were removed, the long gallery was
+occupied by musicians, and Master Gottfried crossed the hall to tell
+his eldest grandnephew that to him he should depute the opening of
+the dance with the handsome bride of the Rathsherr, Ulrich Burger.
+Ebbo blushed up to the eyes, and muttered that he prayed his uncle to
+excuse him.
+
+"So!" said the old citizen, really displeased; "thy kinsman might
+have proved to thee that it is no derogation of thy lordly dignity.
+I have been patient with thee, but thy pride passes--"
+
+"Sir," interposed Friedel hastily, raising his sweet candid face with
+a look between shame and merriment, "it is not that; but you forget
+what poor mountaineers we are.  Never did we tread a measure save now
+and then with our mother on a winter evening, and we know no more
+than a chamois of your intricate measures."
+
+Master Gottfried looked perplexed, for these dances were matters of
+great punctilio.  It was but seven years since the Lord of Praunstein
+had defied the whole city of Frankfort because a damsel of that place
+had refused to dance with one of his Cousins; and, though "Fistright"
+and letters of challenge had been made illegal, yet the whole city of
+Ulm would have resented the affront put on it by the young lord of
+Adlerstein.  Happily the Freiherr of Adlerstein Wildschloss was at
+hand.  "Herr Burgomaster," he said, "let me commence the dance with
+your fair lady niece.  By your testimony," he added, smiling to the
+youths, "she can tread a measure.  And, after marking us, you may try
+your success with the Rathsherrinn."
+
+Christina would gladly have transferred her noble partner to the
+Rathsherrinn, but she feared to mortify her good uncle and aunt
+further, and consented to figure alone with Sir Kasimir in one of the
+majestic, graceful dances performed by a single couple before a
+gazing assembly.  So she let him lead her to her place, and they
+bowed and bent, swept past one another, and moved in interlacing
+lines and curves, with a grand slow movement that displayed her quiet
+grace and his stately port and courtly air.
+
+"Is it not beautiful to see the motherling?" said Friedel to his
+brother; "she sails like a white cloud in a soft wind.  And he stands
+grand as a stag at gaze."
+
+"Like a malapert peacock, say I," returned Ebbo; "didst not see,
+Friedel, how he kept his eyes on her in church?  My uncle says the
+Bohemians are mere deceivers.  Depend on it the woman had spied his
+insolent looks when she made her ribald prediction."
+
+"See," said Friedel, who had been watching the steps rather than
+attending, "it will be easy to dance it now.  It is a figure my
+mother once tried to teach us.  I remember it now."
+
+"Then go and do it, since better may not be."
+
+"Nay, but it should be thou."
+
+"Who will know which of us it is?  I hated his presumption too much
+to mark his antics."
+
+Friedel came forward, and the substitution was undetected by all save
+their mother and uncle; by the latter only because, addressing Ebbo,
+he received a reply in a tone such as Friedel never used.
+
+Natural grace, quickness of ear and eye, and a skilful partner,
+rendered Friedel's so fair a performance that he ventured on sending
+his brother to attend the councilloress with wine and comfits; while
+he in his own person performed another dance with the city dame next
+in pretension, and their mother was amused by Sir Kasimir's remark,
+that her second son danced better than the elder, but both must
+learn.
+
+The remark displeased Ebbo.  In his isolated castle he knew no
+superior, and his nature might yield willingly, but rebelled at being
+put down.  His brother was his perfect equal in all mental and bodily
+attributes, but it was the absence of all self-assertion that made
+Ebbo so often give him the preference; it was his mother's tender
+meekness in which lay her power with him; and if he yielded to
+Gottfried Sorel's wisdom and experience, it was with the inward
+consciousness of voluntary deference to one of lower rank.  But here
+was Wildschloss, of the same noble blood with himself, his elder, his
+sponsor, his protector, with every right to direct him, so that there
+was no choice between grateful docility and headstrong folly.  If the
+fellow had been old, weak, or in any way inferior, it would have been
+more bearable; but he was a tried warrior, a sage counsellor, in the
+prime vigour of manhood, and with a kindly reasonable authority to
+which only a fool could fail to attend, and which for that very
+reason chafed Ebbo excessively.
+
+Moreover there was the gipsy prophecy ever rankling in the lad's
+heart, and embittering to him the sight of every civility from his
+kinsman to his mother.  Sir Kasimir lodged at a neighbouring hostel;
+but he spent much time with his cousins, and tried to make them
+friends with his squire, Count Rudiger.  A great offence to Ebbo was
+however the criticisms of both knight and squire on the bearing of
+the young Barons in military exercises.  Truly, with no instructor
+but the rough lanzknecht Heinz, they must, as Friedel said, have been
+born paladins to have equalled youths whose life had been spent in
+chivalrous training.
+
+"See us in a downright fight," said Ebbo; "we could strike as hard as
+any courtly minion."
+
+"As hard, but scarce as dexterously," said Friedel, "and be called
+for our pains the wild mountaineers.  I heard the men-at-arms saying
+I sat my horse as though it were always going up or down a precipice;
+and Master Schmidt went into his shop the other day shrugging his
+shoulders, and saying we hailed one another across the market-place
+as if we thought Ulm was a mountain full of gemsbocks."
+
+"Thou heardst! and didst not cast his insolence in his teeth?" cried
+Ebbo.
+
+"How could I," laughed Friedel, "when the echo was casting back in my
+teeth my own shout to thee?  I could only laugh with Rudiger."
+
+"The chief delight I could have, next to getting home, would be to
+lay that fellow Rudiger on his back in the tilt-yard," said Ebbo.
+
+But, as Rudiger was by four years his senior, and very expert, the
+upshot of these encounters was quite otherwise, and the young
+gentlemen were disabused of the notion that fighting came by nature,
+and found that, if they desired success in a serious conflict, they
+must practise diligently in the city tilt-yard, where young men were
+trained to arms.  The crossbow was the only weapon with which they
+excelled; and, as shooting was a favourite exercise of the burghers,
+their proficiency was not as exclusive as had seemed to Ebbo a
+baronial privilege.  Harquebuses were novelties to them, and they
+despised them as burgher weapons, in spite of Sir Kasimir's assurance
+that firearms were a great subject of study and interest to the King
+of the Romans.  The name of this personage was, it may be feared,
+highly distasteful to the Freiherr von Adlerstein, both as
+Wildschloss's model of knightly perfection, and as one who claimed
+submission from his haughty spirit.  When Sir Kasimir spoke to him on
+the subject of giving his allegiance, he stiffly replied, "Sir, that
+is a question for ripe consideration."
+
+"It is the question," said Wildschloss, rather more lightly than
+agreed with the Baron's dignity, "whether you like to have your
+castle pulled down about your ears."
+
+"That has never happened yet to Adlerstein!" said Ebbo, proudly.
+
+"No, because since the days of the Hohenstaufen there has been
+neither rule nor union in the empire.  But times are changing fast,
+my Junker, and within the last ten years forty castles such as yours
+have been consumed by the Swabian League, as though they were so many
+walnuts."
+
+"The shell of Adlerstein was too hard for them, though.  They never
+tried."
+
+"And wherefore, friend Eberhard?  It was because I represented to the
+Kaiser and the Graf von Wurtemberg that little profit and no glory
+would accrue from attacking a crag full of women and babes, and that
+I, having the honour to be your next heir, should prefer having the
+castle untouched, and under the peace of the empire, so long as that
+peace was kept.  When you should come to years of discretion, then it
+would be for you to carry out the intention wherewith your father and
+grandfather left home."
+
+"Then we have been protected by the peace of the empire all this
+time?" said Friedel, while Ebbo looked as if the notion were hard of
+digestion.
+
+"Even so; and, had you not freely and nobly released your Genoese
+merchant, it had gone hard with Adlerstein."
+
+"Could Adlerstein be taken?" demanded Ebbo triumphantly.
+
+"Your grandmother thought not," said Sir Kasimir, with a shade of
+irony in his tone.  "It would be a troublesome siege; but the League
+numbers 1,500 horse, and 9,000 foot, and, with Schlangenwald's
+concurrence, you would be assuredly starved out."
+
+Ebbo was so much the more stimulated to take his chance, and do
+nothing on compulsion; but Friedel put in the question to what the
+oaths would bind them.
+
+"Only to aid the Emperor with sword and counsel in field or Diet, and
+thereby win fame and honour such as can scarce be gained by carrying
+prey to yon eagle roost."
+
+"One may preserve one's independence without robbery," said Ebbo
+coldly.
+
+"Nay, lad:  did you ever hear of a wolf that could live without
+marauding?  Or if he tried, would he get credit for so doing?"
+
+"After all," said Friedel, "does not the present agreement hold till
+we are of age?  I suppose the Swabian League would attempt nothing
+against minors, unless we break the peace?"
+
+"Probably not; I will do my utmost to give the Freiherr there time to
+grow beyond his grandmother's maxims," said Wildschloss.  "If
+Schlangenwald do not meddle in the matter, he may have the next five
+years to decide whether Adlerstein can hold out against all Germany."
+
+"Freiherr Kasimir von Adlerstein Wildschloss," said Eberhard, turning
+solemnly on him, "I do you to wit once for all that threats will not
+serve with me.  If I submit, it will be because I am convinced it is
+right.  Otherwise we had rather both be buried in the ruins of our
+castle, as its last free lords."
+
+"So!" said the provoking kinsman; "such burials look grim when the
+time comes, but happily it is not coming yet!"
+
+Meantime, as Ebbo said to Friedel, how much might happen--a
+disruption of the empire, a crusade against the Turks, a war in
+Italy, some grand means of making the Diet value the sword of a free
+baron, without chaining him down to gratify the greed of hungry
+Austria.  If only Wildschloss could be shaken off!  But he only
+became constantly more friendly and intrusive, almost paternal.  No
+wonder, when the mother and her uncle made him so welcome, and were
+so intolerably grateful for his impertinent interference, while even
+Friedel confessed the reasonableness of his counsels, as if that were
+not the very sting of them.
+
+He even asked leave to bring his little daughter Thekla from her
+convent to see the Lady of Adlerstein.  She was a pretty, flaxen-
+haired maiden of five years old, in a round cap, and long narrow
+frock, with a little cross at the neck.  She had never seen any one
+beyond the walls of the nunnery; and, when her father took her from
+the lay sister's arms, and carried her to the gallery, where sat
+Hausfrau Johanna, in dark green, slashed with cherry colour, Master
+Gottfried, in sober crimson, with gold medal and chain, Freiherrinn
+Christina, in silver-broidered black, and the two Junkern stood near
+in the shining mail in which they were going to the tilt yard, she
+turned her head in terror, struggled with her scarce known father,
+and shrieked for Sister Grethel.
+
+"It was all too sheen," she sobbed, in the lay sister's arms; "she
+did not want to be in Paradise yet, among the saints!  O! take her
+back!  The two bright, holy Michaels would let her go, for indeed she
+had made but one mistake in her Ave."
+
+Vain was the attempt to make her lift her face from the black serge
+shoulder where she had hidden it.  Sister Grethel coaxed and scolded,
+Sir Kasimir reproved, the housemother offered comfits, and
+Christina's soft voice was worst of all, for the child, probably
+taking her for Our Lady herself, began to gasp forth a general
+confession.  "I will never do so again!  Yes, it was a fib, but
+Mother Hildegard gave me a bit of marchpane not to tell--"  Here the
+lay sister took strong measures for closing the little mouth, and
+Christina drew back, recommending that the child should be left
+gradually to discover their terrestrial nature.  Ebbo had looked on
+with extreme disgust, trying to hurry Friedel, who had delayed to
+trace some lines for his mother on her broidery pattern.  In passing
+the step where Grethel sat with Thekla on her lap, the clank of their
+armour caused the uplifting of the little flaxen head, and two wide
+blue eyes looked over Grethel's shoulder, and met Friedel's sunny
+glance.  He smiled; she laughed back again.  He held out his arms,
+and, though his hands were gauntleted, she let him lift her up, and
+curiously smoothed and patted his cheek, as if he had been a strange
+animal.
+
+"You have no wings," she said.  "Are you St. George, or St. Michael?"
+
+"Neither the one nor the other, pretty one.  Only your poor cousin
+Friedel von Adlerstein, and here is Ebbo, my brother."
+
+It was not in Ebbo's nature not to smile encouragement at the fair
+little face, with its wistful look.  He drew off his glove to caress
+her silken hair, and for a few minutes she was played with by the two
+brothers like a newly-invented toy, receiving their attentions with
+pretty half-frightened graciousness, until Count Rudiger hastened in
+to summon them, and Friedel placed her on his mother's knee, where
+she speedily became perfectly happy, and at ease.
+
+Her extreme delight, when towards evening the Junkern returned, was
+flattering even to Ebbo; and, when it was time for her to be taken
+home, she made strong resistance, clinging fast to Christina, with
+screams and struggles.  To the lady's promise of coming to see her
+she replied, "Friedel and Ebbo, too," and, receiving no response to
+this request, she burst out, "Then I won't come!  I am the
+Freiherrinn Thekla, the heiress of Adlerstein Wildschloss and
+Felsenbach.  I won't be a nun.  I'll be married!  You shall be my
+husband," and she made a dart at the nearest youth, who happened to
+be Ebbo.
+
+"Ay, ay, you shall have him.  He will come for you, sweetest
+Fraulein," said the perplexed Grethel, "so only you will come home!
+Nobody will come for you if you are naughty."
+
+"Will you come if I am good?" said the spoilt cloister pet, clinging
+tight to Ebbo.
+
+"Yes," said her father, as she still resisted, "come back, my child,
+and one day shall you see Ebbo, and have him for a brother."
+
+Thereat Ebbo shook off the little grasping fingers, almost as if they
+had belonged to a noxious insect.
+
+"The matron's coif should succeed the widow's veil."  He might talk
+with scholarly contempt of the new race of Bohemian impostors; but
+there was no forgetting that sentence.  And in like manner, though
+his grandmother's allegation that his mother had been bent on
+captivating Sir Kasimir in that single interview at Adlerstein, had
+always seemed to him the most preposterous of all Kunigunde's forms
+of outrage, the recollection would recur to him; and he could have
+found it in his heart to wish that his mother had never heard of the
+old lady's designs as to the oubliette.  He did most sincerely wish
+Master Gottfried had never let Wildschloss know of the mode in which
+his life had been saved.  Yet, while it would have seemed to him
+profane to breathe even to Friedel the true secret of his repugnance
+to this meddlesome kinsman, it was absolutely impossible to avoid his
+most distasteful authority and patronage.
+
+And the mother herself was gently, thankfully happy and unsuspicious,
+basking in the tender home affection of which she had so long been
+deprived, proud of her sons, and, though anxious as to Ebbo's
+decision, with a quiet trust in his foundation of principle, and
+above all trusting to prayer.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV:  THE DOUBLE-HEADED EAGLE
+
+
+
+One summer evening, when shooting at a bird on a pole was in full
+exercise in the tilt-yard, the sports were interrupted by a message
+from the Provost that a harbinger had brought tidings that the
+Imperial court was within a day's journey.
+
+All was preparation.  Fresh sand had to be strewn on the arena.  New
+tapestry hangings were to deck the galleries, the houses and
+balconies to be brave with drapery, the fountain in the market-place
+was to play Rhine wine, all Ulm was astir to do honour to itself and
+to the Kaisar, and Ebbo stood amid all the bustle, drawing lines in
+the sand with the stock of his arblast, subject to all that
+oppressive self-magnification so frequent in early youth, and which
+made it seem to him as if the Kaisar and the King of the Romans were
+coming to Ulm with the mere purpose of destroying his independence,
+and as if the eyes of all Germany were watching for his humiliation.
+
+"See! see!" suddenly exclaimed Friedel; "look! there is something
+among the tracery of the Dome Kirk Tower.  Is it man or bird?"
+
+"Bird, folly!  Thou couldst see no bird less than an eagle from
+hence," said Ebbo.  "No doubt they are about to hoist a banner."
+
+"That is not their wont," returned Sir Kasimir.
+
+"I see him," interrupted Ebbo.  "Nay, but he is a bold climber!  We
+went up to that stage, close to the balcony, but there's no footing
+beyond but crockets and canopies."
+
+"And a bit of rotten scaffold," added Friedel.  "Perhaps he is a
+builder going to examine it!  Up higher, higher!"
+
+"A builder!" said Ebbo; "a man with a head and foot like that should
+be a chamois hunter!  Shouldst thou deem it worse than the Red Eyrie,
+Friedel?"
+
+"Yea, truly!  The depth beneath is plainer!  There would be no
+climbing there without--"
+
+"Without what, cousin?" asked Wildschloss.
+
+"Without great cause," said Friedel.  "It is fearful!  He is like a
+fly against the sky."
+
+"Beaten again!" muttered Ebbo; "I did think that none of these town-
+bred fellows could surpass us when it came to a giddy height!  Who
+can he be?"
+
+"Look! look!" burst out Friedel.  "The saints protect him!  He is on
+that narrowest topmost ledge--measuring; his heel is over the
+parapet--half his foot!"
+
+"Holding on by the rotten scaffold pole!  St. Barbara be his speed;
+but he is a brave man!" shouted Ebbo.  "Oh! the pole has broken."
+
+"Heaven forefend!" cried Wildschloss, with despair on his face unseen
+by the boys, for Friedel had hidden his eyes, and Ebbo was straining
+his with the intense gaze of horror.  He had carried his glance
+downwards, following the 380 feet fall that must be the lot of the
+adventurer.  Then looking up again he shouted, "I see him!  I see
+him!  Praise to St. Barbara!  He is safe!  He has caught by the
+upright stone work."
+
+"Where? where?  Show me!" cried Wildschloss, grasping Ebbo's arm.
+
+"There! clinging to that upright bit of tracery, stretching his foot
+out to yonder crocket."
+
+"I cannot see.  Mine eyes swim and dazzle," said Wildschloss.
+"Merciful heavens! is this another tempting of Providence?  How is it
+with him now, Ebbo?"
+
+"Swarming down another slender bit of the stone network.  It must be
+easy now to one who could keep head and hand steady in such a shock."
+
+"There!" added Friedel, after a breathless space, "he is on the lower
+parapet, whence begins the stair.  Do you know him, sir?  Who is he?"
+
+"Either a Venetian mountebank," said Wildschloss, "or else there is
+only one man I know of either so foolhardy or so steady of head."
+
+"Be he who he may," said Ebbo, "he is the bravest man that ever I
+beheld.  Who is he, Sir Kasimir?"
+
+"An eagle of higher flight than ours, no doubt," said Wildschloss.
+"But come; we shall reach the Dome Kirk by the time the climber has
+wound his way down the turret stairs, and we shall see what like he
+is."
+
+Their coming was well timed, for a small door at the foot of the
+tower was just opening to give exit to a very tall knight, in one of
+those short Spanish cloaks the collar of which could be raised so as
+to conceal the face.  He looked to the right and left, and had one
+hand raised to put up the collar when he recognized Sir Kasimir, and,
+holding out both hands, exclaimed, "Ha, Adlerstein! well met!  I
+looked to see thee here.  No unbonneting; I am not come yet.  I am at
+Strasburg, with the Kaisar and the Archduke, and am not here till we
+ride in, in purple and in pall by the time the good folk have hung
+out their arras, and donned their gold chains, and conned their
+speeches, and mounted their mules."
+
+"Well that their speeches are not over the lykewake of his kingly
+kaisarly highness," gravely returned Sir Kasimir.
+
+"Ha!  Thou sawest?  I came out here to avoid the gaping throng, who
+don't know what a hunter can do.  I have been in worse case in the
+Tyrol.  Snowdrifts are worse footing than stone vine leaves."
+
+"Where abides your highness?" asked Wildschloss.
+
+"I ride back again to the halting-place for the night, and meet my
+father in time to do my part in the pageant.  I was sick of the
+addresses, and, moreover, the purse-proud Flemings have made such a
+stiff little fop of my poor boy that I am ashamed to look at him, or
+hear his French accent.  So I rode off to get a view of this notable
+Dom in peace, ere it be bedizened in holiday garb; and one can't stir
+without all the Chapter waddling after one."
+
+"Your highness has found means of distancing them."
+
+"Why, truly, the Prior would scarce delight in the view from yonder
+parapet," laughed his highness.  "Ha!  Adlerstein, where didst get
+such a perfect pair of pages?  I would I could match my hounds as
+well."
+
+"They are no pages of mine, so please you," said the knight; "rather
+this is the head of my name.  Let me present to your kingly highness
+the Freiherr von Adlerstein."
+
+"Thou dost not thyself distinguish between them!" said Maximilian, as
+Friedmund stepped back, putting forward Eberhard, whose bright,
+lively smile of interest and admiration had been the cause of his
+cousin's mistake.  They would have doffed their caps and bent the
+knee, but were hastily checked by Maximilian.  "No, no, Junkern, I
+shall owe you no thanks for bringing all the street on me!--that's
+enough.  Reserve the rest for Kaisar Fritz."  Then, familiarly taking
+Sir Kasimir's arm, he walked on, saying, "I remember now.  Thou
+wentest after an inheritance from the old Mouser of the Debateable
+Ford, and wert ousted by a couple of lusty boys sprung of a peasant
+wedlock."
+
+"Nay, my lord, of a burgher lady, fair as she is wise and virtuous;
+who, spite of all hindrances, has bred up these youths in all good
+and noble nurture."
+
+"Is this so?" said the king, turning sharp round on the twins.  "Are
+ye minded to quit freebooting, and come a crusading against the Turks
+with me?"
+
+"Everywhere with such a leader!" enthusiastically exclaimed Ebbo.
+
+"'What? up there?" said Maximilian, smiling.  "Thou hast the tread of
+a chamois-hunter."
+
+"Friedel has been on the Red Eyrie," exclaimed Ebbo; then, thinking
+he had spoken foolishly, he coloured.
+
+"Which is the Red Eyrie?" good-humouredly asked the king.
+
+"It is the crag above our castle," said Friedel, modestly.
+
+"None other has been there," added Ebbo, perceiving his auditor's
+interest; "but he saw the eagle flying away with a poor widow's kid,
+and the sight must have given him wings, for we never could find the
+same path; but here is one of the feathers he brought down"--taking
+off his cap so as to show a feather rather the worse for wear, and
+sheltered behind a fresher one.
+
+"Nay," said Friedel, "thou shouldst say that I came to a ledge where
+I had like to have stayed all night, but that ye all came out with
+men and ropes."
+
+"We know what such a case is!" said the king.  "It has chanced to us
+to hang between heaven and earth; I've even had the Holy Sacrament
+held up for my last pious gaze by those who gave me up for lost on
+the mountain-side.  Adlerstein?  The peak above the Braunwasser?
+Some day shall ye show me this eyrie of yours, and we will see
+whether we can amaze our cousins the eagles.  We see you at our
+father's court to-morrow?" he graciously added, and Ebbo gave a ready
+bow of acquiescence.
+
+"There," said the king, as after their dismissal he walked on with
+Sir Kasimir, "never blame me for rashness and imprudence.  Here has
+this height of the steeple proved the height of policy.  It has made
+a loyal subject of a Mouser on the spot."
+
+"Pray Heaven it may have won a heart, true though proud!" said
+Wildschloss; "but mousing was cured before by the wise training of
+the mother.  Your highness will have taken out the sting of
+submission, and you will scarce find more faithful subjects."
+
+"How old are the Junkern?"
+
+"Some sixteen years, your highness."
+
+"That is what living among mountains does for a lad.  Why could not
+those thrice-accursed Flemish towns let me breed up my boy to be good
+for something in the mountains, instead of getting duck-footed and
+muddy-witted in the fens?"
+
+In the meantime Ebbo and Friedel were returning home in that sort of
+passion of enthusiasm that ingenuous boyhood feels when first brought
+into contact with greatness or brilliant qualities.
+
+And brilliance was the striking point in Maximilian.  The Last of the
+Knights, in spite of his many defects, was, by personal qualities,
+and the hereditary influence of long-descended rank, verily a king of
+men in aspect and demeanour, even when most careless and simple.  He
+was at this time a year or two past thirty, unusually tall, and with
+a form at once majestic and full of vigour and activity; a noble,
+fair, though sunburnt countenance; eyes of dark gray, almost black;
+long fair hair, a keen aquiline nose, a lip only beginning to
+lengthen to the characteristic Austrian feature, an expression always
+lofty, sometimes dreamy, and yet at the same time full of acuteness
+and humour.  His abilities were of the highest order, his purposes,
+especially at this period of his life, most noble and becoming in the
+first prince of Christendom; and, if his life were a failure, and his
+reputation unworthy of his endowments, the cause seems to have been
+in great measure the bewilderment and confusion that unusual gifts
+sometimes cause to their possessor, whose sight their conflicting
+illumination dazzles so as to impair his steadiness of aim, while
+their contending gleams light him into various directions, so that
+one object is deserted for another ere its completion.  Thus
+Maximilian cuts a figure in history far inferior to that made by his
+grandson, Charles V., whom he nevertheless excelled in every personal
+quality, except the most needful of all, force of character; and, in
+like manner, his remote descendant, the narrow-minded Ferdinand of
+Styria, gained his ends, though the able and brilliant Joseph II. was
+to die broken-hearted, calling his reign a failure and mistake.
+However, such terms as these could not be applied to Maximilian with
+regard to home affairs.  He has had hard measure from those who have
+only regarded his vacillating foreign policy, especially with respect
+to Italy--ever the temptation and the bane of Austria; but even here
+much of his uncertain conduct was owing to the unfulfilled promises
+of what he himself called his "realm of kings," and a sovereign can
+only justly be estimated by his domestic policy.  The contrast of the
+empire before his time with the subsequent Germany is that of chaos
+with order.  Since the death of Friedrich II. the Imperial title had
+been a mockery, making the prince who chanced to bear it a mere mark
+for the spite of his rivals; there was no centre of justice, no
+appeal; everybody might make war on everybody, with the sole
+preliminary of exchanging a challenge; "fist-right" was the
+acknowledged law of the land; and, except in the free cities, and
+under such a happy accident as a right-minded prince here and there,
+the state of Germany seems to have been rather worse than that of
+Scotland from Bruce to the union of the Crowns.  Under Maximilian,
+the Diet became an effective council, fist-right was abolished,
+independent robber-lords put down, civilization began to effect an
+entrance, the system of circles was arranged, and the empire again
+became a leading power in Europe, instead of a mere vortex of
+disorder and misrule.  Never would Charles V. have held the position
+he occupied had he come after an ordinary man, instead of after an
+able and sagacious reformer like that Maximilian who is popularly
+regarded as a fantastic caricature of a knight-errant, marred by
+avarice and weakness of purpose.
+
+At the juncture of which we are writing, none of Maximilian's less
+worthy qualities had appeared; he had not been rendered shifty and
+unscrupulous by difficulties and disappointments in money matters,
+and had not found it impossible to keep many of the promises he had
+given in all good faith.  He stood forth as the hope of Germany, in
+salient contrast to the feeble and avaricious father, who was felt to
+be the only obstacle in the way of his noble designs of establishing
+peace and good discipline in the empire, and conducting a general
+crusade against the Turks, whose progress was the most threatening
+peril of Christendom.  His fame was, of course, frequently discussed
+among the citizens, with whom he was very popular, not only from his
+ease and freedom of manner, but because his graceful tastes, his love
+of painting, sculpture, architecture, and the mechanical turn which
+made him an improver of fire-arms and a patron of painting and
+engraving, rendered their society more agreeable to him than that of
+his dull, barbarous nobility.  Ebbo had heard so much of the
+perfections of the King of the Romans as to be prepared to hate him;
+but the boy, as we have seen, was of a generous, sensitive nature,
+peculiarly prone to enthusiastic impressions of veneration; and
+Maximilian's high-spirited manhood, personal fascination, and
+individual kindness had so entirely taken him by surprise, that he
+talked of him all the evening in a more fervid manner than did even
+Friedel, though both could scarcely rest for their anticipations of
+seeing him on the morrow in the full state of his entry.
+
+Richly clad, and mounted on cream-coloured steeds, nearly as much
+alike as themselves, the twins were a pleasant sight for a proud
+mother's eyes, as they rode out to take their place in the procession
+that was to welcome the royal guests.  Master Sorel, in ample gown,
+richly furred, with medal and chain of office, likewise went forth as
+Guildmaster; and Christina, with smiling lips and liquid eyes,
+recollected the days when to see him in such array was her keenest
+pleasure, and the utmost splendour her fancy could depict.
+
+Arrayed, as her sons loved to see her, in black velvet, and with
+pearl-bordered cap, Christina sat by her aunt in the tapestried
+balcony, and between them stood or sat little Thekla von Adlerstein
+Wildschloss, whose father had entrusted her to their care, to see the
+procession pass by.  A rich Eastern carpet, of gorgeous colouring,
+covered the upper balustrade, over which they leant, in somewhat
+close quarters with the scarlet-bodiced dames of the opposite house,
+but with ample space for sight up and down the rows of smiling
+expectants at each balcony, or window, equally gay with hangings,
+while the bells of all the churches clashed forth their gayest
+chimes, and fitful bursts of music were borne upon the breeze.
+Little Thekla danced in the narrow space for very glee, and wondered
+why any one should live in a cloister when the world was so wide and
+so fair.  And Dame Johanna tried to say something pious of worldly
+temptations, and the cloister shelter; but Thekla interrupted her,
+and, clinging to Christina, exclaimed, "Nay, but I am always naughty
+with Mother Ludmilla in the convent, and I know I should never be
+naughty out here with you and the barons; I should be so happy."
+
+"Hush! hush! little one; here they come!"
+
+On they came--stout lanzknechts first, the city guard with steel
+helmets unadorned, buff suits, and bearing either harquebuses,
+halberts, or those handsome but terrible weapons, morning stars.
+Then followed guild after guild, each preceded by the banner bearing
+its homely emblem--the cauldron of the smiths, the hose of the
+clothiers, the helmet of the armourers, the bason of the barbers, the
+boot of the sutors; even the sausage of the cooks, and the shoe of
+the shoeblacks, were re-presented, as by men who gloried in the
+calling in which they did life's duty and task.
+
+First in each of these bands marched the prentices, stout, broad,
+flat-faced lads, from twenty to fourteen years of age, with hair like
+tow hanging from under their blue caps, staves in their hands, and
+knives at their girdles.  Behind them came the journeymen, in
+leathern jerkins and steel caps, and armed with halberts or cross-
+bows; men of all ages, from sixty to one or two and twenty, and many
+of the younger ones with foreign countenances and garb betokening
+that they were strangers spending part of their wandering years in
+studying the Ulm fashions of their craft.  Each trade showed a large
+array of these juniors; but the masters who came behind were
+comparatively few, mostly elderly, long-gowned, gold-chained
+personages, with a weight of solid dignity on their wise brows--men
+who respected themselves, made others respect them, and kept their
+city a peaceful, well-ordered haven, while storms raged in the realm
+beyond--men too who had raised to the glory of their God a temple,
+not indeed fulfilling the original design, but a noble effort, and
+grand monument of burgher devotion.
+
+Then came the ragged regiment of scholars, wild lads from every part
+of Germany and Switzerland, some wan and pinched with hardship and
+privation, others sturdy, selfish rogues, evidently well able to take
+care of themselves.  There were many rude, tyrannical-looking lads
+among the older lads; and, though here and there a studious, earnest
+face might be remarked, the prospect of Germany's future priests and
+teachers was not encouraging.  And what a searching ordeal was
+awaiting those careless lads when the voice of one, as yet still a
+student, should ring through Germany!
+
+Contrasting with these ill-kempt pupils marched the grave professors
+and teachers, in square ecclesiastic caps and long gowns, whose
+colours marked their degrees and the Universities that had conferred
+them--some thin, some portly, some jocund, others dreamy; some
+observing all the humours around, others still intent on Aristotelian
+ethics; all men of high fame, with doctor at the beginning of their
+names, and "or" or "us" at the close of them.  After them rode the
+magistracy, a burgomaster from each guild, and the Herr Provost
+himself--as great a potentate within his own walls as the Doge of
+Venice or of Genoa, or perhaps greater, because less jealously
+hampered.  In this dignified group was Uncle Gottfried, by complacent
+nod and smile acknowledging his good wife and niece, who indeed had
+received many a previous glance and bow from friends passing beneath.
+But Master Sorel was no new spectacle in a civic procession, and the
+sight of him was only a pleasant fillip to the excitement of his
+ladies.
+
+Here was jingling of spurs and trampling of horses; heraldic
+achievements showed upon the banners, round which rode the mail-clad
+retainers of country nobles who had mustered to meet their lords.
+Then, with still more of clank and tramp, rode a bright-faced troop
+of lads, with feathered caps and gay mantles.  Young Count Rudiger
+looked up with courteous salutation; and just behind him, with
+smiling lips and upraised faces, were the pair whose dark eyes, dark
+hair, and slender forms rendered them conspicuous among the fair
+Teutonic youth.  Each cap was taken off and waved, and each pair of
+lustrous eyes glanced up pleasure and exultation at the sight of the
+lovely "Mutterlein."  And she?  The pageant was well-nigh over to
+her, save for heartily agreeing with Aunt Johanna that there was not
+a young noble of them all to compare with the twin Barons of
+Adlerstein!  However, she knew she should be called to account if she
+did not look well at "the Romish King;" besides, Thekla was shrieking
+with delight at the sight of her father, tall and splendid on his
+mighty black charger, with a smile for his child, and for the lady a
+bow so low and deferential that it was evidently remarked by those at
+whose approach every lady in the balconies was rising, every head in
+the street was bared.
+
+A tall, thin, shrivelled, but exceedingly stately old man on a gray
+horse was in the centre.  Clad in a purple velvet mantle, and bowing
+as he went, he looked truly the Kaisar, to whom stately courtesy was
+second nature.  On one side, in black and gold, with the jewel of the
+Golden Fleece on his breast, rode Maximilian, responding gracefully
+to the salutations of the people, but his keen gray eye roving in
+search of the object of Sir Kasimir's salute, and lighting on
+Christina with such a rapid, amused glance of discovery that, in her
+confusion, she missed what excited Dame Johanna's rapturous
+admiration--the handsome boy on the Emperor's other side, a fair,
+plump lad, the young sovereign of the Low Countries, beautiful in
+feature and complexion, but lacking the fire and the loftiness that
+characterized his father's countenance.  The train was closed by the
+Reitern of the Emperor's guard--steel-clad mercenaries who were
+looked on with no friendly eyes by the few gazers in the street who
+had been left behind in the general rush to keep up with the
+attractive part of the show.
+
+Pageants of elaborate mythological character impeded the imperial
+progress at every stage, and it was full two hours ere the two youths
+returned, heartily weary of the lengthened ceremonial, and laughing
+at having actually seen the King of the Romans enduring to be
+conducted from shrine to shrine in the cathedral by a large
+proportion of its dignitaries.  Ebbo was sure he had caught an archly
+disconsolate wink!
+
+Ebbo had to dress for the banquet spread in the town-hall.  Space was
+wanting for the concourse of guests, and Master Sorel had decided
+that the younger Baron should not be included in the invitation.
+Friedel pardoned him more easily than did Ebbo, who not only resented
+any slight to his double, but in his fits of shy pride needed the aid
+of his readier and brighter other self.  But it might not be, and Sir
+Kasimir and Master Gottfried alone accompanied him, hoping that he
+would not look as wild as a hawk, and would do nothing to diminish
+the favourable impression he had made on the King of the Romans.
+
+Late, according to mediaeval hours, was the return, and Ebbo spoke in
+a tone of elation.  "The Kaisar was most gracious, and the king knew
+me," he said, "and asked for thee, Friedel, saying one of us was
+nought without the other.  But thou wilt go to-morrow, for we are to
+receive knighthood."
+
+"Already!" exclaimed Friedel, a bright glow rushing to his cheek.
+
+"Yea," said Ebbo.  "The Romish king said somewhat about waiting to
+win our spurs; but the Kaisar said I was in a position to take rank
+as a knight, and I thanked him, so thou shouldst share the honour."
+
+"The Kaisar," said Wildschloss, "is not the man to let a knight's fee
+slip between his fingers.  The king would have kept off their grip,
+and reserved you for knighthood from his own sword under the banner
+of the empire; but there is no help for it now, and you must make
+your vassals send in their dues."
+
+"My vassals?" said Ebbo; "what could they send?"
+
+"The aid customary on the knighthood of the heir."
+
+"But there is--there is nothing!" said Friedel.  "They can scarce pay
+meal and poultry enough for our daily fare; and if we were to flay
+them alive, we should not get sixty groschen from the whole."
+
+"True enough!  Knighthood must wait till we win it," said Ebbo,
+gloomily.
+
+"Nay, it is accepted," said Wildschloss.  "The Kaisar loves his iron
+chest too well to let you go back.  You must be ready with your round
+sum to the chancellor, and your spur-money and your fee to the
+heralds, and largess to the crowd."
+
+"Mother, the dowry," said Ebbo.
+
+"At your service, my son," said Christina, anxious to chase the cloud
+from his brow.
+
+But it was a deep haul, for the avaricious Friedrich IV. made
+exorbitant charges for the knighting his young nobles; and Ebbo soon
+saw that the improvements at home must suffer for the honours that
+would have been so much better won than bought.
+
+"If your vassals cannot aid, yet may not your kinsman--?" began
+Wildschloss.
+
+"No!" interrupted Ebbo, lashed up to hot indignation.  "No, sir!
+Rather will my mother, brother, and I ride back this very night to
+unfettered liberty on our mountain, without obligation to any living
+man."
+
+"Less hotly, Sir Baron," said Master Gottfried, gravely.  "You broke
+in on your noble godfather, and you had not heard me speak.  You and
+your brother are the old man's only heirs, nor do ye incur any
+obligation that need fret you by forestalling what would be your just
+right.  I will see my nephews as well equipped as any young baron of
+them."
+
+The mother looked anxiously at Ebbo.  He bent his head with rising
+colour, and said, "Thanks, kind uncle.  From YOU I have learnt to
+look on goodness as fatherly."
+
+"Only," added Friedel, "if the Baron's station renders knighthood
+fitting for him, surely I might remain his esquire."
+
+"Never, Friedel!" cried his brother.  "Without thee, nothing."
+
+"Well said, Freiherr," said Master Sorel; "what becomes the one
+becomes the other.  I would not have thee left out, my Friedel, since
+I cannot leave thee the mysteries of my craft."
+
+"To-morrow!" said Friedel, gravely.  "Then must the vigil be kept to-
+night."
+
+"The boy thinks these are the days of Roland and Karl the Great,"
+said Wildschloss.  "He would fain watch his arms in the moonlight in
+the Dome Kirk!  Alas! no, my Friedel!  Knighthood in these days
+smacks more of bezants than of deeds of prowess."
+
+"Unbearable fellow!" cried Ebbo, when he had latched the door of the
+room he shared with his brother.  "First, holding up my inexperience
+to scorn!  As though the Kaisar knew not better than he what befits
+me!  Then trying to buy my silence and my mother's gratitude with his
+hateful advance of gold.  As if I did not loathe him enough without!
+If I pay my homage, and sign the League to-morrow, it will be purely
+that he may not plume himself on our holding our own by sufferance,
+in deference to him."
+
+"You will sign it--you will do homage!" exclaimed Friedel.  "How
+rejoiced the mother will be."
+
+"I had rather depend at once--if depend I must--on yonder dignified
+Kaisar and that noble king than on our meddling kinsman," said Ebbo.
+"I shall be his equal now!  Ay, and no more classed with the court
+Junkern I was with to-day.  The dullards!  No one reasonable thing
+know they but the chase.  One had been at Florence; and when I asked
+him of the Baptistery and rare Giotto of whom my uncle told us, he
+asked if he were a knight of the Medici.  All he knew was that there
+were ortolans at Ser Lorenzo's table; and he and the rest of them
+talked over wines as many and as hard to call as the roll of AEneas's
+comrades; and when each one must drink to her he loved best, and I
+said I loved none like my sweet mother, they gibed me for a simple
+dutiful mountaineer.  Yea, and when the servants brought a bowl, I
+thought it was a wholesome draught of spring water after all their
+hot wines and fripperies.  Pah!"
+
+"The rose-water, Ebbo!  No wonder they laughed!  Why, the bowls for
+our fingers came round at the banquet here."
+
+"Ah! thou hast eyes for their finikin manners!  Yet what know they of
+what we used to long for in polished life!  Not one but vowed he
+abhorred books, and cursed Dr. Faustus for multiplying them.  I may
+not know the taste of a stew, nor the fit of a glove, as they do, but
+I trust I bear a less empty brain.  And the young Netherlanders that
+came with the Archduke were worst of all.  They got together and
+gabbled French, and treated the German Junkern with the very same
+sauce with which they had served me.  The Archduke laughed with them,
+and when the Provost addressed him, made as if he understood not,
+till his father heard, and thundered out, 'How now, Philip!  Deaf on
+thy German ear?  I tell thee, Herr Probst, he knows his own tongue as
+well as thou or I, and thou shalt hear him speak as becomes the son
+of an Austrian hunter.'  That Romish king is a knight of knights,
+Friedel.  I could follow him to the world's end.  I wonder whether he
+will ever come to climb the Red Eyrie."
+
+"It does not seem the world's end when one is there," said Friedel,
+with strange yearnings in his breast.
+
+"Even the Dom steeple never rose to its full height," he added,
+standing in the window, and gazing pensively into the summer sky.
+"Oh, Ebbo! this knighthood has come very suddenly after our many
+dreams; and, even though its outward tokens be lowered, it is still a
+holy, awful thing."
+
+Nurtured in mountain solitude, on romance transmitted through the
+pure medium of his mother's mind, and his spirit untainted by contact
+with the world, Friedmund von Adlerstein looked on chivalry with the
+temper of a Percival or Galahad, and regarded it with a sacred awe.
+Eberhard, though treating it more as a matter of business, was like
+enough to his brother to enter into the force of the vows they were
+about to make; and if the young Barons of Adlerstein did not perform
+the night-watch over their armour, yet they kept a vigil that
+impressed their own minds as deeply, and in early morn they went to
+confession and mass ere the gay parts of the city were astir.
+
+"Sweet niece," said Master Sorel, as he saw the brothers' grave,
+earnest looks, "thou hast done well by these youths; yet I doubt me
+at times whether they be not too much lifted out of this veritable
+world of ours."
+
+"Ah, fair uncle, were they not above it, how could they face its
+temptations?"
+
+"True, my child; but how will it be when they find how lightly others
+treat what to them is so solemn?"
+
+"There must be temptations for them, above all for Ebbo," said
+Christina, "but still, when I remember how my heart sank when their
+grandmother tried to bring them up to love crime as sport and glory,
+I cannot but trust that the good work will be wrought out, and my
+dream fulfilled, that they may be lights on earth and stars in
+heaven.  Even this matter of homage, that seemed so hard to my Ebbo,
+has now been made easy to him by his veneration for the Emperor."
+
+It was even so.  If the sense that he was the last veritable FREE
+lord of Adlerstein rushed over Ebbo, he was, on the other hand,
+overmastered by the kingliness of Friedrich and Maximilian, and was
+aware that this submission, while depriving him of little or no
+actual power, brought him into relations with the civilized world,
+and opened to him paths of true honour.  So the ceremonies were gone
+through, his oath of allegiance was made, investiture was granted to
+him by the delivery of a sword, and both he and Friedel were dubbed
+knights.  Then they shared another banquet, where, as away from the
+Junkern and among elder men, Ebbo was happier than the day before.
+Some of the knights seemed to him as rude and ignorant as the
+Schneiderlein, but no one talked to him nor observed his manners, and
+he could listen to conversation on war and policy such as interested
+him far more than the subjects affected by youths a little older than
+himself.  Their lonely life and training had rendered the minds of
+the brothers as much in advance of their fellows as they were behind
+them in knowledge of the world.
+
+The crass obtuseness of most of the nobility made it a relief to
+return to the usual habits of the Sorel household when the court had
+left Ulm.  Friedmund, anxious to prove that his new honours were not
+to alter his home demeanour, was drawing on a block of wood from a
+tinted pen-and-ink sketch; Ebbo was deeply engaged with a newly-
+acquired copy of Virgil; and their mother was embroidering some
+draperies for the long-neglected castle chapel,--all sitting, as
+Master Gottfried loved to have them, in his studio, whence he had a
+few moments before been called away, when, as the door slowly opened,
+a voice was heard that made both lads start and rise.
+
+"Yea, truly, Herr Guildmaster, I would see these masterpieces.  Ha!
+What have you here for masterpieces?  Our two new double-ganger
+knights?"  And Maximilian entered in a simple riding-dress, attended
+by Master Gottfried, and by Sir Kasimir of Adlerstein Wildschloss.
+
+Christina would fain have slipped out unperceived, but the king was
+already removing his cap from his fair curling locks, and bending his
+head as he said, "The Frau Freiherrinn von Adlerstein?  Fair lady, I
+greet you well, and thank you in the Kaisar's name and mine for
+having bred up for us two true and loyal subjects."
+
+"May they so prove themselves, my liege!" said Christina, bending
+low.
+
+"And not only loyal-hearted," added Maximilian, smiling, "but ready-
+brained, which is less frequent among our youth.  What is thy book,
+young knight?  Virgilius Maro?  Dost thou read the Latin?" he added,
+in that tongue.
+
+"Not as well as we wish, your kingly highness," readily answered
+Ebbo, in Latin, "having learnt solely of our mother till we came
+hither."
+
+"Never fear for that, my young blade," laughed the king.  "Knowst not
+that the wiseacres thought me too dull for teaching till I was past
+ten years?  And what is thy double about?  Drawing on wood?  How now!
+An able draughtsman, my young knight?"
+
+"My nephew Sir Friedmund is good to the old man," said Gottfried,
+himself almost regretting the lad's avocation.  "My eyes are failing
+me, and he is aiding me with the graving of this border.  He has the
+knack that no teaching will impart to any of my present journeymen."
+
+"Born, not made," quoth Maximilian.  "Nay," as Friedel coloured
+deeper at the sense that Ebbo was ashamed of him, "no blushes, my
+boy; it is a rare gift.  I can make a hundred knights any day, but
+the Almighty alone can make a genius.  It was this very matter of
+graving that led me hither."
+
+For Maximilian had a passion for composition, and chiefly for
+autobiography, and his head was full of that curious performance, Der
+Weisse Konig, which occupied many of the leisure moments of his life,
+being dictated to his former writing-master, Marcus Sauerwein.  He
+had already designed the portrayal of his father as the old white
+king, and himself as the young white king, in a series of woodcuts
+illustrating the narrative which culminated in the one romance of his
+life, his brief happy marriage with Mary of Burgundy; and he
+continued eagerly to talk to Master Gottfried about the mystery of
+graving, and the various scenes in which he wished to depict himself
+learning languages from native speakers--Czech from a peasant with a
+basket of eggs, English from the exiles at the Burgundian court, who
+had also taught him the use of the longbow, building from architects
+and masons, painting from artists, and, more imaginatively, astrology
+from a wonderful flaming sphere in the sky, and the black art from a
+witch inspired by a long-tailed demon perched on her shoulder.  No
+doubt "the young white king" made an exceedingly prominent figure in
+the discourse, but it was so quaint and so brilliant that it did not
+need the charm of royal condescension to entrance the young knights,
+who stood silent auditors.  Ebbo at least was convinced that no
+species of knowledge or skill was viewed by his kaisarly kingship as
+beneath his dignity; but still he feared Friedel's being seized upon
+to be as prime illustrator to the royal autobiography--a lot to
+which, with all his devotion to Maximilian, he could hardly have
+consigned his brother, in the certainty that the jeers of the ruder
+nobles would pursue the craftsman baron.
+
+However, for the present, Maximilian was keen enough to see that the
+boy's mechanical skill was not as yet equal to his genius; so he only
+encouraged him to practise, adding that he heard there was a rare
+lad, one Durer, at Nuremburg, whose productions were already
+wonderful.  "And what is this?" he asked; "what is the daintily-
+carved group I see yonder?"
+
+"Your highness means, 'The Dove in the Eagle's Nest,'" said Kasimir.
+"It is the work of my young kinsmen, and their appropriate device."
+
+"As well chosen as carved," said Maximilian, examining it.  "Well is
+it that a city dove should now and then find her way to the eyrie.
+Some of my nobles would cut my throat for the heresy, but I am safe
+here, eh, Sir Kasimir?  Fare ye well, ye dove-trained eaglets.  We
+will know one another better when we bear the cross against the
+infidel."
+
+The brothers kissed his hand, and he descended the steps from the
+hall door.  Ere he had gone far, he turned round upon Sir Kasimir
+with a merry smile
+
+"A very white and tender dove indeed, and one who might easily nestle
+in another eyrie, methinks."
+
+"Deems your kingly highness that consent could be won?" asked
+Wildschloss
+
+"From the Kaisar?  Pfui, man, thou knowst as well as I do the golden
+key to his consent.  So thou wouldst risk thy luck again!  Thou hast
+no male heir."
+
+"And I would fain give my child a mother who would deal well with
+her.  Nay, to say sooth, that gentle, innocent face has dwelt with me
+for many years.  But for my pre-contract, I had striven long ago to
+win her, and had been a happier man, mayhap.  And, now I have seen
+what she has made of her sons, I feel I could scarce find her match
+among our nobility."
+
+"Nor elsewhere," said the king; "and I honour thee for not being so
+besotted in our German haughtiness as not to see that it is our free
+cities that make refined and discreet dames.  I give you good speed,
+Adlerstein; but, if I read aright the brow of one at least of these
+young fellows, thou wilt scarce have a willing or obedient stepson.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV:  THE RIVAL EYRIE
+
+
+
+Ebbo trusted that his kinsman of Wildschloss was safe gone with the
+Court, and his temper smoothed and his spirits rose in proportion
+while preparations for a return to Adlerstein were being completed--
+preparations by which the burgher lady might hope to render the
+castle far more habitable, not to say baronial, than it had ever
+been.
+
+The lady herself felt thankful that her stay at Ulm had turned out
+well beyond all anticipations in the excellent understanding between
+her uncle and her sons, and still more in Ebbo's full submission and
+personal loyalty towards the imperial family.  The die was cast, and
+the first step had been taken towards rendering the Adlerstein family
+the peaceful, honourable nobles she had always longed to see them.
+
+She was one afternoon assisting her aunt in some of the duties of her
+wirthschaft, when Master Gottfried entered the apartment with an air
+of such extreme complacency that both turned round amazed; the one
+exclaiming, "Surely funds have come in for finishing the spire!" the
+other, "Have they appointed thee Provost for next year, house-
+father?"
+
+"Neither the one nor the other," was the reply.  "But heard you not
+the horse's feet?  Here has the Lord of Adlerstein Wildschloss been
+with me in full state, to make formal proposals for the hand of our
+child, Christina."
+
+"For Christina!" cried Hausfrau Johanna with delight; "truly that is
+well.  Truly our maiden has done honour to her breeding.  A second
+nobleman demanding her--and one who should be able richly to endow
+her!"
+
+"And who will do so," said Master Gottfried.  "For morning gift he
+promises the farms and lands of Grunau--rich both in forest and corn
+glebe.  Likewise, her dower shall be upon Wildschloss--where the soil
+is of the richest pasture, and there are no less than three mills,
+whence the lord obtains large rights of multure.  Moreover, the
+Castle was added to and furnished on his marriage with the late
+baroness, and might serve a Kurfurst; and though the jewels of
+Freiherrinn Valeska must be inherited by her daughter, yet there are
+many of higher price which have descended from his own ancestresses,
+and which will all be hers."
+
+"And what a wedding we will have!" exclaimed Johanna; "it shall be
+truly baronial.  I will take my hood and go at once to neighbour
+Sophie Lemsberg, who was wife to the Markgraf's Under Keller-Meister.
+She will tell me point device the ceremonies befitting the espousals
+of a baron's widow."
+
+Poor Christina had sat all this time with drooping head and clasped
+hands, a tear stealing down as the formal terms of the treaty sent
+her spirit back to the urgent, pleading, imperious voice that had
+said, "Now, little one, thou wilt not shut me out;" and as she
+glanced at the ring that had lain on that broad palm, she felt as if
+her sixteen cheerful years had been an injury to her husband in his
+nameless bloody grave.  But protection was so needful in those rude
+ages, and second marriages so frequent, that reluctance was counted
+as weakness.  She knew her uncle and aunt would never believe that
+aught but compulsion had bound her to the rude outlaw, and her habit
+of submission was so strong that, only when her aunt was actually
+rising to go and consult her gossip, she found breath to falter,
+
+"Hold, dear aunt--my sons--"
+
+"Nay, child, it is the best thing thou couldst do for them.  Wonders
+hast thou wrought, yet are they too old to be without fatherly
+authority.  I speak not of Friedel; the lad is gentle and pious,
+though spirited, but for the baron.  The very eye and temper of my
+poor brother Hugh--thy father, Stine--are alive again in him.  Yea, I
+love the lad the better for it, while I fear.  He minds me precisely
+of Hugh ere he was 'prenticed to the weapon-smith, and all became
+bitterness."
+
+"Ah, truly," said Christina, raising her eyes "all would become
+bitterness with my Ebbo were I to give a father's power to one whom
+he would not love."
+
+"Then were he sullen and unruly, indeed!" said the old burgomaster
+with displeasure; "none have shown him more kindness, none could
+better aid him in court and empire.  The lad has never had restraint
+enough.  I blame thee not, child, but he needs it sorely, by thine
+own showing."
+
+"Alas, uncle! mine be the blame, but it is over late.  My boy will
+rule himself for the love of God and of his mother, but he will brook
+no hand over him--least of all now he is a knight and thinks himself
+a man.  Uncle, I should be deprived of both my sons, for Friedel's
+very soul is bound up with his brother's.  I pray thee enjoin not
+this thing on me," she implored.
+
+"Child!" exclaimed Master Gottfried, "thou thinkst not that such a
+contract as this can be declined for the sake of a wayward Junker!"
+
+"Stay, house-father, the little one will doubtless hear reason and
+submit," put in the aunt.  "Her sons were goodly and delightsome to
+her in their upgrowth, but they are well-nigh men.  They will be away
+to court and camp, to love and marriage; and how will it be with her
+then, young and fair as she still is?  Well will it be for her to
+have a stately lord of her own, and a new home of love and honour
+springing round her."
+
+"True," continued Sorel; "and though she be too pious and wise to
+reck greatly of such trifles, yet it may please her dreamy brain to
+hear that Sir Kasimir loves her even like a paladin, and the love of
+a tried man of six-and-forty is better worth than a mere kindling of
+youthful fancy."
+
+"Mine Eberhard loved me!" murmured Christina, almost to herself, but
+her aunt caught the word.
+
+"And what was such love worth?  To force thee into a stolen match,
+and leave thee alone and unowned to the consequences!"
+
+"Peace!" exclaimed Christina, with crimson cheek and uplifted head.
+"Peace!  My own dear lord loved me with true and generous love!  None
+but myself knows how much.  Not a word will I hear against that
+tender heart."
+
+"Yes, peace," returned Gottfried in a conciliatory tone,--"peace to
+the brave Sir Eberhard.  Thine aunt meant no ill of him.  He truly
+would rejoice that the wisdom of his choice should receive such
+testimony, and that his sons should be thus well handled.  Nay,
+little as I heed such toys, it will doubtless please the lads that
+the baron will obtain of the Emperor letters of nobility for this
+house, which verily sprang of a good Walloon family, and so their
+shield will have no blank.  The Romish king promises to give thee
+rank with any baroness, and hath fully owned what a pearl thou art,
+mine own sweet dove!  Nay, Sir Kasimir is coming to-morrow in the
+trust to make the first betrothal with Graf von Kaulwitz as a
+witness, and I thought of asking the Provost on the other hand."
+
+"To-morrow!" exclaimed Johanna; "and how is she to be meetly clad?
+Look at this widow-garb; and how is time to be found for procuring
+other raiment?  House-father, a substantial man like you should
+better understand!  The meal too!  I must to gossip Sophie!"
+
+"Verily, dear mother and father," said Christina, who had rallied a
+little, "have patience with me.  I may not lightly or suddenly
+betroth myself; I know not that I can do so at all, assuredly not
+unless my sons were heartily willing.  Have I your leave to retire?"
+
+"Granted, my child, for meditation will show thee that this is too
+fair a lot for any but thee.  Much had I longed to see thee wedded
+ere thy sons outgrew thy care, but I shunned proposing even one of
+our worthy guildmasters, lest my young Freiherr should take offence;
+but this knight, of his own blood, true and wise as a burgher, and
+faithful and God-fearing withal, is a better match than I durst hope,
+and is no doubt a special reward from thy patron saint."
+
+"Let me entreat one favour more," implored Christina.  "Speak of this
+to no one ere I have seen my sons."
+
+She made her way to her own chamber, there to weep and flutter.
+Marriage was a matter of such high contract between families that the
+parties themselves had usually no voice in the matter, and only the
+widowed had any chance of a personal choice; nor was this always
+accorded in the case of females, who remained at the disposal of
+their relatives.  Good substantial wedded affection was not lacking,
+but romantic love was thought an unnecessary preliminary, and found a
+vent in extravagant adoration, not always in reputable quarters.
+Obedience first to the father, then to the husband, was the first
+requisite; love might shift for itself; and the fair widow of
+Adlerstein, telling her beads in sheer perplexity, knew not whether
+her strong repugnance to this marriage and warm sympathy with her son
+Ebbo were not an act of rebellion.  Yet each moment did her husband
+rise before her mind more vividly, with his rugged looks, his warm,
+tender heart, his dawnings of comprehension, his generous forbearance
+and reverential love--the love of her youth--to be equalled by no
+other.  The accomplished courtier and polished man of the world might
+be his superior, but she loathed the superiority, since it was to her
+husband.  Might not his one chosen dove keep heart-whole for him to
+the last?  She recollected that coarsest, cruellest reproach of all
+that her mother-in-law had been wont to fling at her,--that she, the
+recent widow, the new-made mother of Eberhard's babes, in her grief,
+her terror, and her weakness had sought to captivate this suitor by
+her blandishments.  The taunt seemed justified, and her cheeks burned
+with absolute shame "My husband! my loving Eberhard! left with none
+but me to love thee, unknown to thine own sons!  I cannot, I will not
+give my heart away from thee!  Thy little bride shall be faithful to
+thee, whatever betide.  When we meet beyond the grave I will have
+been thine only, nor have set any before thy sons.  Heaven forgive me
+if I be undutiful to my uncle; but thou must be preferred before even
+him!  Hark!" and she started as if at Eberhard's foot-step; then
+smiled, recollecting that Ebbo had his father's tread.  But her
+husband had been too much in awe of her to enter with that hasty
+agitated step and exclamation, "Mother, mother, what insolence is
+this!"
+
+"Hush, Ebbo!  I prayed mine uncle to let me speak to thee."
+
+"It is true, then," said Ebbo, dashing his cap on the ground; "I had
+soundly beaten that grinning 'prentice for telling Heinz."
+
+"Truly the house rings with the rumour, mother," said Friedel, "but
+we had not believed it."
+
+"I believed Wildschloss assured enough for aught," said Ebbo, "but I
+thought he knew where to begin.  Does he not know who is head of the
+house of Adlerstein, since he must tamper with a mechanical
+craftsman, cap in hand to any sprig of nobility!  I would have soon
+silenced his overtures!"
+
+"Is it in sooth as we heard?" asked Friedel, blushing to the ears,
+for the boy was shy as a maiden.  "Mother, we know what you would
+say," he added, throwing himself on his knees beside her, his arm
+round her waist, his cheek on her lap, and his eyes raised to hers.
+
+She bent down to kiss him.  "Thou knewst it, Friedel, and now must
+thou aid me to remain thy father's true widow, and to keep Ebbo from
+being violent."
+
+Ebbo checked his hasty march to put his hand on her chair and kiss
+her brow.  "Motherling, I will restrain myself, so you will give me
+your word not to desert us."
+
+"Nay, Ebbo," said Friedel, "the motherling is too true and loving for
+us to bind her."
+
+"Children," she answered, "hear me patiently.  I have been communing
+with myself, and deeply do I feel that none other can I love save him
+who is to you a mere name, but to me a living presence.  Nor would I
+put any between you and me.  Fear me not, Ebbo.  I think the mothers
+and sons of this wider, fuller world do not prize one another as we
+do.  But, my son, this is no matter for rage or ingratitude.
+Remember it is no small condescension in a noble to stoop to thy
+citizen mother."
+
+"He knew what painted puppets noble ladies are," growled Ebbo.
+
+"Moreover," continued Christina, "thine uncle is highly gratified,
+and cannot believe that I can refuse.  He understands not my love for
+thy father, and sees many advantages for us all.  I doubt me if he
+believes I have power to resist his will, and for thee, he would not
+count thine opposition valid.  And the more angry and vehement thou
+art, the more will he deem himself doing thee a service by overruling
+thee."
+
+"Come home, mother.  Let Heinz lead our horses to the door in the
+dawn, and when we are back in free Adlerstein it will be plain who is
+master."
+
+"Such a flitting would scarce prove our wisdom," said Christina, "to
+run away with thy mother like a lover in a ballad.  Nay, let me first
+deal gently with thine uncle, and speak myself with Sir Kasimir, so
+that I may show him the vanity of his suit.  Then will we back to
+Adlerstein without leaving wounds to requite kindness."
+
+Ebbo was wrought on to promise not to attack the burgomaster on the
+subject, but he was moody and silent, and Master Gottfried let him
+alone, considering his gloom as another proof of his need of fatherly
+authority, and as a peace-lover forbearing to provoke his fiery
+spirit.
+
+But when Sir Kasimir's visit was imminent, and Christina had refused
+to make the change in her dress by which a young widow was considered
+to lay herself open to another courtship, Master Gottfried called the
+twins apart.
+
+"My young lords," he said, "I fear me ye are vexing your gentle
+mother by needless strife at what must take place."
+
+"Pardon me, good uncle," said Ebbo, "I utterly decline the honour of
+Sir Kasimir's suit to my mother."
+
+Master Gottfried smiled.  "Sons are not wont to be the judges in such
+cases, Sir Eberhard."
+
+"Perhaps not," he answered; "but my mother's will is to the nayward,
+nor shall she be coerced."
+
+"It is merely because of you and your pride," said Master Gottfried.
+
+"I think not so," rejoined the calmer Friedel; "my mother's love for
+my father is still fresh."
+
+"Young knights," said Master Gottfried, "it would scarce become me to
+say, nor you to hear, how much matter of fancy such love must have
+been towards one whom she knew but for a few short months, though her
+pure sweet dreams, through these long years, have moulded him into a
+hero.  Boys, I verily believe ye love her truly.  Would it be well
+for her still to mourn and cherish a dream while yet in her fresh
+age, capable of new happiness, fuller than she has ever enjoyed?"
+
+"She is happy with us," rejoined Ebbo.
+
+"And ye are good lads and loving sons, though less duteous in manner
+than I could wish.  But look you, you may not ever be with her, and
+when ye are absent in camp or court, or contracting a wedlock of your
+own, would you leave her to her lonesome life in your solitary
+castle?"
+
+Friedel's unselfishness might have been startled, but Ebbo boldly
+answered, "All mine is hers.  No joy to me but shall be a joy to her.
+We can make her happier than could any stranger.  Is it not so,
+Friedel?"
+
+"It is," said Friedel, thoughtfully.
+
+"Ah, rash bloods, promising beyond what ye can keep.  Nature will be
+too strong for you.  Love your mother as ye may, what will she be to
+you when a bride comes in your way?  Fling not away in wrath, Sir
+Baron; it was so with your parents both before you; and what said the
+law of the good God at the first marriage?  How can you withstand the
+nature He has given?"
+
+"Belike I may wed," said Ebbo, bluntly; "but if it be not for my
+mother's happiness, call me man-sworn knight."
+
+"Not so," good-humouredly answered Gottfried, "but boy-sworn paladin,
+who talks of he knows not what.  Speak knightly truth, Sir Baron, and
+own that this opposition is in verity from distaste to a stepfather's
+rule."
+
+"I own that I will not brook such rule," said Ebbo; "nor do I know
+what we have done to deserve that it should be thrust on us.  You
+have never blamed Friedel, at least; and verily, uncle, my mother's
+eye will lead me where a stranger's hand shall never drive me.  Did I
+even think she had for this man a quarter of the love she bears to my
+dead father, I would strive for endurance; but in good sooth we found
+her in tears, praying us to guard her from him.  I may be a boy, but
+I am man enough to prevent her from being coerced."
+
+"Was this so, Friedel?" asked Master Gottfried, moved more than by
+all that had gone before.  "Ach, I thought ye all wiser.  And spake
+she not of Sir Kasimir's offers?--Interest with the Romish king?--
+Yea, and a grant of nobility and arms to this house, so as to fill
+the blank in your scutcheon?"
+
+"My father never asked if she were noble," said Ebbo.  "Nor will I
+barter her for a cantle of a shield."
+
+"There spake a manly spirit," said his uncle, delighted.  "Her worth
+hath taught thee how little to prize these gewgaws!  Yet, if you look
+to mingling with your own proud kind, ye may fall among greater
+slights than ye can brook.  It may matter less to you, Sir Baron, but
+Friedel here, ay, and your sons, will be ineligible to the choicest
+orders of knighthood, and the canonries and chapters that are
+honourable endowments."
+
+Friedel looked as if he could bear it, and Eberhard said, "The order
+of the Dove of Adlerstein is enough for us."
+
+"Headstrong all, headstrong all," sighed Master Gottfried.  "One
+romantic marriage has turned all your heads."
+
+The Baron of Adlerstein Wildschloss, unprepared for the opposition
+that awaited him, was riding down the street equipped point device,
+and with a goodly train of followers, in brilliant suits.  Private
+wooing did not enter into the honest ideas of the burghers, and the
+suitor was ushered into the full family assembly, where Christina
+rose and came forward a few steps to meet him, curtseying as low as
+he bowed, as he said, "Lady, I have preferred my suit to you through
+your honour-worthy uncle, who is good enough to stand my friend."
+
+"You are over good, sir.  I feel the honour, but a second wedlock may
+not be mine."
+
+"Now," murmured Ebbo to his brother, as the knight and lady seated
+themselves in full view, "now will the smooth-tongued fellow talk her
+out of her senses.  Alack! that gipsy prophecy!"
+
+Wildschloss did not talk like a young wooer; such days were over for
+both; but he spoke as a grave and honourable man, deeply penetrated
+with true esteem and affection.  He said that at their first meeting
+he had been struck with her sweetness and discretion, and would soon
+after have endeavoured to release her from her durance, but that he
+was bound by the contract already made with the Trautbachs, who were
+dangerous neighbours to Wildschloss.  He had delayed his distasteful
+marriage as long as possible, and it had caused him nothing but
+trouble and strife; his children would not live, and Thekla, the only
+survivor, was, as his sole heiress, a mark for the cupidity of her
+uncle, the Count of Trautbach, and his almost savage son Lassla;
+while the right to the Wildschloss barony would become so doubtful
+between her and Ebbo, as heir of the male line, that strife and
+bloodshed would be well-nigh inevitable.  These causes made it almost
+imperative that he should re-marry, and his own strong preference and
+regard for little Thekla directed his wishes towards the Freiherrinn
+von Adlerstein.  He backed his suit with courtly compliments, as well
+as with representations of his child's need of a mother's training,
+and the twins' equal want of fatherly guidance, dilating on the
+benefits he could confer on them.
+
+Christina felt his kindness, and had full trust in his intentions.
+"No" was a difficult syllable to her, but she had that within her
+which could not accept him; and she firmly told him that she was too
+much bound to both her Eberhards.  But there was no daunting him, nor
+preventing her uncle and aunt from encouraging him.  He professed
+that he would wait, and give her time to consider; and though she
+reiterated that consideration would not change her mind, Master
+Gottfried came forward to thank him, and express his confidence of
+bringing her to reason.
+
+"While I, sir," said Ebbo, with flashing eyes, and low but resentful
+voice, "beg to decline the honour in the name of the elder house of
+Adlerstein."
+
+He held himself upright as a dart, but was infinitely annoyed by the
+little mocking bow and smile that he received in return, as Sir
+Kasimir, with his long mantle, swept out of the apartment, attended
+by Master Gottfried.
+
+"Burgomaster Sorel," said the boy, standing in the middle of the
+floor as his uncle returned, "let me hear whether I am a person of
+any consideration in this family or not?"
+
+"Nephew baron," quietly replied Master Gottfried, "it is not the use
+of us Germans to be dictated to by youths not yet arrived at years of
+discretion."
+
+"Then, mother," said Ebbo, "we leave this place to-morrow morn."  And
+at her nod of assent the house-father looked deeply grieved, the
+house-mother began to clamour about ingratitude.  "Not so," answered
+Ebbo, fiercely.  "We quit the house as poor as we came, in homespun
+and with the old mare."
+
+"Peace, Ebbo!" said his mother, rising; "peace, I entreat, house-
+mother! pardon, uncle, I pray thee.  O, why will not all who love me
+let me follow that which I believe to be best!"
+
+"Child," said her uncle, "I cannot see thee domineered over by a
+youth whose whole conduct shows his need of restraint."
+
+"Nor am I," said Christina.  "It is I who am utterly averse to this
+offer.  My sons and I are one in that; and, uncle, if I pray of you
+to consent to let us return to our castle, it is that I would not see
+the visit that has made us so happy stained with strife and
+dissension!  Sure, sure, you cannot be angered with my son for his
+love for me."
+
+"For the self-seeking of his love," said Master Gottfried.  "It is to
+gratify his own pride that he first would prevent thee from being
+enriched and ennobled, and now would bear thee away to the scant--
+Nay, Freiherr, I will not seem to insult you, but resentment would
+make you cruel to your mother."
+
+"Not cruel!" said Friedel, hastily.  "My mother is willing.  And
+verily, good uncle, methinks that we all were best at home.  We have
+benefited much and greatly by our stay; we have learnt to love and
+reverence you; but we are wild mountaineers at the best; and, while
+our hearts are fretted by the fear of losing our sweet mother, we can
+scarce be as patient or submissive as if we had been bred up by a
+stern father.  We have ever judged and acted for ourselves, and it is
+hard to us not to do so still, when our minds are chafed."
+
+"Friedel," said Ebbo, sternly, "I will have no pardon asked for
+maintaining my mother's cause.  Do not thou learn to be smooth-
+tongued."
+
+"O thou wrong-headed boy!" half groaned Master Gottfried.  "Why did
+not all this fall out ten years sooner, when thou wouldst have been
+amenable?  Yet, after all, I do not know that any noble training has
+produced a more high-minded loving youth," he added, half relenting
+as he looked at the gallant, earnest face, full of defiance indeed,
+but with a certain wistful appealing glance at "the motherling,"
+softening the liquid lustrous dark eye.  "Get thee gone, boy, I would
+not quarrel with you; and it may be, as Friedel says, that we are
+best out of one another's way.  You are used to lord it, and I can
+scarce make excuses for you."
+
+"Then," said Ebbo, scarce appeased, "I take home my mother, and you,
+sir, cease to favour Kasimir's suit."
+
+"No, Sir Baron.  I cease not to think that nothing would be so much
+for your good.  It is because I believe that a return to your own old
+castle will best convince you all that I will not vex your mother by
+further opposing your departure.  When you perceive your error may it
+only not be too late!  Such a protector is not to be found every
+day."
+
+"My mother shall never need any protector save myself," said Ebbo;
+"but, sir, she loves you, and owes all to you.  Therefore I will not
+be at strife with you, and there is my hand."
+
+He said it as if he had been the Emperor reconciling himself to all
+the Hanse towns in one.  Master Gottfried could scarce refrain from
+shrugging his shoulders, and Hausfrau Johanna was exceedingly angry
+with the petulant pride and insolence of the young noble; but, in
+effect, all were too much relieved to avoid an absolute quarrel with
+the fiery lad to take exception at minor matters.  The old burgher
+was forbearing; Christina, who knew how much her son must have
+swallowed to bring him to this concession for love of her, thought
+him a hero worthy of all sacrifices; and peace-making Friedel, by his
+aunt's side, soon softened even her, by some of the persuasive
+arguments that old dames love from gracious, graceful, great-nephews.
+
+And when, by and by, Master Gottfried went out to call on Sir
+Kasimir, and explain how he had thought it best to yield to the hot-
+tempered lad, and let the family learn how to be thankful for the
+goods they had rejected, he found affairs in a state that made him
+doubly anxious that the young barons should be safe on their mountain
+without knowing of them.  The Trautbach family had heard of
+Wildschloss's designs, and they had set abroad such injurious reports
+respecting the Lady of Adlerstein, that Sir Kasimir was in the act of
+inditing a cartel to be sent by Count Kaulwitz, to demand an
+explanation--not merely as the lady's suitor, but as the only
+Adlerstein of full age.  Now, if Ebbo had heard of the rumour, he
+would certainly have given the lie direct, and taken the whole
+defence on himself; and it may be feared that, just as his cause
+might have been, Master Gottfried's faith did not stretch to
+believing that it would make his sixteen-year-old arm equal to the
+brutal might of Lassla of Trautbach.  So he heartily thanked the
+Baron of Wildschloss, agreed with him that the young knights were not
+as yet equal to the maintenance of the cause, and went home again to
+watch carefully that no report reached either of his nephews.  Nor
+did he breathe freely till he had seen the little party ride safe off
+in the early morning, in much more lordly guise than when they had
+entered the city.
+
+As to Wildschloss and his nephew of Trautbach, in spite of their
+relationship they had a sharp combat on the borders of their own
+estates, in which both were severely wounded; but Sir Kasimir, with
+the misericorde in his grasp, forced Lassla to retract whatever he
+had said in dispraise of the Lady of Adlerstein.  Wily old Gottfried
+took care that the tidings should be sent in a form that might at
+once move Christina with pity and gratitude towards her champion, and
+convince her sons that the adversary was too much hurt for them to
+attempt a fresh challenge.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI:  THE EAGLE AND THE SNAKE
+
+
+
+The reconciliation made Ebbo retract his hasty resolution of
+relinquishing all the benefits resulting from his connection with the
+Sorel family, and his mother's fortune made it possible to carry out
+many changes that rendered the castle and its inmates far more
+prosperous in appearance than had ever been the case before.
+Christina had once again the appliances of a wirthschaft, such as she
+felt to be the suitable and becoming appurtenance of a right-minded
+Frau, gentle or simple, and she felt so much the happier and more
+respectable.
+
+A chaplain had also been secured.  The youths had insisted on his
+being capable of assisting their studies, and, a good man had been
+found who was fearfully learned, having studied at all possible
+universities, but then failing as a teacher, because he was so dreamy
+and absent as to be incapable of keeping the unruly students in
+order.  Jobst Schon was his proper name, but he was translated into
+Jodocus Pulcher.  The chapel was duly adorned, the hall and other
+chambers were fitted up with some degree of comfort; the castle court
+was cleansed, the cattle sheds removed to the rear, and the serfs
+were presented with seed, and offered payment in coin if they would
+give their labour in fencing and clearing the cornfield and vineyard
+which the barons were bent on forming on the sunny slope of the
+ravine.  Poverty was over, thanks to the marriage portion, and yet
+Ebbo looked less happy than in the days when there was but a bare
+subsistence; and he seemed to miss the full tide of city life more
+than did his brother, who, though he had enjoyed Ulm more heartily at
+the time, seemed to have returned to all his mountain delights with
+greater zest than ever.  At his favourite tarn, he revelled in the
+vast stillness with the greater awe for having heard the hum of men,
+and his minstrel dreams had derived fresh vigour from contact with
+the active world.  But, as usual, he was his brother's chief stay in
+the vexations of a reformer.  The serfs had much rather their lord
+had turned out a freebooter than an improver.  Why should they sow
+new seeds, when the old had sufficed their fathers?  Work, beyond the
+regulated days when they scratched up the soil of his old enclosure,
+was abhorrent to them.  As to his offered coin, they needed nothing
+it would buy, and had rather bask in the sun or sleep in the smoke.
+A vineyard had never been heard of on Adlerstein mountain:  it was
+clean contrary to his forefathers' habits; and all came of the bad
+drop of restless burgher blood, that could not let honest folk rest.
+
+Ebbo stormed, not merely with words, but blows, became ashamed of his
+violence, tried to atone for it by gifts and kind words, and in
+return was sulkily told that he would bring more good to the village
+by rolling the fiery wheel straight down hill at the wake, than by
+all his new-fangled ways.  Had not Koppel and a few younger men been
+more open to influence, his agricultural schemes could hardly have
+begun; but Friedel's persuasions were not absolutely without success,
+and every rood that was dug was achieved by his patience and
+perseverance.
+
+Next came home the Graf von Schlangenwald.  He had of late inhabited
+his castle in Styria, but in a fierce quarrel with some of his
+neighbours he had lost his eldest son, and the pacification enforced
+by the King of the Romans had so galled and infuriated him that he
+had deserted that part of the country and returned to Swabia more
+fierce and bitter than ever.  Thenceforth began a petty border
+warfare such as had existed when Christina first knew Adlerstein, but
+had of late died out.  The shepherd lad came home weeping with wrath.
+Three mounted Schlangenwaldern had driven off his four best sheep,
+and beaten himself with their halberds, though he was safe on
+Adlerstein ground.  Then a light thrown by a Schlangenwald reiter
+consumed all Jobst's pile of wood.  The swine did not come home, and
+were found with spears sticking in them; the great broad-horned bull
+that Ebbo had brought from the pastures of Ulm vanished from the Alp
+below the Gemsbock's Pass, and was known to be salted for winter use
+at Schlangenwald.
+
+Still Christina tried to persuade her sons that this might be only
+the retainers' violence, and induced Ebbo to write a letter,
+complaining of the outrages, but not blaming the Count, only begging
+that his followers might be better restrained.  The letter was
+conveyed by a lay brother--no other messenger being safe.  Ebbo had
+protested from the first that it would be of no use, but he waited
+anxiously for the answer.
+
+Thus it stood, when conveyed to him by a tenant of the Ruprecht
+cloister
+
+"Wot you, Eberhard, Freiherr von Adlerstein, that your house have
+injured me by thought, word, and deed.  Your great-grandfather
+usurped my lands at the ford.  Your grandfather stole my cattle and
+burnt my mills.  Then, in the war, he slew my brother Johann and
+lamed for life my cousin Matthias.  Your father slew eight of my
+retainers and spoiled my crops.  You yourself claim my land at the
+ford, and secure the spoil which is justly mine.  Therefore do I
+declare war and feud against you.  Therefore to you and all yours, to
+your helpers and helpers' helpers, am I a foe.  And thereby shall I
+have maintained my honour against you and yours.
+
+WOLFGANG, Graf von Schlangenwald.
+HIEROM, Graf von Schlangenwald--his cousin."
+&c. &c. &c.
+
+
+And a long list of names, all connected with Schlangenwald, followed;
+and a large seal, bearing the snake of Schlangenwald, was appended
+thereto.
+
+"The old miscreant!" burst out Ebbo; "it is a feud brief."
+
+"A feud brief!" exclaimed Friedel; "they are no longer according to
+the law."
+
+"Law?--what cares he for law or mercy either?  Is this the way men
+act by the League?  Did we not swear to send no more feud letters,
+nor have recourse to fist-right?"
+
+"We must appeal to the Markgraf of Wurtemburg," said Friedel.
+
+It was the only measure in their power, though Ebbo winced at it; but
+his oaths were recent, and his conscience would not allow him to
+transgress them by doing himself justice.  Besides, neither party
+could take the castle of the other, and the only reprisals in his
+power would have been on the defenceless peasants of Schlangenwald.
+He must therefore lay the whole matter before the Markgraf, who was
+the head of the Swabian League, and bound to redress his wrongs.  He
+made his arrangements without faltering, selecting the escort who
+were to accompany him, and insisting on leaving Friedel to guard his
+mother and the castle.  He would not for the world have admitted the
+suggestion that the counsel and introduction of Adlerstein
+Wildschloss would have been exceedingly useful to him.
+
+Poor Christina!  It was a great deal too like that former departure,
+and her heart was heavy within her!  Friedel was equally unhappy at
+letting his brother go without him, but it was quite necessary that
+he and the few armed men who remained should show themselves at all
+points open to the enemy in the course of the day, lest the
+Freiherr's absence should be remarked.  He did his best to cheer his
+mother, by reminding her that Ebbo was not likely to be taken at
+unawares as their father had been; and he shared the prayers and
+chapel services, in which she poured out her anxiety.
+
+The blue banner came safe up the Pass again, but Wurtemburg had been
+formally civil to the young Freiherr; but he had laughed at the fend
+letter as a mere old-fashioned habit of Schangenwald's that it was
+better not to notice, and he evidently regarded the stealing of a
+bull or the misusing of a serf as far too petty a matter for his
+attention.  It was as if a judge had been called by a crying child to
+settle a nursery quarrel.  He told Ebbo that, being a free Baron of
+the empire, he must keep his bounds respected; he was free to take
+and hang any spoiler he could catch, but his bulls were his own
+affair:  the League was not for such gear.
+
+And a knight who had ridden out of Stuttgard with Ebbo had told him
+that it was no wonder that this had been his reception, for not only
+was Schlangenwald an old intimate of the Markgraf, but Swabia was
+claimed as a fief of Wurtemburg, so that Ebbo's direct homage to the
+Emperor, without the interposition of the Markgraf, had made him no
+object of favour.
+
+"What could be done?" asked Ebbo.
+
+"Fire some Schlangenwald hamlet, and teach him to respect yours,"
+said the knight.
+
+"The poor serfs are guiltless."
+
+"Ha! ha! as if they would not rob any of yours.  Give and take,
+that's the way the empire wags, Sir Baron.  Send him a feud letter in
+return, with a goodly file of names at its foot, and teach him to
+respect you."
+
+"But I have sworn to abstain from fist-right."
+
+"Much you gain by so abstaining.  If the League will not take the
+trouble to right you, right yourself."
+
+"I shall appeal to the Emperor, and tell him how his League is
+administered."
+
+"Young sir, if the Emperor were to guard every cow in his domains he
+would have enough to do.  You will never prosper with him without
+some one to back your cause better than that free tongue of yours.
+Hast no sister that thou couldst give in marriage to a stout baron
+that could aid you with strong arm and prudent head?"
+
+"I have only one twin brother."
+
+"Ah! the twins of Adlerstein!  I remember me.  Was not the other
+Adlerstein seeking an alliance with your lady mother?  Sure no better
+aid could be found.  He is hand and glove with young King Max."
+
+"That may never be," said Ebbo, haughtily.  And, sure that he should
+receive the same advice, he decided against turning aside to consult
+his uncle at Ulm, and returned home in a mood that rejoiced Heinz and
+Hatto with hopes of the old days, while it filled his mother with
+dreary dismay and apprehension.
+
+"Schlangenwald should suffer next time he transgressed," said Ebbo.
+"It should not again be said that he himself was a coward who
+appealed to the law because his hand could not keep his head."
+
+The "next time" was when the first winter cold was setting in.  A
+party of reitern came to harry an outlying field, where Ulrich had
+raised a scanty crop of rye.  Tidings reached the castle in such good
+time that the two brothers, with Heinz, the two Ulm grooms, Koppel,
+and a troop of serfs, fell on the marauders before they had effected
+much damage, and while some remained to trample out the fire, the
+rest pursued the enemy even to the village of Schlangenwald.
+
+"Burn it, Herr Freiherr," cried Heinz, hot with victory.  "Let them
+learn how to make havoc of our corn."
+
+But a host of half-naked beings rushed out shrieking about sick
+children, bed-ridden grandmothers, and crippled fathers, and falling
+on their knees, with their hands stretched out to the young barons.
+Ebbo turned away his head with hot tears in his eyes.  "Friedel, what
+can we do?"
+
+"Not barbarous murder," said Friedel.
+
+"But they brand us for cowards!"
+
+"The cowardice were in striking here," and Friedel sprang to withhold
+Koppel, who had lighted a bundle of dried fern ready to thrust into
+the thatch.
+
+"Peasants!" said Ebbo, with the same impulse, "I spare you.  You did
+not this wrong.  But bear word to your lord, that if he will meet me
+with lance and sword, he will learn the valour of Adlerstein."
+
+The serfs flung themselves before him in transports of gratitude, but
+he turned hastily away and strode up the mountain, his cheek glowing
+as he remembered, too late, that his defiance would be scoffed at, as
+a boy's vaunt.  By and by he arrived at the hamlet, where he found a
+prisoner, a scowling, abject fellow, already well beaten, and now
+held by two serfs.
+
+"The halter is ready, Herr Freiherr," said old Ulrich, "and yon rowan
+stump is still as stout as when your Herr grandsire hung three
+lanzknechts on it in one day.  We only waited your bidding."
+
+"Quick then, and let me hear no more," said Ebbo, about to descend
+the pass, as if hastening from the execution of a wolf taken in a
+gin.
+
+"Has he seen the priest?" asked Friedel.
+
+The peasants looked as if this were one of Sir Friedel's
+unaccountable fancies.  Ebbo paused, frowned, and muttered, but
+seeing a move as if to drag the wretch towards the stunted bush
+overhanging an abyss, he shouted, "Hold, Ulrich!  Little Hans, do
+thou run down to the castle, and bring Father Jodocus to do his
+office!"
+
+The serfs were much disgusted.  "It never was so seen before, Herr
+Freiherr," remonstrated Heinz; "fang and hang was ever the word."
+
+"What shrift had my lord's father, or mine?" added Koppel.
+
+"Look you!" said Ebbo, turning sharply.  "If Schlangenwald be a
+godless ruffian, pitiless alike to soul and body, is that a cause
+that I should stain myself too?"
+
+"It were true vengeance," growled Koppel.
+
+"And now," grumbled Ulrich, "will my lady hear, and there will be
+feeble pleadings for the vermin's life."
+
+Like mutterings ensued, the purport of which was caught by Friedel,
+and made him say to Ebbo, who would again have escaped the
+disagreeableness of the scene, "We had better tarry at hand.  Unless
+we hold the folk in some check there will be no right execution.
+They will torture him to death ere the priest comes."
+
+Ebbo yielded, and began to pace the scanty area of the flat rock
+where the need-fire was wont to blaze.  After a time he exclaimed:
+"Friedel, how couldst ask me?  Knowst not that it sickens me to see a
+mountain cat killed, save in full chase.  And thou--why, thou art
+white as the snow crags!"
+
+"Better conquer the folly than that he there should be put to
+needless pain," said Friedel, but with labouring breath that showed
+how terrible was the prospect to his imaginative soul not inured to
+death-scenes like those of his fellows.
+
+Just then a mocking laugh broke forth.  "Ha!" cried Ebbo, looking
+keenly down, "what do ye there?  Fang and hang may be fair; fang and
+torment is base!  What was it, Lieschen?"
+
+"Only, Herr Freiherr, the caitiff craved drink, and the fleischerinn
+gave him a cup from the stream behind the slaughter-house, where we
+killed the swine.  Fit for the like of him!"
+
+"By heavens, when I forbade torture!" cried Ebbo, leaping from the
+rock in time to see the disgusting draught held to the lips of the
+captive, whose hands were twisted back and bound with cruel
+tightness; for the German boor, once roused from his lazy good-
+nature, was doubly savage from stolidity.
+
+"Wretches!" cried Ebbo, striking right and left with the back of his
+sword, among the serfs, and then cutting the thong that was eating
+into the prisoner's flesh, while Friedel caught up a wooden bowl,
+filled it with pure water, and offered it to the captive, who drank
+deeply.
+
+"Now," said Ebbo, "hast ought to say for thyself?"
+
+A low curse against things in general was the only answer.
+
+"What brought thee here?" continued Ebbo, in hopes of extracting some
+excuse for pardon; but the prisoner only hung his head as one
+stupefied, brutally indifferent and hardened against the mere trouble
+of answering.  Not another word could be extracted, and Ebbo's
+position was very uncomfortable, keeping guard over his condemned
+felon, with the sulky peasants herding round, in fear of being balked
+of their prey; and the reluctance growing on him every moment to
+taking life in cold blood.  Right of life and death was a heavy
+burden to a youth under seventeen, unless he had been thoughtless and
+reckless, and from this Ebbo had been prevented by his peculiar life.
+The lion cub had never tasted blood.
+
+The situation was prolonged beyond expectation.
+
+Many a time had the brothers paced their platform of rock, the
+criminal had fallen into a dose, and women and boys were murmuring
+that they must call home their kine and goats, and it was a shame to
+debar them of the sight of the hanging, long before Hans came back
+between crying and stammering, to say that Father Jodocus had fallen
+into so deep a study over his book, that he only muttered "Coming,"
+then went into another musing fit, whence no one could rouse him to
+do more than say "Coming!  Let him wait."
+
+"I must go and bring him, if the thing is to be done," said Friedel.
+
+"And let it last all night!" was the answer.  "No, if the man were to
+die, it should be at once, not by inches.  Hark thee, rogue!"
+stirring him with his foot.
+
+"Well, sir," said the man, "is the hanging ready yet?  You've been
+long enough about it for us to have twisted the necks of every
+Adlerstein of you all."
+
+"Look thee, caitiff!" said Ebbo; "thou meritest the rope as well as
+any wolf on the mountain, but we have kept thee so long in suspense,
+that if thou canst say a word for thy life, or pledge thyself to
+meddle no more with my lands, I'll consider of thy doom."
+
+"You have had plenty of time to consider it," growled the fellow.
+
+A murmur, followed by a wrathful shout, rose among the villagers.
+"Letting off the villain!  No!  No!  Out upon him!  He dares not!"
+
+"Dare!" thundered Ebbo, with flashing eyes.  "Rascals as ye are,
+think ye to hinder me from daring?  Your will to be mine?  There,
+fellow; away with thee!  Up to the Gemsbock's Pass!  And whoso would
+follow him, let him do so at his peril!"
+
+The prisoner was prompt to gather himself up and rush like a hunted
+animal to the path, at the entrance of which stood both twins, with
+drawn swords, to defend the escape.  Of course no one ventured to
+follow; and surly discontented murmurs were the sole result as the
+peasants dispersed.  Ebbo, sheathing his sword, and putting his arm
+into his brother's, said:  "What, Friedel, turned stony-hearted?
+Hadst never a word for the poor caitiff?"
+
+"I knew thou wouldst never do the deed," said Friedel, smiling.
+
+"It was such wretched prey," said Ebbo.  "Yet shall I be despised for
+this!  Would that thou hadst let me string him up shriftless, as any
+other man had done, and there would have been an end of it!"
+
+And even his mother's satisfaction did not greatly comfort Ebbo, for
+he was of the age to feel more ashamed of a solecism than a crime.
+Christina perceived that this was one of his most critical periods of
+life, baited as he was by the enemy of his race, and feeling all the
+disadvantages which heart and conscience gave him in dealing with a
+man who had neither, at a time when public opinion was always with
+the most masterful.  The necessity of arming his retainers and having
+fighting men as a guard were additional temptations to hereditary
+habits of violence; and that so proud and fiery a nature as his
+should never become involved in them was almost beyond hope.  Even
+present danger seemed more around than ever before.  The estate was
+almost in a state of siege, and Christina never saw her sons quit the
+castle without thinking of their father's fate, and passing into the
+chapel to entreat for their return unscathed in body or soul.  The
+snow, which she had so often hailed as a friend, was never more
+welcome than this winter; not merely as shutting the enemy out, and
+her sons in, but as cutting off all danger of a visit from her
+suitor, who would now come armed with his late sufferings in her
+behalf; and, moreover, with all the urgent need of a wise and
+respected head and protector for her sons.  Yet the more evident the
+expediency became, the greater grew her distaste.
+
+Still the lonely life weighed heavily on Ebbo.  Light-hearted Friedel
+was ever busy and happy, were he chasing the grim winter game--the
+bear and wolf--with his brother, fencing in the hall, learning Greek
+with the chaplain, reading or singing to his mother, or carving
+graceful angel forms to adorn the chapel.  Or he could at all times
+soar into a minstrel dream of pure chivalrous semi-allegorical
+romance, sometimes told over the glowing embers to his mother and
+brother.  All that came to Friedel was joy, from battling with the
+bear on a frozen rock, to persuading rude little Hans to come to the
+Frau Freiherrinn to learn his Paternoster.  But the elder twin might
+hunt, might fence, might smile or kindle at his brother's lay, but
+ever with a restless gloom on him, a doubt of the future which made
+him impatient of the present, and led to a sharpness and hastiness of
+manner that broke forth in anger at slight offences.
+
+"The matron's coif succeeding the widow's veil," Friedel heard him
+muttering even in sleep, and more than once listened to it as Ebbo
+leant over the battlements--as he looked over the white world to the
+gray mist above the city of Ulm.
+
+"Thou, who mockest my forebodings and fancies, to dwell on that gipsy
+augury!" argued Friedel.  "As thou saidst at the time, Wildschloss's
+looks gave shrewd cause for it."
+
+"The answer is in mine own heart," answered Ebbo.  "Since our stay at
+Ulm, I have ever felt as though the sweet motherling were less my
+own!  And the same with my house and lands.  Rule as I will, a
+mocking laugh comes back to me, saying:  'Thou art but a boy, Sir
+Baron, thou dost but play at lords and knights.'  If I had hung yon
+rogue of a reiter, I wonder if I had felt my grasp more real?"
+
+"Nay," said Friedel, glancing from the sparkling white slopes to the
+pure blue above, "our whole life is but a play at lords and knights,
+with the blessed saints as witnesses of our sport in the tilt-yard."
+
+"Were it merely that," said Ebbo, impatiently, "I were not so galled.
+Something hangs over us, Friedel!  I long that these snows would
+melt, that I might at least know what it is!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII:  BRIDGING THE FORD
+
+
+
+The snow melted, the torrent became a flood, then contracted itself,
+but was still a broad stream, when one spring afternoon Ebbo showed
+his brother some wains making for the ford, adding, "It cannot be
+rightly passable.  They will come to loss.  I shall get the men
+together to aid them."
+
+He blew a blast on his horn, and added, "The knaves will be alert
+enough if they hope to meddle with honest men's luggage."
+
+"See," and Friedel pointed to the thicket to the westward of the
+meadow around the stream, where the beech trees were budding, but not
+yet forming a full mass of verdure, "is not the Snake in the wood?
+Methinks I spy the glitter of his scales."
+
+"By heavens, the villains are lying in wait for the travellers at our
+landing-place," cried Ebbo, and again raising the bugle to his lips,
+he sent forth three notes well known as a call to arms.  Their echoes
+came back from the rocks, followed instantly by lusty jodels, and the
+brothers rushed into the hall to take down their light head-pieces
+and corslets, answering in haste their mother's startled questions,
+by telling of the endangered travellers, and the Schlangenwald
+ambush.  She looked white and trembled, but said no word to hinder
+them; only as she clasped Friedel's corslet, she entreated them to
+take fuller armour.
+
+"We must speed the short way down the rock," said Ebbo, "and cannot
+be cumbered with heavy harness.  Sweet motherling, fear not; but let
+a meal be spread for our rescued captives.  Ho, Heinz, 'tis against
+the Schlangenwald rascals.  Art too stiff to go down the rock path?"
+
+"No; nor down the abyss, could I strike a good stroke against
+Schlangenwald at the bottom of it," quoth Heinz.
+
+"Nor see vermin set free by the Freiherr," growled Koppel; but the
+words were lost in Ebbo's loud commands to the men, as Friedel and
+Hatto handed down the weapons to them.
+
+The convoy had by this time halted, evidently to try the ford.  A
+horseman crossed, and found it practicable, for a waggon proceeded to
+make the attempt.
+
+"Now is our time," said Ebbo, who was standing on the narrow ledge
+between the castle and the precipitous path leading to the meadow.
+"One waggon may get over, but the second or third will stick in the
+ruts that it leaves.  Now we will drop from our crag, and if the
+Snake falls on them, why, then for a pounce of the Eagle."
+
+The two young knights, so goodly in their bright steel, knelt for
+their mother's blessing, and then sprang like chamois down the ivy-
+twined steep, followed by their men, and were lost to sight among the
+bushes and rocks.  Yet even while her frame quivered with fear, her
+heart swelled at the thought what a gulf there was between these days
+and those when she had hidden her face in despair, while Ermentrude
+watched the Debateable Ford.
+
+She watched now in suspense, indeed, but with exultation instead of
+shame, as two waggons safely crossed; but the third stuck fast, and
+presently turned over in the stream, impelled sideways by the efforts
+of the struggling horses.  Then, amid endeavours to disentangle the
+animals and succour the driver, the travellers were attacked by a
+party of armed men, who dashed out of the beechwood, and fell on the
+main body of the waggons, which were waiting on the bit of bare
+shingly soil that lay between the new and old channels.  A wild melee
+was all that Christina could see--weapons raised, horses starting,
+men rushing from the river, while the clang and the shout rose even
+to the castle.
+
+Hark!  Out rings the clear call, "The Eagle to the rescue!"  There
+they speed over the meadow, the two slender forms with glancing
+helms!  O overrun not the followers, rush not into needless danger!
+There is Koppel almost up with them with his big axe--Heinz's broad
+shoulders near.  Heaven strike with them!  Visit not their
+forefathers' sin on those pure spirits.  Some are flying.  Some one
+has fallen!  O heavens! on which side?  Ah! it is into the
+Schlangenwald woods that the fugitives direct their flight.  Three--
+four--the whole troop pursued!  Go not too far!  Run not into
+needless risk!  Your work is done, and gallantly.  Well done, young
+knights of Adlerstein!  Which of you is it that stands pointing out
+safe standing-ground for the men that are raising the waggon?  Which
+of you is it who stands in converse with a burgher form?  Thanks and
+blessings! the lads are safe, and full knightly hath been their first
+emprise.
+
+A quarter of an hour later, a gay step mounted the ascent, and
+Friedel's bright face laughed from his helmet:  "There, mother, will
+you crown your knights?  Could you see Ebbo bear down the chief
+squire? for the old Snake was not there himself.  And whom do you
+think we rescued, besides a whole band of Venetian traders to whom he
+had joined himself?  Why, my uncle's friend, the architect, of whom
+he used to speak--Master Moritz Schleiermacher."
+
+"Moritz Schleiermacher!  I knew him as a boy."
+
+"He had been laying out a Lustgarten for the Romish king at
+Innspruck, and he is a stout man of his hands, and attempted defence;
+but he had such a shrewd blow before we came up, that he lay like one
+dead; and when he was lifted up, he gazed at us like one moon-struck,
+and said, 'Are my eyes dazed, or are these the twins of Adlerstein,
+that are as like as face to mirror?  Lads, lads, your uncle looked
+not to hear of you acting in this sort.'  But soon we and his people
+let him know how it was, and that eagles do not have the manner of
+snakes."
+
+"Poor Master Moritz!  Is he much hurt?  Is Ebbo bringing him up
+hither?"
+
+"No, mother, he is but giddied and stunned, and now must you send
+down store of sausage, sourkraut, meat, wine, and beer; for the wains
+cannot all cross till daylight, and we must keep ward all night lest
+the Schlangenwalden should fall on them again.  Plenty of good cheer,
+mother, to make a right merry watch."
+
+"Take heed, Friedel mine; a merry watch is scarce a safe one."
+
+"Even so, sweet motherling, and therefore must Ebbo and I share it.
+You must mete out your liquor wisely, you see, enough for the credit
+of Adlerstein, and enough to keep out the marsh fog, yet not enough
+to make us snore too soundly.  I am going to take my lute; it would
+be using it ill not to let it enjoy such a chance as a midnight
+watch."
+
+So away went the light-hearted boy, and by and by Christina saw the
+red watch-fire as she gazed from her turret window.  She would have
+been pleased to see how, marshalled by a merchant who had crossed the
+desert from Egypt to Palestine, the waggons were ranged in a circle,
+and the watches told off, while the food and drink were carefully
+portioned out.
+
+Freiherr Ebbo, on his own ground, as champion and host, was far more
+at ease than in the city, and became very friendly with the merchants
+and architect as they sat round the bright fire, conversing, or at
+times challenging the mountain echoes by songs to the sound of
+Friedel's lute.  When the stars grew bright, most lay down to sleep
+in the waggons, while others watched, pacing up and down till Karl's
+waggon should be over the mountain, and the vigil was relieved.
+
+No disturbance took place, and at sunrise a hasty meal was partaken
+of, and the work of crossing the river was set in hand.
+
+"Pity," said Moritz, the architect, "that this ford were not spanned
+by a bridge, to the avoiding of danger and spoil."
+
+"Who could build such a bridge?" asked Ebbo.
+
+"Yourself, Herr Freiherr, in union with us burghers of Ulm.  It were
+well worth your while to give land and stone, and ours to give labour
+and skill, provided we fixed a toll on the passage, which would be
+willingly paid to save peril and delay."
+
+The brothers caught at the idea, and the merchants agreed that such a
+bridge would be an inestimable boon to all traffickers between
+Constance, Ulm, and Augsburg, and would attract many travellers who
+were scared away by the evil fame of the Debateable Ford.  Master
+Moritz looked at the stone of the mountain, pronounced it excellent
+material, and already sketched the span of the arches with a view to
+winter torrents.  As to the site, the best was on the firm ground
+above the ford; but here only one side was Adlerstein, while on the
+other Ebbo claimed both banks, and it was probable that an equally
+sound foundation could be obtained, only with more cost and delay.
+
+After this survey, the travellers took leave of the barons, promising
+to write when their fellow-citizens should have been sounded as to
+the bridge; and Ebbo remained in high spirits, with such brilliant
+purposes that he had quite forgotten his gloomy forebodings.  "Peace
+instead of war at home," he said; "with the revenue it will bring, I
+will build a mill, and set our lads to work, so that they may become
+less dull and doltish than their parents.  Then will we follow the
+Emperor with a train that none need despise!  No one will talk now of
+Adlerstein not being able to take care of himself!"
+
+Letters came from Ulm, saying that the guilds of mercers and wine
+merchants were delighted with the project, and invited the Baron of
+Adlerstein to a council at the Rathhaus.  Master Sorel begged the
+mother to come with her sons to be his guest; but fearing the
+neighbourhood of Sir Kasimir, she remained at home, with Heinz for
+her seneschal while her sons rode to the city.  There Ebbo found that
+his late exploit and his future plan had made him a person of much
+greater consideration than on his last visit, and he demeaned himself
+with far more ease and affability in consequence.  He had affairs on
+his hands too, and felt more than one year older.
+
+The two guilds agreed to build the bridge, and share the toll with
+the Baron in return for the ground and materials; but they preferred
+the plan that placed one pier on the Schlangenwald bank, and proposed
+to write to the Count an offer to include him in the scheme, awarding
+him a share of the profits in proportion to his contribution.
+However vexed at the turn affairs had taken, Ebbo could offer no
+valid objection, and was obliged to affix his signature to the letter
+in company with the guildmasters.
+
+It was despatched by the city pursuivants -
+
+
+The only men who safe might ride;
+
+
+Their errands on the border side and a meeting was appointed in the
+Rathhaus for the day of their expected return.  The higher burghers
+sat on their carved chairs in the grand old hall, the lesser magnates
+on benches, and Ebbo, in an elbowed seat far too spacious for his
+slender proportions, met a glance from Friedel that told him his
+merry brother was thinking of the frog and the ox.  The pursuivants
+entered--hardy, shrewd-looking men, with the city arms decking them
+wherever there was room for them.
+
+"Honour-worthy sirs," they said, "no letter did the Graf von
+Schlangenwald return."
+
+"Sent he no message?" demanded Moritz Schleiermacher.
+
+"Yea, worthy sir, but scarce befitting this reverend assembly."  On
+being pressed, however, it was repeated:  "The Lord Count was pleased
+to swear at what he termed the insolence of the city in sending him
+heralds, 'as if,' said he, 'the dogs,' your worships, 'were his
+equals.'  Then having cursed your worships, he reviled the crooked
+writing of Herr Clerk Diedrichson, and called his chaplain to read it
+to him.  Herr Priest could scarce read three lines for his foul
+language about the ford.  'Never,' said he, 'would he consent to
+raising a bridge--a mean trick,' so said he, 'for defrauding him of
+his rights to what the flood sent him.'"
+
+"But," asked Ebbo, "took he no note of our explanation, that if he
+give not the upper bank, we will build lower, where both sides are my
+own?"
+
+"He passed it not entirely over," replied the messenger.
+
+"What said he--the very words?" demanded Ebbo, with the paling cheek
+and low voice that made his passion often seem like patience.
+
+"He said--(the Herr Freiherr will pardon me for repeating the words)-
+-he said, 'Tell the misproud mongrel of Adlerstein that he had best
+sit firm in his own saddle ere meddling with his betters, and if he
+touch one pebble of the Braunwasser, he will rue it.  And before your
+city-folk take up with him or his, they had best learn whether he
+have any right at all in the case.'"
+
+"His right is plain," said Master Gottfried; "full proofs were given
+in, and his investiture by the Kaisar forms a title in itself.  It is
+mere bravado, and an endeavour to make mischief between the Baron and
+the city."
+
+"Even so did I explain, Herr Guildmaster," said the pursuivant; "but,
+pardon me, the Count laughed me to scorn, and quoth he, 'asked the
+Kaisar for proof of his father's death!'"
+
+"Mere mischief-making, as before," said Master Gottfried, while his
+nephews started with amaze.  "His father's death was proved by an
+eye-witness, whom you still have in your train, have you not, Herr
+Freiherr?"
+
+"Yea," replied Ebbo, "he is at Adlerstein now, Heinrich Bauermann,
+called the Schneiderlein, a lanzknecht, who alone escaped the
+slaughter, and from whom we have often heard how my father died,
+choked in his own blood, from a deep breast-wound, immediately after
+he had sent home his last greetings to my lady mother."
+
+"Was the corpse restored?" asked the able Rathsherr Ulrich.
+
+"No," said Ebbo.  "Almost all our retainers had perished, and when a
+friar was sent to the hostel to bring home the remains, it appeared
+that the treacherous foe had borne them off--nay, my grandfather's
+head was sent to the Diet!"
+
+The whole assembly agreed that the Count could only mean to make the
+absence of direct evidence about a murder committed eighteen years
+ago tell in sowing distrust between the allies.  The suggestion was
+not worth a thought, and it was plain that no site would be available
+except the Debateable Strand.  To this, however, Ebbo's title was
+assailable, both on account of his minority, as well as his father's
+unproved death, and of the disputed claim to the ground.  The
+Rathsherr, Master Gottfried, and others, therefore recommended
+deferring the work till the Baron should be of age, when, on again
+tendering his allegiance, he might obtain a distinct recognition of
+his marches.  But this policy did not consort with the quick spirit
+of Moritz Schleiermacher, nor with the convenience of the mercers and
+wine-merchants, who were constant sufferers by the want of a bridge,
+and afraid of waiting four years, in which a lad like the Baron might
+return to the nominal instincts of his class, or the Braunwasser
+might take back the land it had given; whilst Ebbo himself was
+urgent, with all the defiant fire of youth, to begin building at once
+in spite of all gainsayers.
+
+"Strife and blood will it cost," said Master Sorel, gravely.
+
+"What can be had worth the having save at cost of strife and blood?"
+said Ebbo, with a glance of fire.
+
+"Youth speaks of counting the cost.  Little knows it what it saith,"
+sighed Master Gottfried.
+
+"Nay," returned the Rathsherr, "were it otherwise, who would have the
+heart for enterprise?"
+
+So the young knights mounted, and had ridden about half the way in
+silence, when Ebbo exclaimed, "Friedel"--and as his brother started,
+"What art musing on?"
+
+"What thou art thinking of," said Friedel, turning on him an eye that
+had not only something of the brightness but of the penetration of a
+sunbeam.
+
+"I do not think thereon at all," said Ebbo, gloomily.  "It is a
+figment of the old serpent to hinder us from snatching his prey from
+him."
+
+"Nevertheless," said Friedel, "I cannot but remember that the Genoese
+merchant of old told us of a German noble sold by his foes to the
+Moors."
+
+"Folly!  That tale was too recent to concern my father."
+
+"I did not think it did," said Friedel; "but mayhap that noble's
+family rest equally certain of his death."
+
+"Pfui!" said Ebbo, hotly; "hast not heard fifty times how he died
+even in speaking, and how Heinz crossed his hands on his breast?
+What wouldst have more?"
+
+"Hardly even that," said Friedel, slightly smiling.
+
+"Tush!" hastily returned his brother, "I meant only by way of proof.
+Would an honest old fellow like Heinz be a deceiver?"
+
+"Not wittingly.  Yet I would fain ride to that hostel and make
+inquiries!"
+
+"The traitor host met his deserts, and was broken on the wheel for
+murdering a pedlar a year ago," said Ebbo.  "I would I knew where my
+father was buried, for then would I bring his corpse honourably back;
+but as to his being a living man, I will not have it spoken of to
+trouble my mother."
+
+"To trouble her?" exclaimed Friedel.
+
+"To trouble her," repeated Ebbo.  "Long since hath passed the pang of
+his loss, and there is reason in what old Sorel says, that he must
+have been a rugged, untaught savage, with little in common with the
+gentle one, and that tender memory hath decked him out as he never
+could have been.  Nay, Friedel, it is but sense.  What could a man
+have been under the granddame's breeding?"
+
+"It becomes not thee to say so!" returned Friedel.  "Nay, he could
+learn to love our mother."
+
+"One sign of grace, but doubtless she loved him the better for their
+having been so little together.  Her heart is at peace, believing him
+in his grave; but let her imagine him in Schlangenwald's dungeon, or
+some Moorish galley, if thou likest it better, and how will her mild
+spirit be rent!"
+
+"It might be so," said Friedel, thoughtfully.  "It may be best to
+keep this secret from her till we have fuller certainty."
+
+"Agreed then," said Ebbo, "unless the Wildschloss fellow should again
+molest us, when his answer is ready."
+
+"Is this just towards my mother?" said Friedel.
+
+"Just!  What mean'st thou?  Is it not our office and our dearest
+right to shield our mother from care?  And is not her chief wish to
+be rid of the Wildschloss suit?"
+
+Nevertheless Ebbo was moody all the way home, but when there he
+devoted himself in his most eager and winning way to his mother,
+telling her of Master Gottfried's woodcuts, and Hausfrau Johanna's
+rheumatism, and of all the news of the country, in especial that the
+Kaisar was at Lintz, very ill with a gangrene in his leg, said to
+have been caused by his habit of always kicking doors open, and that
+his doctors thought of amputation, a horrible idea in the fifteenth
+century.  The young baron was evidently bent on proving that no one
+could make his mother so happy as he could; and he was not far wrong
+there.
+
+Friedel, however, could not rest till he had followed Heinz to the
+stable, and speaking over the back of the old white mare, the only
+other survivor of the massacre, had asked him once more for the
+particulars, a tale he was never loth to tell; but when Friedel
+further demanded whether he was certain of having seen the death of
+his younger lord, he replied, as if hurt:  "What, think you I would
+have quitted him while life was yet in him?"
+
+"No, certainly, good Heinz; yet I would fain know by what tokens thou
+knewest his death."
+
+"Ah!  Sir Friedel; when you have seen a stricken field or two, you
+will not ask how I know death from life."
+
+"Is a swoon so utterly unlike death?"
+
+"I say not but that an inexperienced youth might be mistaken," said
+Heinz; "but for one who had learned the bloody trade, it were
+impossible.  Why ask, sir?"
+
+"Because," said Friedel, low and mysteriously--"my brother would not
+have my mother know it, but--Count Schlangenwald demanded whether we
+could prove my father's death."
+
+"Prove!  He could not choose but die with three such wounds, as the
+old ruffian knows.  I shall bless the day, Sir Friedmund, when I see
+you or your brother give back those strokes!  A heavy reckoning be
+his."
+
+"We all deem that line only meant to cross our designs," said
+Friedel.  "Yet, Heinz, I would I knew how to find out what passed
+when thou wast gone.  Is there no servant at the inn--no retainer of
+Schlangenwald that aught could be learnt from?"
+
+"By St. Gertrude," roughly answered the Schneiderlein, "if you cannot
+be satisfied with the oath of a man like me, who would have given his
+life to save your father, I know not what will please you."
+
+Friedel, with his wonted good-nature, set himself to pacify the
+warrior with assurances of his trust; yet while Ebbo plunged more
+eagerly into plans for the bridge-building, Friedel drew more and
+more into his old world of musings; and many a summer afternoon was
+spent by him at the Ptarmigan's Mere, in deep communings with
+himself, as one revolving a purpose.
+
+Christina could not but observe, with a strange sense of foreboding,
+that, while one son was more than ever in the lonely mountain
+heights, the other was far more at the base.  Master Moritz
+Schleiermacher was a constant guest at the castle, and Ebbo was much
+taken up with his companionship.  He was a strong, shrewd man, still
+young, but with much experience, and he knew how to adapt himself to
+intercourse with the proud nobility, preserving an independent
+bearing, while avoiding all that haughtiness could take umbrage at;
+and thus he was acquiring a greater influence over Ebbo than was
+perceived by any save the watchful mother, who began to fear lest her
+son was acquiring an infusion of worldly wisdom and eagerness for
+gain that would indeed be a severance between him and his brother.
+
+If she had known the real difference that unconsciously kept her sons
+apart, her heart would have ached yet more.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII:  FRIEDMUND IN THE CLOUDS
+
+
+
+The stone was quarried high on the mountain, and a direct road was
+made for bringing it down to the water-side.  The castle profited by
+the road in accessibility, but its impregnability was so far
+lessened.  However, as Ebbo said, it was to be a friendly harbour,
+instead of a robber crag, and in case of need the communication could
+easily be destroyed.  The blocks of stone were brought down, and
+wooden sheds were erected for the workmen in the meadow.
+
+In August, however, came tidings that, after two amputations of his
+diseased limb, the Kaisar Friedrich III. had died--it was said from
+over free use of melons in the fever consequent on the operation.
+His death was not likely to make much change in the government, which
+had of late been left to his son.  At this time the King of the
+Romans (for the title of Kaisar was conferred only by coronation by
+the Pope, and this Maximilian never received) was at Innspruck
+collecting troops for the deliverance of Styria and Carinthia from a
+horde of invading Turks.  The Markgraf of Wurtemburg sent an
+intimation to all the Swabian League that the new sovereign would be
+best pleased if their homage were paid to him in his camp at the head
+of their armed retainers.
+
+Here was the way of enterprise and honour open at last, and the young
+barons of Adlerstein eagerly prepared for it, equipping their vassals
+and sending to Ulm to take three or four men-at-arms into their pay,
+so as to make up twenty lances as the contingent of Adlerstein.  It
+was decided that Christina should spend the time of their absence at
+Ulm, whither her sons would escort her on their way to the camp.  The
+last busy day was over, and in the summer evening Christina was
+sitting on the castle steps listening to Ebbo's eager talk of his
+plans of interesting his hero, the King of the Romans, in his bridge,
+and obtaining full recognition of his claim to the Debateable Strand,
+where the busy workmen could be seen far below.
+
+Presently Ebbo, as usual when left to himself, grew restless for want
+of Friedel, and exclaiming, "The musing fit is on him!--he will stay
+all night at the tarn if I fetch him not," he set off in quest of
+him, passing through the hamlet to look for him in the chapel on his
+way.
+
+Not finding Friedel there, he was, however, some way up towards the
+tarn, when he met his brother wearing the beamy yet awestruck look
+that he often brought from the mountain height, yet with a steadfast
+expression of resolute purpose on his face.
+
+"Ah, dreamer!" said Ebbo, "I knew where to seek thee!  Ever in the
+clouds!"
+
+"Yes, I have been to the tarn," said Friedel, throwing his arm round
+his brother's neck in their boyish fashion.  "It has been very dear
+to me, and I longed to see its gray depths once more."
+
+"Once!  Yea manifold times shalt thou see them," said Ebbo.
+"Schleiermacher tells me that these are no Janissaries, but a mere
+miscreant horde, even by whom glory can scarce be gained, and no
+peril at all."
+
+"I know not," said Friedel, "but it is to me as if I were taking my
+leave of all these purple hollows and heaven-lighted peaks cleaving
+the sky.  All the more, Ebbo, since I have made up my mind to a
+resolution."
+
+"Nay, none of the old monkish fancies," cried Ebbo, "against them
+thou art sworn, so long as I am true knight."
+
+"No, it is not the monkish fancy, but I am convinced that it is my
+duty to strive to ascertain my father's fate.  Hold, I say not that
+it is thine.  Thou hast thy charge here--"
+
+"Looking for a dead man," growled Ebbo; "a proper quest!"
+
+"Not so," returned Friedel.  "At the camp it will surely be possible
+to learn, through either Schlangenwald or his men, how it went with
+my father.  Men say that his surviving son, the Teutonic knight, is
+of very different mould.  He might bring something to light.  Were it
+proved to be as the Schneiderlein avers, then would our conscience be
+at rest; but, if he were in Schlangenwald's dungeon--"
+
+"Folly!  Impossible!"
+
+"Yet men have pined eighteen years in dark vaults," said Friedel;
+"and, when I think that so may he have wasted for the whole of our
+lives that have been so free and joyous on his own mountain, it irks
+me to bound on the heather or gaze at the stars."
+
+"If the serpent hath dared," cried Ebbo, "though it is mere folly to
+think of it, we would summon the League and have his castle about his
+ears!  Not that I believe it."
+
+"Scarce do I," said Friedel; "but there haunts me evermore the
+description of the kindly German chained between the decks of the
+Corsair's galley.  Once and again have I dreamt thereof.  And, Ebbo,
+recollect the prediction that so fretted thee.  Might not yon dark-
+cheeked woman have had some knowledge of the East and its captives?"
+
+Ebbo started, but resumed his former tone.  "So thou wouldst begin
+thine errantry like Sir Hildebert and Sir Hildebrand in the 'Rose
+garden'?  Have a care.  Such quests end in mortal conflict between
+the unknown father and son."
+
+"I should know him," said Friedel, enthusiastically, "or, at least,
+he would know my mother's son in me; and, could I no otherwise ransom
+him, I would ply the oar in his stead."
+
+"A fine exchange for my mother and me," gloomily laughed Ebbo, "to
+lose thee, my sublimated self, for a rude, savage lord, who would
+straightway undo all our work, and rate and misuse our sweet mother
+for being more civilized than himself."
+
+"Shame, Ebbo!" cried Friedel, "or art thou but in jest?"
+
+"So far in jest that thou wilt never go, puissant Sir Hildebert,"
+returned Ebbo, drawing him closer.  "Thou wilt learn--as I also trust
+to do--in what nameless hole the serpent hid his remains.  Then shall
+they be duly coffined and blazoned.  All the monks in the cloisters
+for twenty miles round shall sing requiems, and thou and I will walk
+bareheaded, with candles in our hands, by the bier, till we rest him
+in the Blessed Friedmund's chapel; and there Lucas Handlein shall
+carve his tomb, and thou shalt sit for the likeness."
+
+"So may it end," said Friedel, "but either I will know him dead, or
+endeavour somewhat in his behalf.  And that the need is real, as well
+as the purpose blessed, I have become the more certain, for, Ebbo, as
+I rose to descend the hill, I saw on the cloud our patron's very
+form--I saw myself kneel before him and receive his blessing."
+
+Ebbo burst out laughing.  "Now know I that it is indeed as saith
+Schleiermacher," he said, "and that these phantoms of the Blessed
+Friedmund are but shadows cast by the sun on the vapours of the
+ravine.  See, Friedel, I had gone to seek thee at the chapel, and
+meeting Father Norbert, I bent my knee, that I might take his
+farewell blessing.  I had the substance, thou the shadow, thou
+dreamer!"
+
+Friedel was as much mortified for the moment as his gentle nature
+could be.  Then he resumed his sweet smile, saying, "Be it so!  I
+have oft read that men are too prone to take visions and special
+providences to themselves, and now I have proved the truth of the
+saying."
+
+"And," said Ebbo, "thou seest thy purpose is as baseless as thy
+vision?"
+
+"No, Ebbo.  It grieves me to differ from thee, but my resolve is
+older than the fancy, and may not be shaken because I was vain enough
+to believe that the Blessed Friedmund could stoop to bless me."
+
+"Ha!" shouted Ebbo, glad to see an object on which to vent his secret
+annoyance.  "Who goes there, skulking round the rocks?  Here, rogue,
+what art after here?"
+
+"No harm," sullenly replied a half-clad boy.
+
+"Whence art thou?  From Schlangenwald, to spy what more we can be
+robbed of?  The lash--"
+
+"Hold," interposed Friedel.  "Perchance the poor lad had no evil
+purposes.  Didst lose thy way?"
+
+"No, sir, my mother sent me."
+
+"I thought so," cried Ebbo.  "This comes of sparing the nest of
+thankless adders!"
+
+"Nay," said Friedel, "mayhap it is because they are not thankless
+that the poor fellow is here."
+
+"Sir," said the boy, coming nearer, "I will tell YOU--YOU I will
+tell--not him who threatens.  Mother said you spared our huts, and
+the lady gave us bread when we came to the castle gate in winter, and
+she would not see the reiters lay waste your folk's doings down there
+without warning you."
+
+"My good lad!  What saidst thou?" cried Ebbo, but the boy seemed dumb
+before him, and Friedel repeated the question ere he answered:  "All
+the lanzknechts and reiters are at the castle, and the Herr Graf has
+taken all my father's young sheep for them, a plague upon him.  And
+our folk are warned to be at the muster rock to-morrow morn, each
+with a bundle of straw and a pine brand; and Black Berend heard the
+body squire say the Herr Graf had sworn not to go to the wars till
+every stick at the ford be burnt, every stone drowned, every workman
+hung."
+
+Ebbo, in a transport of indignation and gratitude, thrust his hand
+into his pouch, and threw the boy a handful of groschen, while
+Friedel gave warm thanks, in the utmost haste, ere both brothers
+sprang with headlong speed down the wild path, to take advantage of
+the timely intelligence.
+
+The little council of war was speedily assembled, consisting of the
+barons, their mother, Master Moritz Schleiermacher, Heinz, and Hatto.
+To bring up to the castle the workmen, their families, and the more
+valuable implements, was at once decided; and Christina asked whether
+there would be anything left worth defending, and whether the
+Schlangenwalden might not expend their fury on the scaffold, which
+could be newly supplied from the forest, the huts, which could be
+quickly restored, and the stones, which could hardly be damaged.  The
+enemy must proceed to the camp in a day or two, and the building
+would be less assailable by their return; and, besides, it was
+scarcely lawful to enter on a private war when the imperial banner
+was in the field.
+
+"Craving your pardon, gracious lady," said the architect, "that blame
+rests with him who provokes the war.  See, lord baron, there is time
+to send to Ulm, where the two guilds, our allies, will at once equip
+their trained bands and despatch them.  We meanwhile will hold the
+knaves in check, and, by the time our burghers come up, the snake
+brood will have had such a lesson as they will not soon forget.  Said
+I well, Herr Freiherr?"
+
+"Right bravely," said Ebbo.  "It consorts not with our honour or
+rights, with my pledges to Ulm, or the fame of my house, to shut
+ourselves up and see the rogues work their will scatheless.  My own
+score of men, besides the stouter masons, carpenters, and serfs, will
+be fully enough to make the old serpent of the wood rue the day, even
+without the aid of the burghers.  Not a word against it, dearest
+mother.  None is so wise as thou in matters of peace, but honour is
+here concerned."
+
+"My question is," persevered the mother, "whether honour be not
+better served by obeying the summons of the king against the infidel,
+with the men thou hast called together at his behest?  Let the count
+do his worst; he gives thee legal ground of complaint to lay before
+the king and the League, and all may there be more firmly
+established."
+
+"That were admirable counsel, lady," said Schleiermacher, "well
+suited to the honour-worthy guildmaster Sorel, and to our justice-
+loving city; but, in matters of baronial rights and aggressions, king
+and League are wont to help those that help themselves, and those
+that are over nice as to law and justice come by the worst."
+
+"Not the worst in the long run," said Friedel.
+
+"Thine unearthly code will not serve us here, Friedel mine," returned
+his brother.  "Did I not defend the work I have begun, I should be
+branded as a weak fool.  Nor will I see the foes of my house insult
+me without striking a fair stroke.  Hap what hap, the Debateable Ford
+shall be debated!  Call in the serfs, Hatto, and arm them.  Mother,
+order a good supper for them.  Master Moritz, let us summon thy
+masons and carpenters, and see who is a good man with his hands among
+them."
+
+Christina saw that remonstrance was vain.  The days of peril and
+violence were coming back again; and all she could take comfort in
+was, that, if not wholly right, her son was far from wholly wrong,
+and that with a free heart she could pray for a blessing on him and
+on his arms.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX:  THE FIGHT AT THE FORD
+
+
+
+By the early September sunrise the thicket beneath the pass was
+sheltering the twenty well-appointed reiters of Adlerstein, each
+standing, holding his horse by the bridle, ready to mount at the
+instant.  In their rear were the serfs and artisans, some with axes,
+scythes, or ploughshares, a few with cross-bows, and Jobst and his
+sons with the long blackened poles used for stirring their charcoal
+fires.  In advance were Master Moritz and the two barons, the former
+in a stout plain steel helmet, cuirass, and gauntlets, a sword, and
+those new-fashioned weapons, pistols; the latter in full knightly
+armour, exactly alike, from the gilt-spurred heel to the eagle-
+crested helm, and often moving restlessly forward to watch for the
+enemy, though taking care not to be betrayed by the glitter of their
+mail.  So long did they wait that there was even a doubt whether it
+might not have been a false alarm; the boy was vituperated, and it
+was proposed to despatch a spy to see whether anything were doing at
+Schlangenwald.
+
+At length a rustling and rushing were heard; then a clank of armour.
+Ebbo vaulted into the saddle, and gave the word to mount;
+Schleiermacher, who always fought on foot, stepped up to him.  "Keep
+back your men, Herr Freiherr.  Let his design be manifest.  We must
+not be said to have fallen on him on his way to the muster."
+
+"It would be but as he served my father!" muttered Ebbo, forced,
+however, to restrain himself, though with boiling blood, as the tramp
+of horses shook the ground, and bright armour became visible on the
+further side of the stream.
+
+For the first time, the brothers beheld the foe of their line.  He
+was seated on a clumsy black horse, and sheathed in full armour, and
+was apparently a large heavy man, whose powerful proportions were
+becoming unwieldy as he advanced in life.  The dragon on his crest
+and shield would have made him known to the twins, even without the
+deadly curse that passed the Schneiderlein's lips at the sight.  As
+the armed troop, out-numbering the Adlersteiners by about a dozen,
+and followed by a rabble with straw and pine brands, came forth on
+the meadow, the count halted and appeared to be giving orders.
+
+"The ruffian!  He is calling them on!  Now--" began Ebbo.
+
+"Nay, there is no sign yet that he is not peacefully on his journey
+to the camp," responded Moritz; and, chafing with impatient fury, the
+knight waited while Schlangenwald rode towards the old channel of the
+Braunwasser, and there, drawing his rein, and sitting like a statue
+in his stirrups, he could hear him shout:  "The lazy dogs are not
+astir yet.  We will give them a reveille.  Forward with your brands!"
+
+"Now!" and Ebbo's cream-coloured horse leapt forth, as the whole band
+flashed into the sunshine from the greenwood covert.
+
+"Who troubles the workmen on my land?" shouted Ebbo.
+
+"Who you may be I care not," replied the count, "but when I find
+strangers unlicensed on my lands, I burn down their huts.  On,
+fellows!"
+
+"Back, fellows!" called Ebbo.  "Whoso touches a stick on Adlerstein
+ground shall suffer."
+
+"So!" said the count, "this is the burgher-bred, burgher-fed varlet,
+that calls himself of Adlerstein!  Boy, thou had best be warned.
+Wert thou true-blooded, it were worth my while to maintain my rights
+against thee.  Craven as thou art, not even with spirit to accept my
+feud, I would fain not have the trouble of sweeping thee from my
+path."
+
+"Herr Graf, as true Freiherr and belted knight, I defy thee!  I
+proclaim my right to this ground, and whoso damages those I place
+there must do battle with me."
+
+"Thou wilt have it then," said the count, taking his heavy lance from
+his squire, closing his visor, and wheeling back his horse, so as to
+give space for his career.
+
+Ebbo did the like, while Friedel on one side, and Hierom von
+Schlangenwald on the other, kept their men in array, awaiting the
+issue of the strife between their leaders--the fire of seventeen
+against the force of fifty-six.
+
+They closed in full shock, with shivered lances and rearing, pawing
+horses, but without damage to either.  Each drew his sword, and they
+were pressing together, when Heinz, seeing a Schlangenwalder aiming
+with his cross-bow, rode at him furiously, and the melee became
+general; shots were fired, not only from cross-bows, but from
+arquebuses, and in the throng Friedel lost sight of the main combat
+between his brother and the count.
+
+Suddenly however there was a crash, as of falling men and horses,
+with a shout of victory strangely mingled with a cry of agony, and
+both sides became aware that their leaders had fallen.  Each party
+rushed to its fallen head.  Friedel beheld Ebbo under his struggling
+horse, and an enemy dashing at his throat, and, flying to the rescue,
+he rode down the assailant, striking him with his sword; and, with
+the instinct of driving the foe as far as possible from his brother,
+he struck with a sort of frenzy, shouting fiercely to his men, and
+leaping over the dry bed of the river, rushing onward with an
+intoxication of ardour that would have seemed foreign to his gentle
+nature, but for the impetuous desire to protect his brother.  Their
+leaders down, the enemy had no one to rally them, and, in spite of
+their superiority in number, gave way in confusion before the furious
+onset of Adlerstein.  So soon, however, as Friedel perceived that he
+had forced the enemy far back from the scene of conflict, his anxiety
+for his brother returned, and, leaving the retainers to continue the
+pursuit, he turned his horse.  There, on the green meadow, lay on the
+one hand Ebbo's cream-coloured charger, with his master under him, on
+the other the large figure of the count; and several other prostrate
+forms likewise struggled on the sand and pebbles of the strand, or on
+the turf.
+
+"Ay," said the architect, who had turned with Friedel, "'twas a
+gallant feat, Sir Friedel, and I trust there is no great harm done.
+Were it the mere dint of the count's sword, your brother will be
+little the worse."
+
+"Ebbo!  Ebbo mine, look up!" cried Friedel, leaping from his horse,
+and unclasping his brother's helmet.
+
+"Friedel!" groaned a half-suffocated voice.  "O take away the horse."
+
+One or two of the artisans were at hand, and with their help the
+dying steed was disengaged from the rider, who could not restrain his
+moans, though Friedel held him in his arms, and endeavoured to move
+him as gently as possible.  It was then seen that the deep gash from
+the count's sword in the chest was not the most serious injury, but
+that an arquebus ball had pierced his thigh, before burying itself in
+the body of his horse; and that the limb had been further crushed and
+wrenched by the animal's struggles.  He was nearly unconscious, and
+gasped with anguish, but, after Moritz had bathed his face and
+moistened his lips, as he lay in his brother's arms, he looked up
+with clearer eyes, and said:  "Have I slain him?  It was the shot,
+not he, that sent me down.  Lives he?  See--thou, Friedel--thou.
+Make him yield."
+
+Transferring Ebbo to the arms of Schleiermacher, Friedel obeyed, and
+stepped towards the fallen foe.  The wrongs of Adlerstein were indeed
+avenged, for the blood was welling fast from a deep thrust above the
+collar-bone, and the failing, feeble hand was wandering uncertainly
+among the clasps of the gorget.
+
+"Let me aid," said Friedel, kneeling down, and in his pity for the
+dying man omitting the summons to yield, he threw back the helmet,
+and beheld a grizzled head and stern hard features, so embrowned by
+weather and inflamed by intemperance, that even approaching death
+failed to blanch them.  A scowl of malignant hate was in the eyes,
+and there was a thrill of angry wonder as they fell on the lad's
+face.  "Thou again,--thou whelp!  I thought at least I had made an
+end of thee," he muttered, unheard by Friedel, who, intent on the
+thought that had recurred to him with greater vividness than ever,
+was again filling Ebbo's helmet with water.  He refreshed the dying
+man's face with it, held it to his lips, and said:  "Herr Graf,
+variance and strife are ended now.  For heaven's sake, say where I
+may find my father!"
+
+"So!  Wouldst find him?" replied Schlangenwald, fixing his look on
+the eager countenance of the youth, while his hand, with a dying
+man's nervous agitation, was fumbling at his belt.
+
+"I would bless you for ever, could I but free him."
+
+"Know then," said the count, speaking very slowly, and still holding
+the young knight's gaze with a sort of intent fascination, by the
+stony glare of his light gray eyes, "know that thy villain father is
+a Turkish slave, unless he be--as I hope--where his mongrel son may
+find him."
+
+Therewith came a flash, a report; Friedel leaped back, staggered,
+fell; Ebbo started to a sitting posture, with horrified eyes, and a
+loud shriek, calling on his brother; Moritz sprang to his feet,
+shouting, "Shame! treason!"
+
+"I call you to witness that I had not yielded," said the count.
+"There's an end of the brood!" and with a grim smile, he straightened
+his limbs, and closed his eyes as a dead man, ere the indignant
+artisans fell on him in savage vengeance.
+
+All this had passed like a flash of lightning, and Friedel had almost
+at the instant of his fall flung himself towards his brother, and
+raising himself on one hand, with the other clasped Ebbo's, saying,
+"Fear not; it is nothing," and he was bending to take Ebbo's head
+again on his knee, when a gush of dark blood, from his left side,
+caused Moritz to exclaim, "Ah!  Sir Friedel, the traitor did his
+work!  That is no slight hurt."
+
+"Where?  How?  The ruffian!" cried Ebbo, supporting himself on his
+elbow, so as to see his brother, who rather dreamily put his hand to
+his side, and, looking at the fresh blood that immediately dyed it,
+said, "I do not feel it.  This is more numb dulness than pain."
+
+"A bad sign that," said Moritz, apart to one of the workmen, with
+whom he held counsel how to carry back to the castle the two young
+knights, who remained on the bank, Ebbo partly extended on the
+ground, partly supported on the knee and arm of Friedel, who sat with
+his head drooping over him, their looks fixed on one another, as if
+conscious of nothing else on earth.
+
+"Herr Freiherr," said Moritz, presently, "have you breath to wind
+your bugle to call the men back from the pursuit?"
+
+Ebbo essayed, but was too faint, and Friedel, rousing himself from
+the stupor, took the horn from him, and made the mountain echoes ring
+again, but at the expense of a great effusion of blood.
+
+By this time, however, Heinz was riding back, and a moment his
+exultation changed to rage and despair, when he saw the condition of
+his young lords.  Master Schleiermacher proposed to lay them on some
+of the planks prepared for the building, and carry them up the new
+road.
+
+"Methinks," said Friedel, "that I could ride if I were lifted on
+horseback, and thus would our mother be less shocked."
+
+"Well thought," said Ebbo.  "Go on and cheer her.  Show her thou
+canst keep the saddle, however it may be with me," he added, with a
+groan of anguish.
+
+Friedel made the sign of the cross over him.  "The holy cross keep us
+and her, Ebbo," he said, as he bent to assist in laying his brother
+on the boards, where a mantle had been spread; then kissed his brow,
+saying, "We shall be together again soon."
+
+Ebbo was lifted on the shoulders of his bearers, and Friedel strove
+to rise, with the aid of Heinz, but sank back, unable to use his
+limbs; and Schleiermacher was the more concerned.  "It goes so with
+the backbone," he said.  "Sir Friedmund, you had best be carried."
+
+"Nay, for my mother's sake!  And I would fain be on my good steed's
+back once again!" he entreated.  And when with much difficulty he had
+been lifted to the back of his cream-colour, who stood as gently and
+patiently as if he understood the exigency of the moment, he sat
+upright, and waved his hand as he passed the litter, while Ebbo, on
+his side, signed to him to speed on and prepare their mother.  Long,
+however, before the castle was reached, dizzy confusion and leaden
+helplessness, when no longer stimulated by his brother's presence, so
+grew on him that it was with much ado that Heinz could keep him in
+his saddle; but, when he saw his mother in the castle gateway, he
+again collected his forces, bade Heinz withdraw his supporting arm,
+and, straightening himself, waved a greeting to her, as he called
+cheerily; "Victory, dear mother.  Ebbo has overthrown the count, and
+you must not be grieved if it be at some cost of blood."
+
+"Alas, my son!" was all Christina could say, for his effort at gaiety
+formed a ghastly contrast with the gray, livid hue that overspread
+his fair young face, his bloody armour, and damp disordered hair, and
+even his stiff unearthly smile.
+
+"Nay, motherling," he added, as she came so near that he could put
+his arm round her neck, "sorrow not, for Ebbo will need thee much.
+And, mother," as his face lighted up, "there is joy coming to you.
+Only I would that I could have brought him.  Mother, he died not
+under the Schlangenwald swords."
+
+"Who?  Not Ebbo?" cried the bewildered mother.
+
+"Your own Eberhard, our father," said Friedel, raising her face to
+him with his hand, and adding, as he met a startled look, "The cruel
+count owned it with his last breath.  He is a Turkish slave, and
+surely heaven will give him back to comfort you, even though we may
+not work his freedom!  O mother, I had so longed for it, but God be
+thanked that at least certainty was bought by my life."  The last
+words were uttered almost unconsciously, and he had nearly fallen, as
+the excitement faded; but, as they were lifting him down, he bent
+once more and kissed the glossy neck of his horse.  "Ah! poor fellow,
+thou too wilt be lonely.  May Ebbo yet ride thee!"
+
+The mother had no time for grief.  Alas!  She might have full time
+for that by and by!  The one wish of the twins was to be together,
+and presently both were laid on the great bed in the upper chamber,
+Ebbo in a swoon from the pain of the transport, and Friedel lying so
+as to meet the first look of recovery.  And, after Ebbo's eyes had
+re-opened, they watched one another in silence for a short space,
+till Ebbo said:  "Is that the hue of death on thy face, brother?"
+
+"I well believe so," said Friedel.
+
+"Ever together," said Ebbo, holding his hand.  "But alas!  My mother!
+Would I had never sent thee to the traitor."
+
+"Ah!  So comes her comfort," said Friedel.  "Heard you not?  He owned
+that my father was among the Turks."
+
+"And I," cried Ebbo.  "I have withheld thee!  O Friedel, had I
+listened to thee, thou hadst not been in this fatal broil!"
+
+"Nay, ever together," repeated Friedel.  "Through Ulm merchants will
+my mother be able to ransom him.  I know she will, so oft have I
+dreamt of his return.  Then, mother, you will give him our duteous
+greetings;" and he smiled again.
+
+Like one in a dream Christina returned his smile, because she saw he
+wished it, just as the moment before she had been trying to staunch
+his wound.
+
+It was plain that the injuries, except Ebbo's sword-cut, were far
+beyond her skill, and she could only endeavour to check the bleeding
+till better aid could be obtained from Ulm.  Thither Moritz
+Schleiermacher had already sent, and he assured her that he was far
+from despairing of the elder baron, but she derived little hope from
+his words, for gunshot wounds were then so ill understood as
+generally to prove fatal.
+
+Moreover, there was an undefined impression that the two lives must
+end in the same hour, even as they had begun.  Indeed, Ebbo was
+suffering so terribly, and was so much spent with pain and loss of
+blood, that he seemed sinking much faster than Friedel, whose wound
+bled less freely, and who only seemed benumbed and torpid, except
+when he roused himself to speak, or was distressed by the writhings
+and moans which, however, for his sake, Ebbo restrained as much as he
+could.
+
+To be together seemed an all-sufficient consolation, and, when the
+chaplain came sorrowfully to give them the last rites of the Church,
+Ebbo implored him to pray that he might not be left behind long in
+purgatory.
+
+"Friedel," he said, clasping his brother's hand, "is even like the
+holy Sebastian or Maurice; but I--I was never such as he.  O father,
+will it be my penance to be left alone when he is in paradise?"
+
+"What is that?" said Friedel, partially roused by the sound of his
+name, and the involuntary pressure of his hand.  "Nay, Ebbo; one
+repentance, one cross, one hope," and he relapsed into a doze, while
+Ebbo murmured over a broken, brief confession--exhausting by its
+vehemence of self-accusation for his proud spirit, his wilful neglect
+of his lost father, his hot contempt of prudent counsel.
+
+Then, when the priest came round to Friedel's side, and the boy was
+wakened to make his shrift, the words were contrite and humble, but
+calm and full of trust.  They were like two of their own mountain
+streams, the waters almost equally undefiled by external stain--yet
+one struggling, agitated, whirling giddily round; the other still,
+transparent, and the light of heaven smiling in its clearness.
+
+The farewell greetings of the Church on earth breathed soft and sweet
+in their loftiness, and Friedel, though lying motionless, and with
+closed eyes, never failed in the murmured response, whether fully
+conscious or not, while his brother only attended by fits and starts,
+and was evidently often in too much pain to know what was passing.
+
+Help was nearer than had been hoped.  The summons despatched the
+night before had been responded to by the vintners and mercers; their
+train bands had set forth, and their captain, a cautious man, never
+rode into the way of blows without his surgeon at hand.  And so it
+came to pass that, before the sun was low on that long and grievous
+day, Doctor Johannes Butteman was led into the upper chamber, where
+the mother looked up to him with a kind of hopeless gratitude on her
+face, which was nearly as white as those of her sons.  The doctor
+soon saw that Friedel was past human aid; but, when he declared that
+there was fair hope for the other youth, Friedel, whose torpor had
+been dispelled by the examination, looked up with his beaming smile,
+saying, "There, motherling."
+
+The doctor then declared that he could not deal with the Baron's
+wound unless he were the sole occupant of the bed, and this sentence
+brought the first cloud of grief or dread to Friedel's brow, but only
+for a moment.  He looked at his brother, who had again fainted at the
+first touch of his wounded limb, and said, "It is well.  Tell the
+dear Ebbo that I cannot help it if after all I go to the praying, and
+leave him the fighting.  Dear, dear Ebbo!  One day together again and
+for ever!  I leave thee for thine own sake."  With much effort he
+signed the cross again on his brother's brow, and kissed it long and
+fervently.  Then, as all stood round, reluctant to effect this
+severance, or disturb one on whom death was visibly fast approaching,
+he struggled up on his elbow, and held out the other hand, saying,
+"Take me now, Heinz, ere Ebbo revive to be grieved.  The last
+sacrifice," he further whispered, whilst almost giving himself to
+Heinz and Moritz to be carried to his own bed in the turret chamber.
+
+There, even as they laid him down, began what seemed to be the mortal
+agony, and, though he was scarcely sensible, his mother felt that her
+prime call was to him, while his brother was in other hands.  Perhaps
+it was well for her.  Surgical practice was rough, and wounds made by
+fire-arms were thought to have imbibed a poison that made treatment
+be supposed efficacious in proportion to the pain inflicted.  When
+Ebbo was recalled by the torture to see no white reflection of his
+own face on the pillow beside him, and to feel in vain for the grasp
+of the cold damp hand, a delirious frenzy seized him, and his
+struggles were frustrating the doctor's attempts, when a low soft
+sweet song stole through the open door.
+
+"Friedel!" he murmured, and held his breath to listen.  All through
+the declining day did the gentle sound continue; now of grand chants
+or hymns caught from the cathedral choir, now of songs of chivalry or
+saintly legend so often sung over the evening fire; the one flowing
+into the other in the wandering of failing powers, but never failing
+in the tender sweetness that had distinguished Friedel through life.
+And, whenever that voice was heard, let them do to him what they
+would, Ebbo was still absorbed in intense listening so as not to lose
+a note, and lulled almost out of sense of suffering by that swan-like
+music.  If his attendants made such noise as to break in on it, or if
+it ceased for a moment, the anguish returned, but was charmed away by
+the weakest, faintest resumption of the song.  Probably Friedel knew
+not, with any earthly sense, what he was doing, but to the very last
+he was serving his twin brother as none other could have aided him in
+his need.
+
+The September sun had set, twilight was coming on, the doctor had
+worked his stern will, and Ebbo, quivering in every fibre, lay spent
+on his pillow, when his mother glided in, and took her seat near him,
+though where she hoped he would not notice her presence.  But he
+raised his eyelids, and said, "He is not singing now."
+
+"Singing indeed, but where we cannot hear him," she answered.
+"'Whiter than the snow, clearer than the ice-cave, more solemn than
+the choir.  They will come at last.'  That was what he said, even as
+he entered there."  And the low dove-like tone and tender calm face
+continued upon Ebbo the spell that the chant had left.  He dozed as
+though still lulled by its echo.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX:  THE WOUNDED EAGLE
+
+
+
+The star and the spark in the stubble!  Often did the presage of her
+dream occur to Christina, and assist in sustaining her hopes during
+the days that Ebbo's life hung in the balance, and he himself had
+hardly consciousness to realize either his brother's death or his own
+state, save as much as was shown by the words, "Let him not be taken
+away, mother; let him wait for me."
+
+Friedmund did wait, in his coffin before the altar in the castle
+chapel, covered with a pall of blue velvet, and great white cross,
+mournfully sent by Hausfrau Johanna; his sword, shield, helmet, and
+spurs laid on it, and wax tapers burning at the head and feet.  And,
+when Christina could leave the one son on his couch of suffering, it
+was to kneel beside the other son on his narrow bed of rest, and
+recall, like a breath of solace, the heavenly loveliness and peace
+that rested on his features when she had taken her last long look at
+them.
+
+Moritz Schleiermacher assisted at Sir Friedmund's first solemn
+requiem, and then made a journey to Ulm, whence he returned to find
+the Baron's danger so much abated that he ventured on begging for an
+interview with the lady, in which he explained his purpose of
+repairing at once to the imperial camp, taking with him a letter from
+the guilds concerned in the bridge, and using his personal influence
+with Maximilian to obtain not only pardon for the combat, but
+authoritative sanction to the erection.  Dankwart of Schlangenwald,
+the Teutonic knight, and only heir of old Wolfgang, was supposed to
+be with the Emperor, and it might be possible to come to terms with
+him, since his breeding in the Prussian commanderies had kept him
+aloof from the feuds of his father and brother.  This mournful fight
+had to a certain extent equalized the injuries on either side, since
+the man whom Friedel had cut down was Hierom, one of the few
+remaining scions of Schlangenwald, and there was thus no dishonour in
+trying to close the deadly feud, and coming to an amicable
+arrangement about the Debateable Strand, the cause of so much
+bloodshed.  What was now wanted was Freiherr Eberhard's signature to
+the letter to the Emperor, and his authority for making terms with
+the new count; and haste was needed, lest the Markgraf of Wurtemburg
+should represent the affray in the light of an outrage against a
+member of the League.
+
+Christina saw the necessity, and undertook if possible to obtain her
+son's signature, but, at the first mention of Master Moritz and the
+bridge, Ebbo turned away his head, groaned, and begged to hear no
+more of either.  He thought of his bold declaration that the bridge
+must be built, even at the cost of blood!  Little did he then guess
+of whose blood!  And in his bitterness of spirit he felt a jealousy
+of that influence of Schleiermacher, which had of late come between
+him and his brother.  He hated the very name, he said, and hid his
+face with a shudder.  He hoped the torrent would sweep away every
+fragment of the bridge.
+
+"Nay, Ebbo mine, wherefore wish ill to a good work that our blessed
+one loved?  Listen, and let me tell you my dream for making yonder
+strand a peaceful memorial of our peaceful boy."
+
+"To honour Friedel?" and he gazed on her with something like interest
+in his eyes.
+
+"Yes, Ebbo, and as he would best brook honour.  Let us seek for ever
+to end the rival claims to yon piece of meadow by praying this knight
+of a religious order, the new count, to unite with us in building
+there--or as near as may be safe--a church of holy peace, and a cell
+for a priest, who may watch over the bridge ward, and offer the holy
+sacrifice for the departed of either house.  There will we place our
+gentle Friedel to be the first to guard the peace of the ford, and
+there will we sleep ourselves when our time shall come, and so may
+the cruel feud of many generations be slaked for ever."
+
+"In his blood!" sighed Ebbo.  "Ah! would that it had been mine,
+mother.  It is well, as well as anything can be again.  So shall the
+spot where he fell be made sacred, and fenced from rude feet, and we
+shall see his fair effigy keeping his armed watch there."
+
+And Christina was thankful to see his look of gratification, sad
+though it was.  She sat down near his bed, and began to write a
+letter in their joint names to Graf Dankwart von Schlangenwald,
+proposing that thus, after the even balance of the wrongs of the two
+houses, their mutual hostility might be laid to rest for ever by the
+consecration of the cause of their long contention.  It was a stiff
+and formal letter, full of the set pious formularies of the age,
+scarcely revealing the deep heart-feeling within; but it was to the
+purpose, and Ebbo, after hearing it read, heartily approved, and
+consented to sign both it and those that Schleiermacher had brought.
+Christina held the scroll, and placed the pen in the fingers that had
+lately so easily wielded the heavy sword, but now felt it a far
+greater effort to guide the slender quill.
+
+Moritz Schleiermacher went his way in search of the King of the
+Romans, far off in Carinthia.  A full reply could not be expected
+till the campaign was over, and all that was known for some time was
+through a messenger sent back to Ulm by Schleiermacher with the
+intelligence that Maximilian would examine into the matter after his
+return, and that Count Dankwart would reply when he should come to
+perform his father's obsequies after the army was dispersed.  There
+was also a letter of kind though courtly condolence from Kasimir of
+Wildschloss, much grieving for gallant young Sir Friedmund,
+proffering all the advocacy he could give the cause of Adlerstein,
+and covertly proffering the protection that she and her remaining son
+might now be more disposed to accept.  Christina suppressed this
+letter, knowing it would only pain and irritate Ebbo, and that she
+had her answer ready.  Indeed, in her grief for one son, and her
+anxiety for the other, perhaps it was this letter that first made her
+fully realize the drift of those earnest words of Friedel's
+respecting his father.
+
+Meantime the mother and son were alone together, with much of
+suffering and of sorrow, yet with a certain tender comfort in the
+being all in all to one another, with none to intermeddle with their
+mutual love and grief.  It was to Christina as if something of
+Friedel's sweetness had passed to his brother in his patient
+helplessness, and that, while thus fully engrossed with him, she had
+both her sons in one.  Nay, in spite of all the pain, grief, and
+weariness, these were times when both dreaded any change, and the
+full recovery, when not only would the loss of Friedel be every
+moment freshly brought home to his brother, but when Ebbo would go in
+quest of his father.
+
+For on this the young Baron had fixed his mind as a sacred duty, from
+the moment he had seen that life was to be his lot.  He looked on his
+neglect of indications of the possibility of his father's life in the
+light of a sin that had led to all his disasters, and not only
+regarded the intended search as a token of repentance, but as a
+charge bequeathed to him by his less selfish brother.  He seldom
+spoke of his intention, but his mother was perfectly aware of it, and
+never thought of it without such an agony of foreboding dread as
+eclipsed all the hope that lay beyond.  She could only turn away her
+mind from the thought, and be thankful for what was still her own
+from day to day.
+
+"Art weary, my son?" asked Christina one October afternoon, as Ebbo
+lay on his bed, languidly turning the pages of a noble folio of the
+Legends of the Saints that Master Gottfried had sent for his
+amusement.  It was such a book as fixed the ardour a few years later
+of the wounded Navarrese knight, Inigo de Loyola, but Ebbo handled it
+as if each page were lead.
+
+"Only thinking how Friedel would have glowed towards these as his own
+kinsmen," said Ebbo.  "Then should I have cared to read of them!" and
+he gave a long sigh.
+
+"Let me take away the book," she said.  "Thou hast read long, and it
+is dark."
+
+"So dark that there must surely be a snow-cloud."
+
+"Snow is falling in the large flakes that our Friedel used to call
+winter-butterflies."
+
+"Butterflies that will swarm and shut us in from the weary world,"
+said Ebbo.  "And alack! when they go, what a turmoil it will be!
+Councils in the Rathhaus, appeals to the League, wranglings with the
+Markgraf, wise saws, overweening speeches, all alike dull and dead."
+
+"It will scarce be so when strength and spirit have returned, mine
+Ebbo."
+
+"Never can life be more to me than the way to him," said the lonely
+boy; "and I--never like him--shall miss the road without him."
+
+While he thus spoke in the listless dejection of sorrow and weakness,
+Hatto's aged step was on the stair.  "Gracious lady," he said, "here
+is a huntsman bewildered in the hills, who has been asking shelter
+from the storm that is drifting up."
+
+"See to his entertainment, then, Hatto," said the lady.
+
+"My lady--Sir Baron," added Hatto, "I had not come up but that this
+guest seems scarce gear for us below.  He is none of the foresters of
+our tract.  His hair is perfumed, his shirt is fine holland, his buff
+suit is of softest skin, his baldric has a jewelled clasp, and his
+arblast!  It would do my lord baron's heart good only to cast eyes on
+the perfect make of that arblast!  He has a lordly tread, and a
+stately presence, and, though he has a free tongue, and made friends
+with us as he dried his garments, he asked after my lord like his
+equal."
+
+"O mother, must you play the chatelaine?" asked Ebbo.  "Who can the
+fellow be?  Why did none ever so come when they would have been more
+welcome?"
+
+"Welcomed must he be," said Christina, rising, "and thy state shall
+be my excuse for not tarrying longer with him than may be needful."
+
+Yet, though shrinking from a stranger's face, she was not without
+hope that the variety might wholesomely rouse her son from his
+depression, and in effect Ebbo, when left with Hatto, minutely
+questioned him on the appearance of the stranger, and watched, with
+much curiosity, for his mother's return.
+
+"Ebbo mine," she said, entering, after a long interval, "the knight
+asks to see thee either after supper, or to-morrow morn."
+
+"Then a knight he is?"
+
+"Yea, truly, a knight truly in every look and gesture, bearing his
+head like the leading stag of the herd, and yet right gracious."
+
+"Gracious to you, mother, in your own hall?" cried Ebbo, almost
+fiercely.
+
+"Ah! jealous champion, thou couldst not take offence!  It was the
+manner of one free and courteous to every one, and yet with an
+inherent loftiness that pervades all."
+
+"Gives he no name?" said Ebbo.
+
+"He calls himself Ritter Theurdank, of the suite of the late Kaisar,
+but I should deem him wont rather to lead than to follow."
+
+"Theurdank," repeated Eberhard, "I know no such name!  So,
+motherling, are you going to sup?  I shall not sleep till I have seen
+him!"
+
+"Hold, dear son."  She leant over him and spoke low.  "See him thou
+must, but let me first station Heinz and Koppel at the door with
+halberts, not within earshot, but thou art so entirely defenceless."
+
+She had the pleasure of seeing him laugh.  "Less defenceless than
+when the kinsman of Wildschloss here visited us, mother?  I see for
+whom thou takest him, but let it be so; a spiritual knight would
+scarce wreak his vengeance on a wounded man in his bed.  I will not
+have him insulted with precautions.  If he has freely risked himself
+in my hands, I will as freely risk myself in his.  Moreover, I
+thought he had won thy heart."
+
+"Reigned over it, rather," said Christina.  "It is but the disguise
+that I suspect and mistrust.  Bid me not leave thee alone with him,
+my son."
+
+"Nay, dear mother," said Ebbo, "the matters on which he is like to
+speak will brook no presence save our own, and even that will be hard
+enough to bear.  So prop me more upright!  So!  And comb out these
+locks somewhat smoother.  Thanks, mother.  Now can he see whether he
+will choose Eberhard of Adlerstein for friend or foe."
+
+By the time supper was ended, the only light in the upper room came
+from the flickering flames of the fire of pine knots on the hearth.
+It glanced on the pale features and dark sad eyes of the young Baron,
+sad in spite of the eager look of scrutiny that he turned on the
+figure that entered at the door, and approached so quickly that the
+partial light only served to show the gloss of long fair hair, the
+glint of a jewelled belt, and the outline of a tall, well-knit, agile
+frame.
+
+"Welcome, Herr Ritter," he said; "I am sorry we have been unable to
+give you a fitter reception."
+
+"No host could be more fully excused than you," said the stranger,
+and Ebbo started at his voice.  "I fear you have suffered much, and
+still have much to suffer."
+
+"My sword wound is healing fast," said Ebbo; "it is the shot in my
+broken thigh that is so tedious and painful."
+
+"And I dare be sworn the leeches made it worse.  I have hated all
+leeches ever since they kept me three days a prisoner in a
+'pothecary's shop stinking with drugs.  Why, I have cured myself with
+one pitcher of water of a raging fever, in their very despite!  How
+did they serve thee, my poor boy?"
+
+"They poured hot oil into the wound to remove the venom of the lead,"
+said Ebbo.
+
+"Had it been my case the lead should have been in their own brains
+first, though that were scarce needed, the heavy-witted Hans
+Sausages.  Why should there be more poison in lead than in steel?  I
+have asked all my surgeons that question, nor ever had a reasonable
+answer.  Greater havoc of warriors do they make than ever with the
+arquebus--ay, even when every lanzknecht bears one."
+
+"Alack!" Ebbo could not help exclaiming, "where will be room for
+chivalry?"
+
+"Talk not old world nonsense," said Theurdank; "chivalry is in the
+heart, not in the weapon.  A youth beforehand enough with the world
+to be building bridges should know that, when all our troops are
+provided with such an arm, then will their platoons in serried ranks
+be as a solid wall breathing fire, and as impregnable as the lines of
+English archers with long bows, or the phalanx of Macedon.  And, when
+each man bears a pistol instead of the misericorde, his life will be
+far more his own."
+
+Ebbo's face was in full light, and his visitor marked his contracted
+brow and trembling lip.  "Ah!" he said, "thou hast had foul
+experience of these weapons."
+
+"Not mine own hurt," said Ebbo; "that was but fair chance of war."
+
+"I understand," said the knight; "it was the shot that severed the
+goodly bond that was so fair to see.  Young man, none has grieved
+more truly than King Max."
+
+"And well he may," said Ebbo.  "He has not lost merely one of his
+best servants, but all the better half of another."
+
+"There is still stuff enough left to make that ONE well worth
+having," said Theurdank, kindly grasping his hand, "though I would it
+were more substantial!  How didst get old Wolfgang down, boy?  He
+must have been a tough morsel for slight bones like these, even when
+better covered than now.  Come, tell me all.  I promised the Markgraf
+of Wurtemburg to look into the matter when I came to be guest at St.
+Ruprecht's cloister, and I have some small interest too with King
+Max."
+
+His kindliness and sympathy were more effectual with Ebbo than the
+desire to represent his case favourably, for he was still too
+wretched to care for policy; but he answered Theurdank's questions
+readily, and explained how the idea of the bridge had originated in
+the vigil beside the broken waggons.
+
+"I hope," said Theurdank, "the merchants made up thy share?  These
+overthrown goods are a seignorial right of one or other of you lords
+of the bank."
+
+"True, Herr Ritter; but we deemed it unknightly to snatch at what
+travellers lost by misfortune."
+
+"Freiherr Eberhard, take my word for it, while thou thus holdest, all
+the arquebuses yet to be cut out of the Black Forest will not mar thy
+chivalry.  Where didst get these ways of thinking?"
+
+"My brother was a very St. Sebastian!  My mother--"
+
+"Ah! her sweet wise face would have shown it, even had not poor
+Kasimir of Adlerstein raved of her.  Ah! lad, thou hast crossed a
+case of true love there!  Canst not brook even such a gallant
+stepfather?"
+
+"I may not," said Ebbo, with spirit; "for with his last breath
+Schlangenwald owned that my own father died not at the hostel, but
+may now be alive as a Turkish slave."
+
+"The devil!" burst out Theurdank.  "Well! that might have been a
+pretty mess!  A Turkish slave, saidst thou!  What year chanced all
+this matter--thy grandfather's murder and all the rest?"
+
+"The year before my birth," said Ebbo.  "It was in the September of
+1475."
+
+"Ha!" muttered Theurdank, musing to himself; "that was the year the
+dotard Schenk got his overthrow at the fight of Rain on Sare from the
+Moslem.  Some composition was made by them, and old Wolfgang was not
+unlikely to have been the go-between.  So!  Say on, young knight," he
+added, "let us to the matter in hand.  How rose the strife that kept
+back two troops from our--from the banner of the empire?"
+
+Ebbo proceeded with the narration, and concluded it just as the bell
+now belonging to the chapel began to toll for compline, and Theurdank
+prepared to obey its summons, first, however, asking if he should
+send any one to the patient.  Ebbo thanked him, but said he needed no
+one till his mother should come after prayers.
+
+"Nay, I told thee I had some leechcraft.  Thou art weary, and must
+rest more entirely;"--and, giving him little choice, Theurdank
+supported him with one arm while removing the pillows that propped
+him, then laid him tenderly down, saying, "Good night, and the saints
+bless thee, brave young knight.  Sleep well, and recover in spite of
+the leeches.  I cannot afford to lose both of you."
+
+Ebbo strove to follow mentally the services that were being performed
+in the chapel, and whose "Amens" and louder notes pealed up to him,
+devoid of the clear young tones that had sung their last here below,
+but swelled by grand bass notes that as much distracted Ebbo's
+attention as the memory of his guest's conversation; and he
+impatiently awaited his mother's arrival.
+
+At length, lamp in hand, she appeared with tears shining in her eyes,
+and bending over him said,
+
+"He hath done honour to our blessed one, my Ebbo; he knelt by him,
+and crossed him with holy water, and when he led me from the chapel
+he told me any mother in Germany might envy me my two sons even now.
+Thou must love him now, Ebbo."
+
+"Love him as one loves one's loftiest model," said Ebbo--"value the
+old castle the more for sheltering him."
+
+"Hath he made himself known to thee?"
+
+"Not openly, but there is only one that he can be."
+
+Christina smiled, thankful that the work of pardon and reconciliation
+had been thus softened by the personal qualities of the enemy, whose
+conduct in the chapel had deeply moved her.
+
+"Then all will be well, blessedly well," she said.
+
+"So I trust," said Ebbo, "but the bell broke our converse, and he
+laid me down as tenderly as--O mother, if a father's kindness be like
+his, I have truly somewhat to regain."
+
+"Knew he aught of the fell bargain?" whispered Christina.
+
+"Not he, of course, save that it was a year of Turkish inroads.  He
+will speak more perchance to-morrow.  Mother, not a word to any one,
+nor let us betray our recognition unless it be his pleasure to make
+himself known."
+
+"Certainly not," said Christina, remembering the danger that the
+household might revenge Friedel's death if they knew the foe to be in
+their power.  Knowing as she did that Ebbo's admiration was apt to be
+enthusiastic, and might now be rendered the more fervent by fever and
+solitude, she was still at a loss to understand his dazzled,
+fascinated state.
+
+When Heinz entered, bringing the castle key, which was always laid
+under the Baron's pillow, Ebbo made a movement with his hand that
+surprised them both, as if to send it elsewhere--then muttered, "No,
+no, not till he reveals himself," and asked, "Where sleeps the
+guest?"
+
+"In the grandmother's room, which we fitted for a guest-chamber,
+little thinking who our first would be," said his mother.
+
+"Never fear, lady; we will have a care to him," said Heinz, somewhat
+grimly.
+
+"Yes, have a care," said Ebbo, wearily; "and take care all due honour
+is shown to him!  Good night, Heinz."
+
+"Gracious lady," said Heinz, when by a sign he had intimated to her
+his desire of speaking with her unobserved by the Baron, "never fear;
+I know who the fellow is as well as you do.  I shall be at the foot
+of the stairs, and woe to whoever tries to step up them past me."
+
+"There is no reason to apprehend treason, Heinz, yet to be on our
+guard can do no harm."
+
+"Nay, lady, I could look to the gear for the oubliette if you would
+speak the word."
+
+"For heaven's sake, no, Heinz.  This man has come hither trusting to
+our honour, and you could not do your lord a greater wrong, nor one
+that he could less pardon, than by any attempt on our guest."
+
+"Would that he had never eaten our bread!" muttered Heinz.  "Vipers
+be they all, and who knows what may come next?"
+
+"Watch, watch, Heinz; that is all," implored Christina, "and, above
+all, not a word to any one else."
+
+And Christina dismissed the man-at-arms gruff and sullen, and herself
+retired ill at ease between fears of, and for, the unwelcome guest
+whose strange powers of fascination had rendered her, in his absence,
+doubly distrustful.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI:  RITTER THEURDANK
+
+
+
+The snow fell all night without ceasing, and was still falling on the
+morrow, when the guest explained his desire of paying a short visit
+to the young Baron, and then taking his departure.  Christina would
+gladly have been quit of him, but she felt bound to remonstrate, for
+their mountain was absolutely impassable during a fall of snow, above
+all when accompanied by wind, since the drifts concealed fearful
+abysses, and the shifting masses insured destruction to the unwary
+wayfarer; nay, natives themselves had perished between the hamlet and
+the castle.
+
+"Not the hardiest cragsman, not my son himself," she said, "could
+venture on such a morning to guide you to--"
+
+"Whither, gracious dame?" asked Theurdank, half smiling.
+
+"Nay, sir, I would not utter what you would not make known."
+
+"You know me then?"
+
+"Surely, sir, for our noble foe, whose generous trust in our honour
+must win my son's heart."
+
+"So!" he said, with a peculiar smile, "Theurdank--Dankwart--I see!
+May I ask if your son likewise smelt out the Schlangenwald?"
+
+"Verily, Sir Count, my Ebbo is not easily deceived.  He said our
+guest could be but one man in all the empire."
+
+Theurdank smiled again, saying, "Then, lady, you shudder not at a man
+whose kin and yours have shed so much of one another's blood?"
+
+"Nay, ghostly knight, I regard you as no more stained therewith than
+are my sons by the deeds of their grandfather."
+
+"If there were more like you, lady," returned Theurdank, "deadly
+feuds would soon be starved out.  May I to your son?  I have more to
+say to him, and I would fain hear his views of the storm."
+
+Christina could not be quite at ease with Theurdank in her son's
+room, but she had no choice, and she knew that Heinz was watching on
+the turret stair, out of hearing indeed, but as ready to spring as a
+cat who sees her young ones in the hand of a child that she only half
+trusts.
+
+Ebbo lay eagerly watching for his visitor, who greeted him with the
+same almost paternal kindness he had evinced the night before, but
+consulted him upon the way from the castle.  Ebbo confirmed his
+mother's opinion that the path was impracticable so long as the snow
+fell, and the wind tossed it in wild drifts.
+
+"We have been caught in snow," he said, "and hard work have we had to
+get home!  Once indeed, after a bear hunt, we fully thought the
+castle stood before us, and lo! it was all a cruel snow mist in that
+mocking shape.  I was even about to climb our last Eagle's Step, as I
+thought, when behold, it proved to be the very brink of the abyss."
+
+"Ah! these ravines are well-nigh as bad as those of the Inn.  I've
+known what it was to be caught on the ledge of a precipice by a sharp
+wind, changing its course, mark'st thou, so swiftly that it verily
+tore my hold from the rock, and had well-nigh swept me into a chasm
+of mighty depth.  There was nothing for it but to make the best
+spring I might towards the crag on the other side, and grip for my
+life at my alpenstock, which by Our Lady's grace was firmly planted,
+and I held on till I got breath again, and felt for my footing on the
+ice-glazed rock."
+
+"Ah!" said Eberhard with a long breath, after having listened with a
+hunter's keen interest to this hair's-breadth escape, "it sounds like
+a gust of my mountain air thus let in on me."
+
+"Truly it is dismal work for a lusty hunter to lie here," said
+Theurdank, "but soon shalt thou take thy crags again in full vigour,
+I hope.  How call'st thou the deep gray lonely pool under a steep
+frowning crag sharpened well-nigh to a spear point, that I passed
+yester afternoon?"
+
+"The Ptarmigan's Mere, the Red Eyrie," murmured Ebbo, scarcely able
+to utter the words as he thought of Friedel's delight in the pool,
+his exploit at the eyrie, and the gay bargain made in the streets of
+Ulm, that he should show the scaler of the Dom steeple the way to the
+eagle's nest.
+
+"I remember," said his guest gravely, coming to his side.  "Ah, boy!
+thy brother's flight has been higher yet.  Weep freely; fear me not.
+Do I not know what it is, when those who were over-good for earth
+have found their eagle's wings, and left us here?"
+
+Ebbo gazed up through his tears into the noble, mournful face that
+was bent kindly over him.  "I will not seek to comfort thee by
+counselling thee to forget," said Theurdank.  "I was scarce thine
+elder when my life was thus rent asunder, and to hoar hairs, nay, to
+the grave itself, will she be my glory and my sorrow.  Never owned I
+brother, but I trow ye two were one in no common sort."
+
+"Such brothers as we saw at Ulm were little like us," returned Ebbo,
+from the bottom of his heart.  "We were knit together so that all
+will begin with me as if it were the left hand remaining alone to do
+it!  I am glad that my old life may not even in shadow be renewed
+till after I have gone in quest of my father."
+
+"Be not over hasty in that quest," said the guest, "or the infidels
+may chance to gain two Freiherren instead of one.  Hast any designs?"
+
+Ebbo explained that he thought of making his way to Genoa to consult
+the merchant Gian Battista dei Battiste, whose description of the
+captive German noble had so strongly impressed Friedel.  Ebbo knew
+the difference between Turks and Moors, but Friedel's impulse guided
+him, and he further thought that at Genoa he should learn the way to
+deal with either variety of infidel.  Theurdank thought this a
+prudent course, since the Genoese had dealings both at Tripoli and
+Constantinople; and, moreover, the transfer was not impossible, since
+the two different hordes of Moslems trafficked among themselves when
+either had made an unusually successful razzia.
+
+"Shame," he broke out, "that these Eastern locusts, these ravening
+hounds, should prey unmolested on the fairest lands of the earth, and
+our German nobles lie here like swine, grunting and squealing over
+the plunder they grub up from one another, deaf to any summons from
+heaven or earth!  Did not Heaven's own voice speak in thunder this
+last year, even in November, hurling the mighty thunderbolt of
+Alsace, an ell long, weighing two hundred and fifteen pounds?  Did I
+not cause it to be hung up in the church of Encisheim, as a witness
+and warning of the plagues that hang over us?  But no, nothing will
+quicken them from their sloth and drunkenness till the foe are at
+their doors; and, if a man arise of different mould, with some heart
+for the knightly, the good, and the true, then they kill him for me!
+But thou, Adlerstein, this pious quest over, thou wilt return to me.
+Thou hast head to think and heart to feel for the shame and woe of
+this misguided land."
+
+"I trust so, my lord," said Ebbo.  "Truly, I have suffered bitterly
+for pursuing my own quarrel rather than the crusade."
+
+"I meant not thee," said Theurdank, kindly.  "Thy bridge is a benefit
+to me, as much as, or more than, ever it can be to thee.  Dost know
+Italian?  There is something of Italy in thine eye."
+
+"My mother's mother was Italian, my lord; but she died so early that
+her language has not descended to my mother or myself."
+
+"Thou shouldst learn it.  It will be pastime while thou art bed-fast,
+and serve thee well in dealing with the Moslem.  Moreover, I may have
+work for thee in Welschland.  Books?  I will send thee books.  There
+is the whole chronicle of Karl the Great, and all his Palsgrafen, by
+Pulci and Boiardo, a brave Count and gentleman himself, governor of
+Reggio, and worthy to sing of deeds of arms; so choice, too, as to
+the names of his heroes, that they say he caused his church bells to
+be rung when he had found one for Rodomonte, his infidel Hector.  He
+has shown up Roland as a love-sick knight, though, which is out of
+all accord with Archbishop Turpin.  Wilt have him?"
+
+"When we were together, we used to love tales of chivalry."
+
+"Ah!  Or wilt have the stern old Ghibelline Florentine, who explored
+the three realms of the departed?  Deep lore, and well-nigh
+unsearchable, is his; but I love him for the sake of his Beatrice,
+who guided him.  May we find such guides in our day!"
+
+"I have heard of him," said Ebbo.  "If he will tell me where my
+Friedel walks in light, then, my lord, I would read him with all my
+heart."
+
+"Or wouldst thou have rare Franciscus Petrarca?  I wot thou art too
+young as yet for the yearnings of his sonnets, but their voice is
+sweet to the bereft heart."
+
+And he murmured over, in their melodious Italian flow, the lines on
+Laura's death
+
+
+"Not pallid, but yet whiter than the snow
+By wind unstirred that on a hillside lies;
+Rest seemed as on a weary frame to grow,
+A gentle slumber pressed her lovely eyes."
+
+
+"Ah!" he added aloud to himself, "it is ever to me as though the poet
+had watched in that chamber at Ghent."
+
+Such were the discourses of that morning, now on poetry and book
+lore; now admiration of the carvings that decked the room; now talk
+on grand architectural designs, or improvements in fire-arms, or the
+discussion of hunting adventures.  There seemed nothing in art, life,
+or learning in which the versatile mind of Theurdank was not at home,
+or that did not end in some strange personal reminiscence of his own.
+All was so kind, so gracious, and brilliant, that at first the
+interview was full of wondering delight to Ebbo, but latterly it
+became very fatiguing from the strain of attention, above all towards
+a guest who evidently knew that he was known, while not permitting
+such recognition to be avowed.  Ebbo began to long for an
+interruption, but, though he could see by the lightened sky that the
+weather had cleared up, it would have been impossible to have
+suggested to any guest that the way might now probably be open, and
+more especially to such a guest as this.  Considerate as his visitor
+had been the night before, the pleasure of talk seemed to have done
+away with the remembrance of his host's weakness, till Ebbo so
+flagged that at last he was scarcely alive to more than the continued
+sound of the voice, and all the pain that for a while had been in
+abeyance seemed to have mastered him; but his guest, half reading his
+books, half discoursing, seemed too much immersed in his own plans,
+theories, and adventures, to mark the condition of his auditor.
+
+Interruption came at last, however.  There was a sudden knock at the
+door at noon, and with scant ceremony Heinz entered, followed by
+three other of the men-at-arms, fully equipped.
+
+"Ha! what means this?" demanded Ebbo.
+
+"Peace, Sir Baron," said Heinz, advancing so as to place his large
+person between Ebbo's bed and the strange hunter.  "You know nothing
+of it.  We are not going to lose you as well as your brother, and we
+mean to see how this knight likes to serve as a hostage instead of
+opening the gates as a traitor spy.  On him, Koppel! it is thy
+right."
+
+"Hands off! at your peril, villains!" exclaimed Ebbo, sitting up, and
+speaking in the steady resolute voice that had so early rendered him
+thoroughly their master, but much perplexed and dismayed, and
+entirely unassisted by Theurdank, who stood looking on with almost a
+smile, as if diverted by his predicament.
+
+"By your leave, Herr Freiherr," said Heinz, putting his hand on his
+shoulder, "this is no concern of yours.  While you cannot guard
+yourself or my lady, it is our part to do so.  I tell you his minions
+are on their way to surprise the castle."
+
+Even as Heinz spoke, Christina came panting into the room, and,
+hurrying to her son's side, said, "Sir Count, is this just, is this
+honourable, thus to return my son's welcome, in his helpless
+condition?"
+
+"Mother, are you likewise distracted?" exclaimed Ebbo.  "What is all
+this madness?"
+
+"Alas, my son, it is no frenzy!  There are armed men coming up the
+Eagle's Stairs on the one hand and by the Gemsbock's Pass on the
+other!"
+
+"But not a hair of your head shall they hurt, lady," said Heinz.
+"This fellow's limbs shall be thrown to them over the battlements.
+On, Koppel!"
+
+"Off, Koppel!" thundered Ebbo.  "Would you brand me with shame for
+ever?  Were he all the Schlangenwalds in one, he should go as freely
+as he came; but he is no more Schlangenwald than I am."
+
+"He has deceived you, my lord," said Heinz.  "My lady's own letter to
+Schlangenwald was in his chamber.  'Tis a treacherous disguise."
+
+"Fool that thou art!" said Ebbo.  "I know this gentleman well.  I
+knew him at Ulm.  Those who meet him here mean me no ill.  Open the
+gates and receive them honourably!  Mother, mother, trust me, all is
+well.  I know what I am saying."
+
+The men looked one upon another.  Christina wrung her hands,
+uncertain whether her son were not under some strange fatal
+deception.
+
+"My lord has his fancies," growled Koppel.  "I'll not be balked of my
+right of vengeance for his scruples!  Will he swear that this fellow
+is what he calls himself?"
+
+"I swear," said Ebbo, slowly, "that he is a true loyal knight, well
+known to me."
+
+"Swear it distinctly, Sir Baron," said Heinz.  "We have all too deep
+a debt of vengeance to let off any one who comes here lurking in the
+interest of our foe.  Swear that this is Theurdank, or we send his
+head to greet his friends."
+
+Drops stood on Ebbo's brow, and his breath laboured as he felt his
+senses reeling, and his powers of defence for his guest failing him.
+Even should the stranger confess his name, the people of the castle
+might not believe him; and here he stood like one indifferent,
+evidently measuring how far his young host would go in his cause.
+
+"I cannot swear that his real name is Theurdank," said Ebbo, rallying
+his forces, "but this I swear, that he is neither friend nor fosterer
+of Schlangenwald, that I know him, and I had rather die than that the
+slightest indignity were offered him."  Here, and with a great effort
+that terribly wrenched his wounded leg, he reached past Heinz, and
+grasped his guest's hand, pulling him as near as he could.
+
+"Sir," he said, "if they try to lay hands on you, strike my death-
+blow!"
+
+A bugle-horn was wound outside.  The men stood daunted--Christina in
+extreme terror for her son, who lay gasping, breathless, but still
+clutching the stranger's hand, and with eyes of fire glaring on the
+mutinous warriors.  Another bugle-blast!  Heinz was almost in the act
+of grappling with the silent foe, and Koppel cried as he raised his
+halbert, "Now or never!" but paused.
+
+"Never, so please you," said the strange guest.  "What if your young
+lord could not forswear himself that my name is Theurdank!  Are you
+foes to all the world save Theurdank?"
+
+"No masking," said Heinz, sternly.  "Tell your true name as an honest
+man, and we will judge whether you be friend or foe."
+
+"My name is a mouthful, as your master knows," said the guest,
+slowly, looking with strangely amused eyes on the confused
+lanzknechts, who were trying to devour their rage.  "I was baptized
+Maximilianus; Archduke of Austria, by birth; by choice of the
+Germans, King of the Romans."
+
+"The Kaisar!"
+
+Christina dropped on her knee; the men-at-arms tumbled backwards;
+Ebbo pressed the hand he held to his lips, and fainted away.  The
+bugle sounded for the third time.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII:  PEACE
+
+
+
+Slowly and painfully did Ebbo recover from his swoon, feeling as if
+the means of revival were rending him away from his brother.  He was
+so completely spent that he was satisfied with a mere assurance that
+nothing was amiss, and presently dropped into a profound slumber,
+whence he awoke to find it still broad daylight, and his mother
+sitting by the side of his bed, all looking so much as it had done
+for the last six weeks, that his first inquiry was if all that had
+happened had been but a strange dream.  His mother would scarcely
+answer till she had satisfied herself that his eye was clear, his
+voice steady, his hand cool, and that, as she said, "That Kaisar had
+done him no harm."
+
+"Ah, then it was true!  Where is he?  Gone?" cried Ebbo, eagerly.
+
+"No, in the hall below, busy with letters they have brought him.  Lie
+still, my boy; he has done thee quite enough damage for one day."
+
+"But, mother, what are you saying!  Something disloyal, was it not?"
+
+"Well, Ebbo, I was very angry that he should have half killed you
+when he could so easily have spoken one word.  Heaven forgive me if I
+did wrong, but I could not help it."
+
+"Did HE forgive you, mother?" said Ebbo, anxiously.
+
+"He--oh yes.  To do him justice he was greatly concerned; devised
+ways of restoring thee, and now has promised not to come near thee
+again without my leave," said the mother, quite as persuaded of her
+own rightful sway in her son's sick chamber as ever Kunigunde had
+been of her dominion over the castle.
+
+"And is he displeased with me?  Those cowardly vindictive rascals, to
+fall on him, and set me at nought!  Before him, too!" exclaimed Ebbo,
+bitterly.
+
+"Nay, Ebbo, he thought thy part most gallant.  I heard him say so,
+not only to me, but below stairs--both wise and true.  Thou didst
+know him then?"
+
+"From the first glance of his princely eye--the first of his keen
+smiles.  I had seen him disguised before.  I thought you knew him
+too, mother; I never guessed that your mind was running on
+Schlangenwald when we talked at cross purposes last night."
+
+"Would that I had; but though I breathed no word openly, I encouraged
+Heinz's precautions.  My boy, I could not help it; my heart would
+tremble for my only one, and I saw he could not be what he seemed."
+
+"And what doth he here?  Who were the men who were advancing?"
+
+"They were the followers he had left at St. Ruprecht's, and likewise
+Master Schleiermacher and Sir Kasimir of Wildschloss."
+
+"Ha!"
+
+"What--he had not told thee?"
+
+"No.  He knew that I knew him, was at no pains to disguise himself,
+yet evidently meant me to treat him as a private knight.  But what
+brought Wildschloss here?"
+
+"It seems," said Christina, "that, on the return from Carinthia, the
+Kaisar expressed his intention of slipping away from his army in his
+own strange fashion, and himself inquiring into the matter of the
+Ford.  So he took with him his own personal followers, the new Graf
+von Schlangenwald, Herr Kasimir, and Master Schleiermacher.  The
+others he sent to Schlangenwald; he himself lodged at St. Ruprecht's,
+appointing that Sir Kasimir should meet him there this morning.  From
+the convent he started on a chamois hunt, and made his way hither;
+but, when the snow came on, and he returned not, his followers became
+uneasy, and came in search of him."
+
+"Ah!" said Ebbo, "he meant to intercede for Wildschloss--it might be
+he would have tried his power.  No, for that he is too generous.  How
+looked Wildschloss, mother?"
+
+"How could I tell how any one looked save thee, my poor wan boy?
+Thou art paler than ever!  I cannot have any king or kaisar of them
+all come to trouble thee."
+
+"Nay, motherling, there is much more trouble and unrest to me in not
+knowing how my king will treat us after such a requital!  Prithee let
+him know that I am at his service."
+
+And, after having fed and refreshed her patient, the gentle potentate
+of his chamber consented to intimate her consent to admit the
+invader.  But not till after delay enough to fret the impatient
+nerves of illness did Maximilian appear, handing her in, and saying,
+in the cheery voice that was one of his chief fascinations,
+
+"Yea, truly, fair dame, I know thou wouldst sooner trust
+Schlangenwald himself than me alone with thy charge.  How goes it, my
+true knight?"
+
+"Well, right well, my liege," said Ebbo, "save for my shame and
+grief."
+
+"Thou art the last to be ashamed for that," said the good-natured
+prince.  "Have I never seen my faithful vassals more bent on their
+own feuds than on my word?--I who reign over a set of kings, who
+brook no will but their own."
+
+"And may we ask your pardon," said Ebbo, "not only for ourselves, but
+for the misguided men-at-arms?"
+
+"What! the grewsome giant that was prepared with the axe, and the
+honest lad that wanted to do his duty by his father?  I honour that
+lad, Freiherr; I would enrol him in my guard, but that probably he is
+better off here than with Massimiliano pochi danari, as the Italians
+call me.  But what I came hither to say was this," and he spoke
+gravely:  "thou art sincere in desiring reconciliation with the house
+of Schlangenwald?"
+
+"With all my heart," said Ebbo, "do I loathe the miserable debt of
+blood for blood!"
+
+"And," said Maximilian, "Graf Dankwart is of like mind.  Bred from
+pagedom in his Prussian commandery, he has never been exposed to the
+irritations that have fed the spirit of strife, and he will be
+thankful to lay it aside.  The question next is how to solemnize this
+reconciliation, ere your retainers on one side or the other do
+something to set you by the ears together again, which, judging by
+this morning's work, is not improbable."
+
+"Alas! no," said Ebbo, "while I am laid by."
+
+"Had you both been in our camp, you should have sworn friendship in
+my chapel.  Now must Dankwart come hither to thee, as I trow he had
+best do, while I am here to keep the peace.  See, friend Ebbo, we
+will have him here to-morrow; thy chaplain shall deck the altar here,
+the Father Abbot shall say mass, and ye shall swear peace and
+brotherhood before me.  And," he added, taking Ebbo's hand, "I shall
+know how to trust thine oaths as of one who sets the fear of God
+above that of his king."
+
+This was truly the only chance of impressing on the wild vassals of
+the two houses an obligation that perhaps might override their
+ancient hatred; and the Baron and his mother gladly submitted to the
+arrangement.  Maximilian withdrew to give directions for summoning
+the persons required and Christina was soon obliged to leave her son,
+while she provided for her influx of guests.
+
+Ebbo was alone till nearly the end of the supper below stairs.  He
+had been dozing, when a cautious tread came up the turret steps, and
+he started, and called out, "Who goes there?  I am not asleep."
+
+"It is your kinsman, Freiherr," said a well-known voice; "I come by
+your mother's leave."
+
+"Welcome, Sir Cousin," said Ebbo, holding out his hand.  "You come to
+find everything changed."
+
+"I have knelt in the chapel," said Wildschloss, gravely.
+
+"And he loved you better than I!" said Ebbo.
+
+"Your jealousy of me was a providential thing, for which all may be
+thankful," said Wildschloss gravely; "yet it is no small thing to
+lose the hope of so many years!  However, young Baron, I have grave
+matter for your consideration.  Know you the service on which I am to
+be sent?  The Kaisar deems that the Armenians or some of the
+Christian nations on the skirts of the Ottoman empire might be made
+our allies, and attack the Turk in his rear.  I am chosen as his
+envoy, and shall sail so soon as I can make my way to Venice.  I only
+knew of the appointment since I came hither, he having been led
+thereto by letters brought him this day; and mayhap by the downfall
+of my hopes.  He was peremptory, as his mood is, and seemed to think
+it no small favour," added Wildschloss, with some annoyance.  "And
+meantime, what of my poor child?  There she is in the cloister at
+Ulm, but an inheritance is a very mill-stone round the neck of an
+orphan maid.  That insolent fellow, Lassla von Trautbach, hath
+already demanded to espouse the poor babe; he--a blood-stained,
+dicing, drunken rover, with whom I would not trust a dog that I
+loved!  Yet my death would place her at the disposal of his father,
+who would give her at once to him.  Nay, even his aunt, the abbess,
+will believe nothing against him, and hath even striven with me to
+have her betrothed at once.  On the barest rumour of my death will
+they wed the poor little thing, and then woe to her, and woe to my
+vassals!"
+
+"The King," suggested Ebbo.  "Surely she might be made his ward."
+
+"Young man," said Sir Kasimir, bending over him, and speaking in an
+undertone, "he may well have won your heart.  As friend, when one is
+at his side, none can be so winning, or so sincere as he; but with
+all his brilliant gifts, he says truly of himself that he is a mere
+reckless huntsman.  To-day, while I am with him, he would give me
+half Austria, or fight single-handed in my cause or Thekla's.  Next
+month, when I am out of sight, comes Trautbach, just when his head is
+full of keeping the French out of Italy, or reforming the Church, or
+beating the Turk, or parcelling the empire into circles, or, maybe,
+of a new touch-hole for a cannon--nay, of a flower-garden, or of
+walking into a lion's den.  He just says, 'Yea, well,' to be rid of
+the importunity, and all is over with my poor little maiden.  Hare-
+brained and bewildered with schemes has he been as Romish King--how
+will it be with him as Kaisar?  It is but of his wonted madness that
+he is here at all, when his Austrian states must be all astray for
+want of him.  No, no; I would rather make a weathercock guardian to
+my daughter.  You yourself are the only guard to whom I can safely
+intrust her."
+
+"My sword as knight and kinsman--" began Ebbo.
+
+"No, no; 'tis no matter of errant knight or distressed damsel.  That
+is King Max's own line!" said Wildschloss, with a little of the irony
+that used to nettle Ebbo.  "There is only one way in which you can
+save her, and that is as her husband."
+
+Ebbo started, as well he might, but Sir Kasimir laid his hand on him
+with a gesture that bade him listen ere he spoke.  "My first wish for
+my child," he said, "was to see her brought up by that peerless lady
+below stairs.  The saints--in pity to one so like themselves--spared
+her the distress our union would have brought her.  Now, it would be
+vain to place my little Thekla in her care, for Trautbach would
+easily feign my death, and claim his niece, nor are you of age to be
+made her guardian as head of our house.  But, if this marriage rite
+were solemnized, then would her person and lands alike be yours, and
+I could leave her with an easy heart."
+
+"But," said the confused, surprised Ebbo, "what can I do?  They say I
+shall not walk for many weeks to come.  And, even if I could, I am so
+young--I have so blundered in my dealings with my own mountaineers,
+and with this fatal bridge--how should I manage such estates as
+yours?  Some better--"
+
+"Look you, Ebbo," said Wildschloss; "you have erred--you have been
+hasty; but tell me where to find another youth, whose strongest
+purpose was as wise as your errors, or who cared for others' good
+more than for his own violence and vainglory?  Brief as your time has
+been, one knows when one is on your bounds by the aspect of your
+serfs, the soundness of their dwellings, the prosperity of their
+crops and cattle above all, by their face and tone if one asks for
+their lord."
+
+"Ah! it was Friedel they loved.  They scarce knew me from Friedel."
+
+"Such as you are, with all the blunders you have made and will make,
+you are the only youth I know to whom I could intrust my child or my
+lands.  The old Wildschloss castle is a male fief, and would return
+to you, but there are domains since granted that will cause
+intolerable trouble and strife, unless you and my poor little heiress
+are united.  As for age, you are--?"
+
+"Eighteen next Easter."
+
+"Then there are scarce eleven years between you.  You will find the
+little one a blooming bride when your first deeds in arms have been
+fought out."
+
+"And, if my mother trains her up," said Ebbo, thoughtfully, "she will
+be all the better daughter to her.  But, Sir Cousin, you know I too
+must be going.  So soon as I can brook the saddle, I must seek out
+and ransom my father."
+
+"That is like to be a far shorter and safer journey than mine.  The
+Genoese and Venetians understand traffic with the infidels for their
+captives, and only by your own fault could you get into danger.  Even
+at the worst, should mishap befall you, you could so order matters as
+to leave your girl-widow in your mother's charge."
+
+"Then," added Ebbo, "she would still have one left to love and
+cherish her.  Sir Kasimir, it is well; though, if you knew me without
+my Friedel, you would repent of your bargain."
+
+"Thanks from my heart," said Wildschloss, "but you need not be
+concerned.  You have never been over-friendly with me even with
+Friedel at your side.  But to business, my son.  You will endure that
+title from me now?  My time is short."
+
+"What would you have me do?  Shall I send the little one a betrothal
+ring, and ride to Ulm to wed and fetch her home in spring?"
+
+"That may hardly serve.  These kinsmen would have seized on her and
+the castle long ere that time.  The only safety is the making wedlock
+as fast as it can be made with a child of such tender years.  Mine is
+the only power that can make the abbess give her up, and therefore
+will I ride this moonlight night to Ulm, bring the little one back
+with me by the time the reconciliation be concluded, and then shall
+ye be wed by the Abbot of St. Ruprecht's, with the Kaisar for a
+witness, and thus will the knot be too strong for the Trautbachs to
+untie."
+
+Ebbo looked disconcerted, and gasped, as if this were over-quick
+work.--"To-morrow!" he said.  "Knows my mother?"
+
+"I go to speak with her at once.  The Kaisar's consent I have, as he
+says, 'If we have one vassal who has common sense and honesty, let us
+make the most of him.'  Ah! my son, I shall return to see you his
+counsellor and friend."
+
+Those days had no delicacies as to the lady's side taking the
+initiative:  and, in effect, the wealth and power of Wildschloss so
+much exceeded those of the elder branch that it would have been
+presumptuous on Eberhard's part to have made the proposal.  It was
+more a treaty than an affair of hearts, and Sir Kasimir had not even
+gone through the form of inquiring if Ebbo were fancy-free.  It was
+true, indeed, that he was still a boy, with no passion for any one
+but his mother; but had he even formed a dream of a ladye love, it
+would scarcely have been deemed a rational objection.  The days of
+romance were no days of romance in marriage.
+
+Yet Christina, wedded herself for pure love, felt this obstacle
+strongly.  The scheme was propounded to her over the hall fire by no
+less a person than Maximilian himself, and he, whose perceptions were
+extremely keen when he was not too much engrossed to use them,
+observed her reluctance through all her timid deference, and probed
+her reasons so successfully that she owned at last that, though it
+might sound like folly, she could scarce endure to see her son so
+bind himself that the romance of his life could hardly be innocent.
+
+"Nay, lady," was the answer, in a tone of deep feeling.  "Neither
+lands nor honours can weigh down the up-springing of true love;" and
+he bowed his head between his hands.
+
+Verily, all the Low Countries had not impeded the true-hearted
+affection of Maximilian and Mary; and, though since her death his
+want of self-restraint had marred his personal character and morals,
+and though he was now on the point of concluding a most loveless
+political marriage, yet still Mary was--as he shows her as the
+Beatrice of both his strange autobiographical allegories--the guiding
+star of his fitful life; and in heart his fidelity was so unbroken
+that, when after a long pause he again looked up to Christina, he
+spoke as well understanding her feelings.
+
+"I know what you would say, lady; your son hardly knows as yet how
+much is asked of him, and the little maid, to whom he vows his heart,
+is over-young to secure it.  But, lady, I have often observed that
+men, whose family affections are as deep and fervent as your son's
+are for you and his brother, seldom have wandering passions, but that
+their love flows deep and steady in the channels prepared for it.
+Let your young Freiherr regard this damsel as his own, and you will
+see he will love her as such."
+
+"I trust so, my liege."
+
+"Moreover, if she turn out like the spiteful Trautbach folk," said
+Maximilian, rather wickedly, "plenty of holes can be picked in a
+baby-wedding.  No fear of its over-firmness.  I never saw one come to
+good; only he must keep firm hold on the lands."
+
+This was not easy to answer, coming from a prince who had no small
+experience in premature bridals coming to nothing, and Christina felt
+that the matter was taken out of her hands, and that she had no more
+to do but to enjoy the warm-hearted Kaisar's praises of her son.
+
+In fact, the general run of nobles were then so boorish and violent
+compared with the citizens, that a nobleman who possessed intellect,
+loyalty, and conscience was so valuable to the sovereign that
+Maximilian was rejoiced to do all that either could bind him to his
+service or increase his power.  The true history of this expedition
+on the Emperor's part was this--that he had consulted Kasimir upon
+the question of the Debateable Ford and the feud of Adlerstein and
+Schlangenwald, asking further how his friend had sped in the wooing
+of the fair widow, to which he remembered having given his consent at
+Ulm.
+
+Wildschloss replied that, though backed up by her kindred at Ulm, he
+had made no progress in consequence of the determined opposition of
+her two sons, and he had therefore resolved to wait a while, and let
+her and the young Baron feel their inability to extricate themselves
+from the difficulties that were sure to beset them, without his
+authority, influence, and experience--fully believing that some
+predicament might arise that would bring the mother to terms, if not
+the sons.
+
+This disaster did seem to have fallen out, and he had meant at once
+to offer himself to the lady as her supporter and advocate, able to
+bring about all her son could desire; though he owned that his hopes
+would have been higher if the survivor had been the gentle, friendly
+Friedmund, rather than the hot and imperious Eberhard, who he knew
+must be brought very low ere his objections would be withdrawn.
+
+The touch of romance had quite fascinated Maximilian.  He would see
+the lady and her son.  He would make all things easy by the personal
+influence that he so well knew how to exert, backed by his imperial
+authority; and both should see cause to be thankful to purchase
+consent to the bridge-building, and pardon for the fray, by the
+marriage between the widow and Sir Kasimir.
+
+But the Last of the Knights was a gentleman, and the meek dignity of
+his hostess had hindered him from pressing on her any distasteful
+subject until her son's explanation of the uncertainty of her
+husband's death had precluded all mention of this intention.
+Besides, Maximilian was himself greatly charmed by Ebbo's own
+qualities--partly perhaps as an intelligent auditor, but also by his
+good sense, high spirit, and, above all, by the ready and delicate
+tact that had both penetrated and respected the disguise.  Moreover,
+Maximilian, though a faulty, was a devout man, and could appreciate
+the youth's unswerving truth, under circumstances that did, in
+effect, imperil him more really than his guest.  In this mood,
+Maximilian felt disposed to be rid to the very utmost of poor Sir
+Kasimir's unlucky attachment to a wedded lady; and receiving letters
+suggestive of the Eastern mission, instantly decided that it would
+only be doing as he would be done by instantly to order the
+disappointed suitor off to the utmost parts of the earth, where he
+would much have liked to go himself, save for the unlucky clog of all
+the realm of Germany.  That Sir Kasimir had any tie to home he had
+for the moment entirely forgotten; and, had he remembered it, the
+knight was so eminently fitted to fulfil his purpose, that it could
+hardly have been regarded.  But, when Wildschloss himself devised his
+little heiress' s union with the head of the direct line, it was a
+most acceptable proposal to the Emperor, who set himself to forward
+it at once, out of policy, and as compensation to all parties.
+
+And so Christina's gentle remonstrance was passed by.  Yet, with all
+her sense of the venture, it was thankworthy to look back on the
+trembling anxiety with which she had watched her boy's childhood, and
+all his temptations and perils, and compare her fears with his
+present position:  his alliance courted, his wisdom honoured, the
+child of the proud, contemned outlaw received as the favourite of the
+Emperor, and the valued ally of her own honoured burgher world.  Yet
+he was still a mere lad.  How would it be for the future?
+
+Would he be unspoiled?  Yes, even as she already viewed one of her
+twins as the star on high--nay, when kneeling in the chapel, her
+dazzling tears made stars of the glint of the light reflected in his
+bright helmet--might she not trust that the other would yet run his
+course to and fro, as the spark in the stubble?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII:  THE ALTAR OF PEACE
+
+
+
+No one could bear to waken the young Baron till the sun had risen
+high enough to fall on his face and unclose his eyes.
+
+"Mother" (ever his first word), "you have let me sleep too long."
+
+"Thou didst wake too long, I fear me."
+
+"I hoped you knew it not.  Yes, my wound throbbed sore, and the
+wonders of the day whirled round my brain like the wild huntsman's
+chase."
+
+"And, cruel boy, thou didst not call to me."
+
+"What, with such a yesterday, and such a morrow for you? while,
+chance what may, I can but lie still.  I thought I must call, if I
+were still so wretched, when the last moonbeam faded; but, behold,
+sleep came, and therewith my Friedel sat by me, and has sung songs of
+peace ever since."
+
+"And hath lulled thee to content, dear son?"
+
+"Content as the echo of his voice and the fulfilment of his hope can
+make me," said Ebbo.
+
+And so Christina made her son ready for the day's solemnities,
+arraying him in a fine holland shirt with exquisite broidery of her
+own on the collar and sleeves, and carefully disposing his long
+glossy, dark brown hair so as to fall on his shoulders as he lay
+propped up by cushions.  She would have thrown his crimson mantle
+round him, but he repelled it indignantly.  "Gay braveries for me,
+while my Friedel is not yet in his resting-place?  Here--the black
+velvet cloak."
+
+"Alas, Ebbo! it makes thee look more of a corpse than a bridegroom.
+Thou wilt scare thy poor little spouse.  Ah! it was not thus I had
+fancied myself decking thee for thy wedding."
+
+"Poor little one!" said Ebbo.  "If, as your uncle says, mourning is
+the seed of joy, this bridal should prove a gladsome one!  But let
+her prove a loving child to you, and honour my Friedel's memory, then
+shall I love her well.  Do not fear, motherling; with the roots of
+hatred and jealousy taken out of the heart, even sorrow is such peace
+that it is almost joy."
+
+It was over early for pain and sorrow to have taught that lesson,
+thought the mother, as with tender tears she gave place to the
+priest, who was to begin the solemnities of the day by shriving the
+young Baron.  It was Father Norbert, who had in this very chamber
+baptized the brothers, while their grandmother was plotting the
+destruction of their godfather, even while he gave Friedmund his name
+of peace,--Father Norbert, who had from the very first encouraged the
+drooping, heart-stricken, solitary Christina not to be overcome of
+evil, but to overcome evil with good.
+
+A temporary altar was erected between the windows, and hung with the
+silk and embroidery belonging to that in the chapel:  a crucifix was
+placed on it, with the shrine of the stone of Nicaea, one or two
+other relics brought on St. Ruprecht's cloister, and a beautiful
+mother-of-pearl and gold pyx also from the abbey, containing the
+host.  These were arranged by the chaplain, Father Norbert, and three
+of his brethren from the abbey.  And then the Father Abbot, a kindly,
+dignified old man, who had long been on friendly terms with the young
+Baron, entered; and after a few kind though serious words to him,
+assumed a gorgeous cope stiff with gold embroidery, and, standing by
+the altar, awaited the arrival of the other assistants at the
+ceremony.
+
+The slender, youthful-looking, pensive lady of the castle, in her
+wonted mourning dress, was courteously handed to her son's bedside by
+the Emperor.  He was in his plain buff leathern hunting garb,
+unornamented, save by the rich clasp of his sword-belt and his gold
+chain, and his head was only covered by the long silken locks of fair
+hair that hung round his shoulders; but, now that his large keen dark
+blue eyes were gravely restrained, and his eager face composed, his
+countenance was so majestic, his bearing so lofty, that not all his
+crowns could have better marked his dignity.
+
+Behind him came a sunburnt, hardy man, wearing the white mantle and
+black fleur-de-lis-pointed cross of the Teutonic Order.  A thrill
+passed through Ebbo's veins as he beheld the man who to him
+represented the murderer of his brother and both his grandfathers,
+the cruel oppressor of his father, and the perpetrator of many a more
+remote, but equally unforgotten, injury.  And in like manner Sir
+Dankwart beheld the actual slayer of his father, and the heir of a
+long score of deadly retribution.  No wonder then that, while the
+Emperor spoke a few words of salutation and inquiry, gracious though
+not familiar, the two foes scanned one another with a shiver of
+mutual repulsing, and a sense that they would fain have fought it out
+as in the good old times.
+
+However, Ebbo only beheld a somewhat dull, heavy, honest-looking
+visage of about thirty years old, good-nature written in all its flat
+German features, and a sort of puzzled wonder in the wide light eyes
+that stared fixedly at him, no doubt in amazement that the mighty
+huge-limbed Wolfgang could have been actually slain by the
+delicately-framed youth, now more colourless than ever in consequence
+of the morning's fast.  Schleiermacher was also present, and the
+chief followers on either hand had come into the lower part of the
+room--Hatto, Heinz, and Koppel, looking far from contented; some of
+the Emperor's suite; and a few attendants of Schlangenwald, like
+himself connected with the Teutonic Order.
+
+The Emperor spoke:  "We have brought you together, Herr Graff von
+Schlangenwald, and Herr Freiherr von Adlerstein, because ye have
+given us reason to believe you willing to lay aside the remembrance
+of the foul and deadly strifes of your forefathers, and to live as
+good Christians in friendship and brotherhood."
+
+"Sire, it is true," said Schlangenwald; and "It is true," said Ebbo.
+
+"That is well," replied Maximilian.  "Nor can our reign better begin
+than by the closing of a breach that has cost the land some of its
+bravest sons.  Dankwart von Schlangenwald, art thou willing to pardon
+the heir of Adlerstein for having slain thy father in free and
+honourable combat, as well as, doubtless, for other deeds of his
+ancestors, more than I know or can specify?"
+
+"Yea, truly; I pardon him, my liege, as befits my vow."
+
+"And thou, Eberhard von Adlerstein, dost thou put from thee vengeance
+for thy twin brother's death, and all the other wrongs that thine
+house has suffered?"
+
+"I put revenge from me for ever."
+
+"Ye agree, further, then, instead of striving as to your rights to
+the piece of meadow called the Debateable Strand, and to the wrecks
+of burthens there cast up by the stream, ye will unite with the
+citizens of Ulm in building a bridge over the Braunwasser, where,
+your mutual portions thereof being decided by the Swabian League,
+toll may be taken from all vehicles and beasts passing there over?"
+
+"We agree," said both knights.
+
+"And I, also, on behalf of the two guilds of Ulm," added Moritz
+Schleiermacher.
+
+"Likewise," continued the Emperor, "for avoidance of debate, and to
+consecrate the spot that has caused so much contention, ye will
+jointly erect a church, where may be buried both the relatives who
+fell in the late unhappy skirmish, and where ye will endow a
+perpetual mass for their souls, and those of others of your two
+races."
+
+"Thereto I willingly agree," said the Teutonic knight.  But to Ebbo
+it was a shock that the pure, gentle Friedmund should thus be classed
+with his treacherous assassin; and he had almost declared that it
+would be sacrilege, when he received from the Emperor a look of
+stern, surprised command, which reminded him that concession must not
+be all on one side, and that he could not do Friedel a greater wrong
+than to make him a cause of strife.  So, though they half choked him,
+he contrived to utter the words, "I consent."
+
+"And in token of amity I here tear up and burn all the feuds of
+Adlerstein," said Schlangenwald, producing from his pouch a
+collection of hostile literature, beginning from a crumpled strip of
+yellow parchment and ending with a coarse paper missive in the
+clerkly hand of burgher-bred Hugh Sorel, and bearing the crooked
+signatures of the last two Eberhards of Adlerstein--all with great
+seals of the eagle shield appended to them.  A similar collection--
+which, with one or two other family defiances, and the letters of
+investiture recently obtained at Ulm, formed the whole archives of
+Adlerstein--had been prepared within Ebbo's reach; and each of the
+two, taking up a dagger, made extensive gashes in these documents,
+and then--with no mercy to the future antiquaries, who would have
+gloated over them--the whole were hurled into the flames on the
+hearth, where the odour they emitted, if not grateful to the physical
+sense, should have been highly agreeable to the moral.
+
+"Then, holy Father Abbot," said Maximilian, "let us ratify this happy
+and Christian reconciliation by the blessed sacrifice of peace, over
+which these two faithful knights shall unite in swearing good-will
+and brotherhood."
+
+Such solemn reconciliations were frequent, but, alas were too often a
+mockery.  Here, however, both parties were men who felt the awe of
+the promise made before the Pardon-winner of all mankind.  Ebbo, bred
+up by his mother in the true life of the Church, and comparatively
+apart from practical superstitions, felt the import to the depths of
+his inmost soul, with a force heightened by his bodily state of
+nervous impressibility; and his wan, wasted features and dark shining
+eyes had a strange spiritual beam, "half passion and half awe," as he
+followed the words of universal forgiveness and lofty praise that he
+had heard last in his anguished trance, when his brother lay dying
+beside him, and leaving him behind.  He knew now that it was for
+this.
+
+His deep repressed ardour and excitement were no small contrast to
+the sober, matter-of-fact demeanour of the Teutonic knight, who
+comported himself with the mechanical decorum of an ecclesiastic, but
+quite as one who meant to keep his word.  Maximilian served the mass
+in his royal character as sub-deacon.  He was fond of so doing,
+either from humility, or love of incongruity, or both.  No one,
+however, communicated except the clergy and the parties concerned--
+Dankwart first, as being monk as well as knight, then Eberhard and
+his mother; and then followed, interposed into the rite, the oath of
+pardon, friendship, and brotherhood administered by the abbot, and
+followed by the solemn kiss of peace.  There was now no recoil;
+Eberhard raised himself to meet the lips of his foe, and his heart
+went with the embrace.  Nay, his inward ear dwelt on Friedmund's song
+mingling with the concluding chants of praise.
+
+The service ended, it was part of the pledge of amity that the
+reconciled enemies should break their fast together, and a collation
+of white bread and wine was provided for the purpose.  The Emperor
+tried to promote free and friendly talk between the two adversaries,
+but not with great success; for Dankwart, though honest and sincere,
+seemed extremely dull.  He appeared to have few ideas beyond his
+Prussian commandery and its routine discipline, and to be lost in a
+castle where all was at his sole will and disposal, and he caught
+eagerly at all proposals made to him as if they were new lights.  As,
+for instance, that some impartial arbitrator should be demanded from
+the Swabian League to define the boundary; and that next Rogation-
+tide the two knights should ride or climb it in company, while
+meantime the serfs should be strictly charged not to trespass, and
+any transgressor should be immediately escorted to his own lord.
+
+"But," quoth Sir Dankwart, in a most serious tone, "I am told that a
+she-bear wons in a den on yonder crag, between the pass you call the
+Gemsbock's and the Schlangenwald valley.  They told me the right in
+it had never been decided, and I have not been up myself.  To say
+truth, I have lived so long in the sand plains as to have lost my
+mountain legs, and I hesitated to see if a hunter could mount thither
+for fear of fresh offence; but, if she bide there till Rogation-tide,
+it will be ill for the lambs."
+
+"Is that all?" cried Maximilian.  "Then will I, a neutral, kill your
+bear for you, gentlemen, so that neither need transgress this new
+crag of debate.  I'll go down and look at your bear spears, friend
+Ebbo, and be ready so soon as Kasimir has done with his bridal."
+
+"That crag!" cried Ebbo.  "Little good will it do either of us.
+Sire, it is a mere wall of sloping rock, slippery as ice, and with
+only a stone or matting of ivy here and there to serve as foothold."
+
+"Where bear can go, man can go," replied the Kaisar.
+
+"Oh, yes!  We have been there, craving your pardon, Herr Graf," said
+Ebbo, "after a dead chamois that rolled into a cleft, but it is the
+worst crag on all the hill, and the frost will make it slippery.
+Sire, if you do venture it, I conjure you to take Koppel, and climb
+by the rocks from the left, not the right, which looks easiest.  The
+yellow rock, with a face like a man's, is the safer; but ach, it is
+fearful for one who knows not the rocks."
+
+"If I know not the rocks, all true German rocks know me," smiled
+Maximilian, to whom the danger seemed to be such a stimulus that he
+began to propose the bear-hunt immediately, as an interlude while
+waiting for the bride.
+
+However, at that moment, half-a-dozen horsemen were seen coming up
+from the ford, by the nearer path, and a forerunner arrived with the
+tidings that the Baron of Adlerstein Wildschloss was close behind
+with the little Baroness Thekla.
+
+Half the moonlight night had Sir Kasimir and his escort ridden; and,
+after a brief sleep at the nearest inn outside Ulm, he had entered in
+early morning, demanded admittance at the convent, made short work
+with the Abbess Ludmilla's arguments, claimed his daughter, and
+placing her on a cushion before him on his saddle, had borne her
+away, telling her of freedom, of the kind lady, and the young knight
+who had dazzled her childish fancy.
+
+Christina went down to receive her.  There was no time to lose, for
+the huntsman Kaisar was bent on the slaughter of his bear before
+dark, and, if he were to be witness of the wedding, it must be
+immediate.  He was in a state of much impatience, which he beguiled
+by teasing his friend Wildschloss by reminding him how often he
+himself had been betrothed, and had managed to slip his neck out of
+the noose.  "And, if my Margot be not soon back on my hands, I shall
+give the French credit," he said, tossing his bear-spear in the air,
+and catching it again.  "Why, this bride is as long of busking her as
+if she were a beauty of seventeen!  I must be off to my Lady
+Bearess."
+
+Thus nothing could be done to prepare the little maiden but to divest
+her of her mufflings, and comb out her flaxen hair, crowning it with
+a wreath which Christina had already woven from the myrtle of her own
+girlhood, scarcely waiting to answer the bewildered queries and
+entreaties save by caresses and admonitions to her to be very good.
+
+Poor little thing!  She was tired, frightened, and confused; and,
+when she had been brought upstairs, she answered the half smiling,
+half shy greeting of her bridegroom with a shudder of alarm, and the
+exclamation, "Where is the beautiful young knight?  That's a lady
+going to take the veil lying under the pall."
+
+"You look rather like a little nun yourself," said Ebbo, for she wore
+a little conventual dress, "but we must take each other for such as
+we are;" and, as she hid her face and clung to his mother, he added
+in a more cheerful, coaxing tone, "You once said you would be my
+wife."
+
+"Ah, but then there were two of you, and you were all shining
+bright."
+
+Before she could be answered, the impatient Emperor returned, and
+brought with him the abbot, who proceeded to find the place in his
+book, and to ask the bridegroom for the rings.  Ebbo looked at Sir
+Kasimir, who owned that he should have brought them from Ulm, but
+that he had forgotten.
+
+"Jewels are not plenty with us," said Ebbo, with a glow of amusement
+and confusion dawning on his cheek, such as reassured the little maid
+that she beheld one of the two beautiful young knights.  "Must we
+borrow?"
+
+Christina looked at the ring she had first seen lying on her own
+Eberhard's palm, and felt as if to let it be used would sever the
+renewed hope she scarcely yet durst entertain; and at the same moment
+Maximilian glanced at his own fingers, and muttered, "None but this!
+Unlucky!"  For it was the very diamond which Mary of Burgundy had
+sent to assure him of her faith, and summon him to her aid after her
+father's death.  Sir Kasimir had not retained the pledge of his own
+ill-omened wedlock; but, in the midst of the dilemma, the Emperor,
+producing his dagger, began to detach some of the massive gold links
+of the chain that supported his hunting-horn.  "There," said he, "the
+little elf of a bride can get her finger into this lesser one and
+you--verily this largest will fit, and the goldsmith can beat it out
+when needed.  So on with you in St. Hubert's name, Father Abbot!"
+
+Slender-boned and thin as was Ebbo's hand, it was a very tight fit,
+but the purpose was served.  The service commenced; and fortunately,
+thanks to Thekla's conventual education, she was awed into silence
+and decorum by the sound of Latin and the sight of an abbot.  It was
+a strange marriage, if only in the contrast between the pale,
+expressive face and sad, dark eyes of the prostrate youth, and the
+frightened, bewildered little girl, standing upon a stool to reach up
+to him, with her blue eyes stretched with wonder, and her cheeks
+flushed and pouting with unshed tears, her rosy plump hand enclosed
+in the long white wasted one that was thus for ever united to it by
+the broken fragments of Kaisar Max's chain.
+
+The rite over, two attestations of the marriage of Eberhard, Freiherr
+von Adlerstein, and Thekla, Freiherrinn von Adlerstein Wildschloss
+and Felsenbach, were drawn up and signed by the abbot, the Emperor,
+Count Dankwart, and the father and mother of the two contracting
+parties; one to be committed to the care of the abbot, the other to
+be preserved by the house of Adlerstein.
+
+Then the Emperor, as the concluding grace of the ceremonial, bent to
+kiss the bride; but, tired, terrified, and cross, Thekla, as if quite
+relieved to have some object for her resentment, returned his attempt
+with a vehement buffet, struck with all the force of her small arm,
+crying out, "Go away with you!  I know I've never married YOU!"
+
+"The better for my eyes!" said the good-natured Emperor, laughing
+heartily.  "My Lady Bearess is like to prove the more courteous
+bride!  Fare thee well, Sir Bridegroom," he added, stooping over
+Ebbo, and kissing his brow; "Heaven give thee joy of this day's work,
+and of thy faithful little fury.  I'll send her the bearskin as her
+meetest wedding-gift."
+
+And the next that was heard from the Kaisar was the arrival of a
+parcel of Italian books for the Freiherr Eberhard, and for the little
+Freiherrinn a large bundle, which proved to contain a softly-dressed
+bearskin, with the head on, the eyes being made of rubies, a gold
+muzzle and chain on the nose, and the claws tipped with gold.  The
+Emperor had made a point that it should be conveyed to the castle,
+snow or no snow, for a yule gift.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV:  OLD IRON AND NEW STEEL
+
+
+
+The clear sunshine of early summer was becoming low on the hillsides.
+Sparkling and dimpling, the clear amber-coloured stream of the
+Braunwasser rippled along its stony bed, winding in and out among the
+rocks so humbly that it seemed to be mocked by the wide span of the
+arch that crossed it in all the might of massive bulwarks, and
+dignified masonry of huge stones.
+
+Some way above, a clearing of the wood below the mountain showed
+huts, and labourers apparently constructing a mill so as to take
+advantage of the leap of the water from the height above; and, on the
+left bank, an enclosure was traced out, within which were rising the
+walls of a small church, while the noise of the mallet and chisel
+echoed back from the mountain side, and masons, white with stone-
+dust, swarmed around.
+
+Across the bridge came a pilgrim, marked out as such by hat, wallet,
+and long staff, on which he leant heavily, stumbling along as if both
+halting and footsore, and bending as one bowed down by past toil and
+present fatigue.  Pausing in the centre, he gazed round with a
+strange disconcerted air--at the castle on the terraced hillside,
+looking down with bright eyes of glass glittering in the sunshine,
+and lighting up even that grim old pile; at the banner hanging so
+lazily that the tinctures and bearings were hidden in the folds; then
+at the crags, rosy purple in evening glow, rising in broad step above
+step up to the Red Eyrie, bathed in sunset majesty of dark crimson;
+and above it the sweep of the descending eagle, discernible for a
+moment in the pearly light of the sky.  The pilgrim's eye lighted up
+as he watched it; but then, looking down at bridge, and church, and
+trodden wheel-tracked path, he frowned with perplexity, and each
+painful step grew heavier and more uncertain.
+
+Near the opposite side of the enclosure there waited a tall, rugged-
+looking, elderly man with two horses--one an aged mare, mane, tail,
+and all of the snowiest silvery white; the other a little shaggy dark
+mountain pony, with a pad-saddle.  And close to the bank of the
+stream might be seen its owner, a little girl of some seven years,
+whose tight round lace cap had slipped back, as well as her blue silk
+hood, and exposed a profusion of loose flaxen hair, and a plump,
+innocent face, intent upon some private little bit of building of her
+own with some pebbles from the brook, and some mortar filched from
+the operations above, to the great detriment of her soft pinky
+fingers.
+
+The pilgrim looked at her unperceived, and for a moment was about to
+address her; but then, with a strange air of repulsion, dragged
+himself on to the porch of the rising church, where, seated on a
+block of stone, he could look into the interior.  All was unfinished,
+but the portion which had made the most progress was a chantry-chapel
+opposite to the porch, and containing what were evidently designed to
+be two monuments.  One was merely blocked out, but it showed the
+outline of a warrior, bearing a shield on which a coiled serpent was
+rudely sketched in red chalk.  The other, in a much more forward
+state, was actually under the hands of the sculptor, and represented
+a slender youth, almost a boy, though in the full armour of a knight,
+his hands clasped on his breast over a lute, an eagle on his shield,
+an eagle-crest on his helmet, and, under the arcade supporting the
+altar-tomb, shields alternately of eagles and doves.
+
+But the strangest thing was that this young knight seemed to be
+sitting for his own effigy.  The very same face, under the very same
+helmet, only with the varied, warm hues of life, instead of in cold
+white marble, was to be seen on the shoulders of a young man in a
+gray cloth dress, with a black scarf passing from shoulder to waist,
+crossed by a sword-belt.  The hair was hidden by the helmet, whose
+raised visor showed keen, finely-cut features, and a pair of dark
+brown eyes, of somewhat grave and sad expression.
+
+"Have a care, Lucas," he presently said; "I fear me you are
+chiselling away too much.  It must be a softer, more rounded face
+than mine has become; and, above all, let it not catch any saddened
+look.  Keep that air of solemn waiting in glad hope, as though he saw
+the dawn through his closed eyelids, and were about to take up his
+song again!"
+
+"Verily, Herr Freiherr, now the likeness is so far forward, the
+actual sight of you may lead me to mar it rather than mend."
+
+"So is it well that this should be the last sitting.  I am to set
+forth for Genoa in another week.  If I cannot get letters from the
+Kaisar, I shall go in search of him, that he may see that my lameness
+is no more an impediment."
+
+The pilgrim passed his hand over his face, as though to dissipate a
+bewildering dream; and just then the little girl, all flushed and
+dabbled, flew rushing up from the stream, but came to a sudden
+standstill at sight of the stranger, who at length addressed her.
+"Little lady," he said, "is this the Debateable Ford?"
+
+"No; now it is the Friendly Bridge," said the child.
+
+The pilgrim started, as with a pang of recollection.  "And what is
+yonder castle?" he further asked.
+
+"Schloss Adlerstein," she said, proudly.
+
+"And you are the little lady of Adlerstein Wildschloss?"
+
+"Yes," again she answered; and then, gathering courage--"You are a
+holy pilgrim!  Come up to the castle for supper and rest."  And then,
+springing past him, she flew up to the knight, crying, "Herr
+Freiherr, here is a holy pilgrim, weary and hungry.  Let us take him
+home to the mother."
+
+"Did he take thee for a wild elf?" said the young man, with an elder-
+brotherly endeavour to right the little cap that had slidden under
+the chin, and to push back the unmanageable wealth of hair under it,
+ere he rose; and he came forward and spoke with kind courtesy, as he
+observed the wanderer's worn air and feeble step.  "Dost need a
+night's lodging, holy palmer?  My mother will make thee welcome, if
+thou canst climb as high as the castle yonder."
+
+The pilgrim made an obeisance, but, instead of answering, demanded
+hastily, "See I yonder the bearing of Schlangenwald?"
+
+"Even so.  Schloss Schlangenwald is about a league further on, and
+thou wilt find a kind reception there, if thither thou art bent."
+
+"Is that Graff Wolfgang's tomb?" still eagerly pursued the pilgrim;
+and receiving a sign in the affirmative, "What was his end?"
+
+"He fell in a skirmish."
+
+"By whose hand?"
+
+"By mine."
+
+"Ha!" and the pilgrim surveyed him with undisguised astonishment;
+then, without another word, took up his staff and limped out of the
+building, but not on the road to Schlangenwald.  It was nearly a
+quarter of an hour afterwards that he was overtaken by the young
+knight and the little lady on their horses, just where the new road
+to the castle parted from the old way by the Eagle's Ladder.  The
+knight reined up as he saw the poor man's slow, painful steps, and
+said, "So thou art not bound for Schlangenwald?"
+
+"I would to the village, so please you--to the shrine of the Blessed
+Friedmund."
+
+"Nay, at this rate thou wilt not be there till midnight," said the
+young knight, springing off his horse; "thou canst never brook our
+sharp stones!  See, Thekla, do thou ride on with Heinz to tell the
+mother I am bringing her a holy pilgrim to tend.  And thou, good man,
+mount my old gray.  Fear not; she is steady and sure-footed, and hath
+of late been used to a lame rider.  Ah! that is well.  Thou hast been
+in the saddle before."
+
+To go afoot for the sake of giving a lift to a holy wayfarer was one
+of the most esteemed acts of piety of the Middle Age, so that no one
+durst object to it, and the palmer did no more than utter a
+suppressed murmur of acknowledgment as he seated himself on
+horseback, the young knight walking by his rein.  "But what is this?"
+he exclaimed, almost with dismay.  "A road to the castle up here!"
+
+"Yes, we find it a great convenience.  Thou art surely from these
+parts?" added the knight.
+
+"I was a man-at-arms in the service of the Baron," was the answer, in
+an odd, muffled tone.
+
+"What!--of my grandfather!" was the exclamation.
+
+"No!" gruffly.  "Of old Freiherr Eberhard.  Not of any of the
+Wildschloss crew."
+
+"But I am not a Wildschloss!  I am grandson to Freiherr Eberhard!
+Oh, wast thou with him and my father when they were set upon in the
+hostel?" he cried, looking eagerly up to the pilgrim; but the man
+kept his broad-leaved hat slouched over his face, and only muttered,
+"The son of Christina!" the last word so low that Ebbo was not sure
+that he caught it, and the next moment the old warrior exclaimed
+exultingly, "And you have had vengeance on them!  When--how--where?"
+
+"Last harvest-tide--at the Debateable Strand," said Ebbo, never able
+to speak of the encounter without a weight at his heart, but drawn on
+by the earnestness of the old foe of Schlangenwald.  "It was a
+meeting in full career--lances broken, sword-stroke on either hand.
+I was sore wounded, but my sword went through his collar-bone."
+
+"Well struck! good stroke!" cried the pilgrim, in rapture.  "And with
+that sword?"
+
+"With this sword.  Didst know it?" said Ebbo, drawing the weapon, and
+giving it to the old man, who held it for a few moments, weighed it
+affectionately, and with a long low sigh restored it, saying, "It is
+well.  You and that blade have paid off the score.  I should be
+content.  Let me dismount.  I know my way to the hermitage."
+
+"Nay, what is this?" said Ebbo; "thou must have rest and food.  The
+hermitage is empty, scarce habitable.  My mother will not be balked
+of the care of thy bleeding feet."
+
+"But let me go, ere I bring evil on you all.  I can pray up there,
+and save my soul, but I cannot see it all."
+
+"See what?" said Ebbo, again trying to see his guest's face.  "There
+may be changes, but an old faithful follower of my father's must ever
+be welcome."
+
+"Not when his wife has taken a new lord," growled the stranger,
+bitterly, "and he a Wildschloss!  Young man, I could have pardoned
+aught else!"
+
+"I know not who you may be who talk of pardoning my lady-mother,"
+said Ebbo, "but new lord she has neither taken nor will take.  She
+has refused every offer; and, now that Schlangenwald with his last
+breath confessed that he slew not my father, but sold him to the
+Turks, I have been only awaiting recovery from my wound to go in
+search of him."
+
+"Who then is yonder child, who told me she was Wildschloss?"
+
+"That child," said Ebbo, with half a smile and half a blush, "is my
+wife, the daughter of Wildschloss, who prayed me to espouse her thus
+early, that so my mother might bring her up."
+
+By this time they had reached the castle court, now a well-kept,
+lordly-looking enclosure, where the pilgrim looked about him as one
+bewildered.  He was so infirm that Ebbo carefully helped him up the
+stone stairs to the hall, where he already saw his mother prepared
+for the hospitable reception of the palmer.  Leaving him at the
+entrance, Ebbo crossed the hall to say to her in a low voice, "This
+pilgrim is one of the old lanzknechts of my grandfather's time.  I
+wonder whether you or Heinz will know him.  One of the old sort--
+supremely discontented at change."
+
+"And thou hast walked up, and wearied thyself!" exclaimed Christina,
+grieved to see her son's halting step.
+
+"A rest will soon cure that," said Ebbo, seating himself as he spoke
+on a settle near the hall fire; but the next moment a strange wild
+low shriek from his mother made him start up and spring to her side.
+She stood with hands clasped, and wondering eyes.  The pilgrim--his
+hat on the ground, his white head and rugged face displayed--was
+gazing as though devouring her with his eyes, murmuring, "Unchanged!
+unchanged!"
+
+"What is this!" thundered the young Baron.  "What are you doing to
+the lady?"
+
+"Hush! hush, Ebbo!" exclaimed Christina.  "It is thy father!  On thy
+knees!  Thy father is come!  It is our son, my own lord.  Oh, embrace
+him!  Kneel to him, Ebbo!" she wildly cried.
+
+"Hold, mother," said Ebbo, keeping his arm round her, though she
+struggled against him, for he felt some doubts as he looked back at
+his walk with the stranger, and remembered Heinz's want of
+recognition.  "Is it certain that this is indeed my father?"
+
+"Oh, Ebbo," was the cry of poor Christina, almost beside herself,
+"how could I not be sure?  I know him!  I feel it!  Oh, my lord, bear
+with him.  It is his wont to be so loving!  Ebbo, cannot you see it
+is himself?"
+
+"The young fellow is right," said the stranger, slowly.  "I will
+answer all he may demand."
+
+"Forgive me," said Ebbo, abashed, "forgive me;" and, as his mother
+broke from him, he fell upon his knee; but he only heard his father's
+cry, "Ah!  Stine, Stine, thou alone art the same," and, looking up,
+saw her, with her face hidden in the white beard, quivering with a
+rapture such as he had never seen in her before.  It seemed long to
+him ere she looked up again in her husband's face to sob on:  "My
+son!  Oh! my beautiful twins!  Our son!  Oh, see him, dear lord!"
+And the pilgrim turned to hear Ebbo's "Pardon, honoured father, and
+your blessing."
+
+Almost bashfully the pilgrim laid his hand on the dark head, and
+murmured something; then said, "Up, then!  The slayer of
+Schlangenwald kneeling!  Ah!  Stine, I knew thy little head was
+wondrous wise, but I little thought thou wouldst breed him up to
+avenge us on old Wolfgang!  So slender a lad too!  Ha!
+Schneiderlein, old rogue, I knew thee," holding out his hand.  "So
+thou didst get home safe?"
+
+"Ay, my lord; though, if I left you alive, never more will I call a
+man dead," said Heinz.
+
+"Worse luck for me--till now," said Sir Eberhard, whose tones, rather
+than his looks, carried perfect conviction of his identity.  It was
+the old homely accent, and gruff good-humoured voice, but with
+something subdued and broken in the tone.  His features had grown
+like his father's, but he looked much older than ever the hale old
+mountaineer had done, or than his real age; so worn and lined was his
+face, his skin tanned, his eyelids and temples puckered by burning
+sun, his hair and beard white as the inane of his old mare, the proud
+Adlerstein port entirely gone.  He stooped even more without his
+staff than with it; and, when he yielded himself with a sigh of
+repose to his wife's tendance, she found that he had not merely the
+ordinary hurts of travelling, but that there were old festering scars
+on his ankles.  "The gyves," he said, as she looked up at him, with
+startled, pitying eyes.  "Little deemed I that they would ever come
+under thy tender hands."  As he almost timidly smoothed the braid of
+dark hair on her brow--"So they never burnt thee for a witch after
+all, little one?  I thought my mother would never keep her hands off
+thee, and used to fancy I heard the crackling of the flame."
+
+"She spared me for my children's sake," said Christina; "and truly
+Heaven has been very good to us, but never so much as now.  My dear
+lord, will it weary thee too much to come to the castle chapel and
+give thanks?" she said, timidly.
+
+"With all my heart," he answered, earnestly.  "I would go even on my
+knees.  We were not without masses even in Tunis; but, when Italian
+and Spaniard would be ransomed, and there was no mind of the German,
+I little thought I should ever sing Brother Lambert's psalm about
+turning our captivity as rivers in the south."
+
+Ebbo was hovering round, supplying all that was needed for his
+father's comfort; but his parents were so completely absorbed in one
+another that he was scarcely noticed, and, what perhaps pained him
+more, there was no word about Friedel.  He felt this almost an
+injustice to the brother who had been foremost in embracing the idea
+of the unknown father, and scarcely understood how his parents shrank
+from any sorrowful thought that might break in on their new-found
+joy, nor that he himself was so strange and new a being in his
+father's eyes, that to imagine him doubled was hardly possible to the
+tardy, dulled capacity, which as yet seemed unable to feel anything
+but that here was home, and Christina.
+
+When the chapel bell rang, and the pair rose to offer their
+thanksgiving, Ebbo dutifully offered his support, but was absolutely
+unseen, so fondly was Sir Eberhard leaning on his wife; and her
+bright exulting smile and shake of the head gave an absolute pang to
+the son who had hitherto been all in all to her.
+
+He followed, and, as they passed Friedmund's coffin, he thought his
+mother pointed to it, but even of this he was uncertain.  The pair
+knelt side by side with hands locked together, while notes of praise
+rose from all voices; and meantime Ebbo, close to that coffin, strove
+to share the joy, and to lift up a heart that WOULD sink in the midst
+of self-reproach for undutifulness, and would dislike the thought of
+the rude untaught man, holding aloof from him, likely to view him
+with distrust and jealousy, and to undo all he had achieved, and
+further absorbing the mother, the mother who was to him all the
+world, and for whose sake he had given his best years to the child-
+wife, as yet nothing to him.
+
+It was reversing the natural order of things that, after reigning
+from infancy, he should have to give up at eighteen to one of the
+last generation; and some such thought rankled in his mind when the
+whole household trooped joyfully out of the chapel to prepare a
+banquet for their old new lord, and their young old lord was left
+alone.
+
+Alone with the coffin where the armour lay upon the white cross, Ebbo
+threw himself on his knees, and laid his head upon it, murmuring,
+"Ah, Friedel!  Friedel!  Would that we had changed places!  Thou
+wouldst brook it better.  At least thou didst never know what it is
+to be lonely."
+
+"Herr Baron!" said a little voice.
+
+His first movement was impatient.  Thekla was apt to pursue him
+wherever he did not want her; but here he had least expected her, for
+she had a great fear of that coffin, and could hardly be brought to
+the chapel at prayer times, when she generally occupied herself with
+fancies that the empty helmet glared at her.  But now Ebbo saw her
+standing as near as she durst, with a sweet wistfulness in her eyes,
+such as he had never seen there before.
+
+"What is it, Thekla?" he said.  "Art sent to call me?"
+
+"No; only I saw that you stayed here all alone," she said, clasping
+her hands.
+
+"Must I not be alone, child?" he said, bitterly.  "Here lies my
+brother.  My mother has her husband again!"
+
+"But you have me!" cried Thekla; and, as he looked up between
+amusement and melancholy, he met such a loving eager little face,
+that he could not help holding out his arms, and letting her cling to
+him.  "Indeed," she said, "I'll never be afraid of the helmet again,
+if only you will not lay down your head there, and say you are
+alone."
+
+"Never, Thekla! while you are my little wife," said he; and, child as
+she was, there was strange solace to his heart in the eyes that, once
+vacant and wondering, had now gained a look of love and intelligence.
+
+"What are you going to do?" she said, shuddering a little, as he rose
+and laid his hand on Friedel's sword.
+
+"To make thee gird on thine own knight's sword," said Ebbo,
+unbuckling that which he had so long worn.  "Friedel," he added,
+"thou wouldst give me thine.  Let me take up thy temper with it,
+thine open-hearted love and humility."
+
+He guided Thekla's happy little fingers to the fastening of the belt,
+and then, laying his hand on hers, said gravely, "Thekla, never speak
+of what I said just now--not even to the mother.  Remember, it is thy
+husband's first secret."
+
+And feeling no longer solitary when his hand was in the clasp of
+hers, he returned to the hall, where his father was installed in the
+baronial chair, in which Ebbo had been at home from babyhood.  His
+mother's exclamation showed that her son had been wanting to her; and
+she looked fuller than ever of bliss when Ebbo gravely stood before
+his father, and presented him with the good old sword that he had
+sent to his unborn son.
+
+"You are like to use it more than I,--nay, you have used it to some
+purpose," said he.  "Yet must I keep mine old comrade at least a
+little while.  Wife, son, sword, should make one feel the same man
+again, but it is all too wonderful!"
+
+All that evening, and long after, his hand from time to time sought
+the hilt of his sword, as if that touch above all proved to him that
+he was again a free noble in his own castle.
+
+The story he told was thus.  The swoon in which Heinz had left him
+had probably saved his life by checking the gush of blood, and he had
+known no more till he found himself in a rough cart among the
+corpses.  At Schlangenwald's castle he had been found still
+breathing, and had been flung into a dungeon, where he lay
+unattended, for how long he never knew, since all the early part of
+the time was lost in the clouds of fever.  On coarse fare and scanty
+drink, in that dark vault, he had struggled by sheer obstinacy of
+vitality into recovery.  In the very height of midsummer alone did
+the sun peep through the grating of his cell, and he had newly hailed
+this cheerful visitor when he was roughly summoned, placed on
+horseback with eyes and hands bound, and only allowed sight again to
+find himself among a herd of his fellow Germans in the Turkish camp.
+They were the prisoners of the terrible Turkish raid of 1475, when
+Georg von Schenk and fourteen other noblemen of Austria and Styria
+were all taken in one unhappy fight, and dragged away into captivity,
+with hundreds of lower rank.
+
+To Sir Eberhard the change had been greatly for the better.  The Turk
+had treated him much better than the Christian; and walking in the
+open air, chained to a German comrade, was far pleasanter than pining
+in his lonely dungeon.  At Adrianople, an offer had been made to each
+of the captives, if they would become Moslems, of entering the
+Ottoman service as Spahis; but with one voice they had refused, and
+had then been draughted into different divisions.  The fifteen
+nobles, who had been offered for ransom, were taken to
+Constantinople, to await its arrival, and they had promised Sir
+Eberhard to publish his fate on their return to their homes; and,
+though he knew the family resources too well to have many hopes, he
+was rather hurt to find that their promise had been unfulfilled.
+
+"Alas! they had no opportunity," said Ebbo.  "Gulden were scarce, or
+were all in Kaisar Friedrich's great chest; the ransoms could not be
+raised, and all died in captivity.  I heard about it when I was at
+Wurms last month."
+
+"The boy at Wurms?" almost gasped Sir Eberhard in amaze.
+
+"I had to be there about matters concerning the Wildschloss lands and
+the bridge," said Ebbo; "and both Dankwart von Schlangenwald and I
+made special inquiries about that company in case you should have
+shared their fate.  I hoped to have set forth at that time, but the
+Kaisar said I was still too lame, and refused me license, or letters
+to the Sultan."
+
+"You would not have found me," said his father, narrating how he with
+a large troop of captives had been driven down to the coast; where
+they were transferred to a Moorish slave-dealer, who shipped them off
+for Tunis.  Here, after their first taste of the miseries of a sea
+life, the alternative of Islam or slavery was again put before them.
+"And, by the holy stone of Nicaea," said Sir Eberhard, "I thought by
+that time that the infidels had the advantage of us in good-will and
+friendliness; but, when they told me women had no souls at all, no
+more than a horse or dog, I knew it was but an empty dream of a
+religion; for did I not know that my little Ermentrude, and thou,
+Stine, had finer, clearer, wiser souls than ever a man I had known?
+'Nay, nay,' quoth I, 'I'll cast in my lot where I may meet my wife
+hereafter, should I never see her here.'"  He had then been allotted
+to a corsair, and had thenceforth been chained to the bench of
+rowers, between the two decks, where, in stifling heat and stench, in
+storm or calm, healthy or diseased, the wretched oarsmen were
+compelled to play the part of machinery in propelling the vessel, in
+order to capture Christian ships--making exertions to which only the
+perpetual lash of the galley-master could have urged their exhausted
+frames; often not desisting for twenty or thirty hours, and rowing
+still while sustenance was put into their mouths by their drivers.
+Many a man drew has last breath with his last stroke, and was at the
+first leisure moment hurled into the waves.  It was the description
+that had so deeply moved Friedel long ago, and Christina wept over
+it, as she looked at the bowed form once so proud and free, and
+thought of the unhealed scars.  But there, her husband added, he had
+been chained next to a holy friar of German blood, like himself a
+captive of the great Styrian raid; and, while some blasphemed in
+their misery, or wildly chid their patron saints, this good man
+strove to show that all was to work out good; he had a pious saying
+for all that befell, and adored the will of God in thus purifying
+him; "And, if it were thus with a saint like him, I thought, what
+must it be with a rough freebooting godless sinner such as I had
+been?  See"--and he took out a rosary of strung bladders of seaweed;
+"that is what he left me when he died, and what I meant to have been
+telling for ever up in the hermitage."
+
+"He died, then?"
+
+"Ay--he died on the shore of Corsica, while most of the dogs were off
+harrying a village inland, and we had a sort of respite, or I trow he
+would have rowed till his last gasp.  How he prayed for the poor
+wretches they were gone to attack!--ay, and for all of us--for me
+also--There's enough of it.  Such talk skills not now."
+
+It was plain that Sir Eberhard had learnt more Christianity in the
+hold of his Moorish pirate ship than ever in the Holy Roman Empire,
+and a weight was lifted off his son's mind by finding that he had
+vowed never to return to a life of violence, even though fancying a
+life of penance in a hermitage the only alternative.
+
+Ebbo asked if the Genoese merchant, Ser Gian Battista dei Battiste,
+had indeed been one of his fellow-captives.
+
+"Ha!--what?" and on the repetition, "Truly I knew him, Merchant Gian
+as we used to call him; but you twang off his name as they speak it
+in his own stately city."
+
+Christina smiled.  "Ebbo learnt the Italian tongue this winter from
+our chaplain, who had studied at Bologna.  He was told it would aid
+in his quest of you."
+
+"Tell me not!" said the traveller, holding up his hands in
+deprecation; "the Junker is worse than a priest!  And yet he killed
+old Wolfgang!  But what of Gian?  Hold,--did not he, when I was with
+him at Genoa, tell me a story of being put into a dungeon in a
+mountain fortress in Germany, and released by a pair of young lads
+with eyes beaming in the sunrise, who vanished just as they brought
+him to a cloister?  Nay, he deemed it a miracle of the saints, and
+hung up a votive picture thereof at the shrine of the holy Cosmo and
+Damian."
+
+"He was not so far wrong in deeming ONE of the lads near of kin to
+the holy ones," said Christina, softly.
+
+And Ebbo briefly narrated the adventure, when it evidently appeared
+that his having led at least one foray gave his father for the first
+time a fellow-feeling for him, and a sense that he was one of the
+true old stock; but, when he heard of the release, he growled, "So!
+How would a lad have fared who so acted in my time?  My poor old
+mother!  She must have been changed indeed not to have scourged him
+till he had no strength to cry out."
+
+"He was my prisoner!" said Ebbo, in his old defiant tone; "I had the
+right."
+
+"Ah, well! the Junker has always been master here, and I never!" said
+the elder knight, looking round rather piteously; and Ebbo, with a
+sudden movement, exclaimed, "Nay, sir, you are the only lord and
+master, and I stand ready to be the first to obey you."
+
+"You!  A fine young book-learned scholar, already knighted, and with
+all these Wildschloss lands too!" said Sir Eberhard, gazing with a
+strange puzzled look at the delicate but spirited features of this
+strange perplexing son.  "Reach hither your hand, boy."
+
+And as he compared the slender, shapely hand of such finely-textured
+skin with the breadth of his own horny giant's paw, he tossed it from
+him, shaking his head with a gesture as if he had no commands for
+such feminine-looking fingers to execute, and mortifying Ebbo not a
+little.  "Ah!" said Christina, apologetically, "it always grieved
+your mother that the boys would resemble me and mine.  But, when
+daylight comes, Ebbo will show you that he has not lost the old
+German strength."
+
+"No doubt--no doubt," said Sir Eberhard, hastily, "since he has slain
+Schlangenwald; and, if the former state of things be at an end, the
+less he takes after the ancient stock the better.  But I am an old
+man now, Stine, though thou look'st fair and fresh as ever, and I do
+not know what to make of these things.  White napery on the table;
+glass drinking things;--nay, were it not for thee and the
+Schneiderlein, I should not know I was at home."
+
+He was led back to his narration, and it appeared that, after some
+years spent at the oar, certain bleedings from the lungs, the remains
+of his wound, had become so much more severe as to render him useless
+for naval purposes; and, as he escaped actually dying during a
+voyage, he was allowed to lie by on coming into port till he had in
+some degree recovered, and then had been set to labour at the
+fortifications, chained to another prisoner, and toiling between the
+burning sand and burning sun, but treated with less horrible severity
+than the necessities of the sea had occasioned on board ship, and
+experiencing the benefit of intercourse with the better class of
+captives, whom their miserable fate had thrown into the hands of the
+Moors.
+
+It was a favourite almsdeed among the Provencals, Spaniards, and
+Italians to send money for the redemption of prisoners to the Moors,
+and there was a regular agency for ransoms through the Jews; but
+German captives were such an exception that no one thought of them,
+and many a time had the summons come for such and such a slave by
+name, or for five poor Sicilians, twenty Genoese, a dozen
+Marseillais, or the like, but still no word for the Swabian; till he
+had made up his mind that he should either leave his bones in the hot
+mud of the harbour, or be only set free by some gallant descent
+either of the brave King of Portugal, or of the Knights of Rhodes, of
+whom the captives were ever dreaming and whispering.
+
+At length his own slave name was shouted; he was called up by the
+captain of his gang, and, while expecting some fresh punishment, or,
+maybe, to find himself sold into some domestic form of slavery, he
+was set before a Jewish agent, who, after examining him on his name,
+country, and station, and comparing his answers with a paper of
+instructions, informed him that he was ransomed, caused his fetters
+to be struck off, and shipped him off at once for Genoa, with orders
+to the captain to consign him to the merchant Signor del Battiste.
+By him Sir Eberhard had been received with the warmest hospitality,
+and treated as befitted his original station, but Battista disclaimed
+the merit of having ransomed him.  He had but acted, he said, as the
+agent of an Austrian gentleman, from whom he had received orders to
+inquire after the Swabian baron who had been his fellow-captive, and,
+if he were still living, to pay his ransom, and bring him home.
+
+"The name--the name!" eagerly asked Ebbo and his mother at once.
+
+"The name?  Gian was wont to make bad work of our honest German
+names, but I tried to learn this--being so beholden to him.  I even
+caused it to be spelt over to me, but my letters long ago went from
+me.  It seems to me that the man is a knight-errant, like those of
+thy ballads, Stine--one Ritter Theur--Theur--"
+
+"Theurdank!" cried Ebbo.
+
+"Ay, Theurdank.  What, you know him?  There is nothing you and your
+mother don't know, I believe."
+
+"Know him!  Father, he is our greatest and noblest!  He has been kind
+to me beyond description.  He is the Kaisar!  Now I see why he had
+that strange arch look which so vexed me when he forbade me on my
+allegiance to set forth till my lameness should be gone!  Long ago
+had he asked me all about Gian Battista.  To him he must have
+written."
+
+"The Kaisar!" said Sir Eberhard.  "Nay, the poor fellows I left in
+Turkey ever said he was too close of fist for them to have hope from
+him."
+
+"Oh! that was old Kaisar Friedrich.  This is our own gallant
+Maximilian--a knight as true and brave as ever was paladin," said
+Christina; "and most truly loving and prizing our Ebbo."
+
+"And yet I wish--I wish," said Ebbo, "that he had let me win my
+father's liberty for myself."
+
+"Yea, well," said his father, "there spoke the Adlerstein.  We never
+were wont to be beholden to king or kaisar."
+
+"Nay," say Ebbo, after a moment's recollection, colouring as he
+spoke; "it is true that I deserved it not.  Nay, Sir Father, it is
+well.  You owe your freedom in very truth to the son you have not
+known.  It was he who treasured up the thought of the captive German
+described by the merchant, and even dreamt of it, while never
+doubting of your death; it was he who caught up Schlangenwald's first
+hint that you lived, while I, in my pride, passed it by as merely
+meant to perplex me; it was he who had formed an absolute purpose of
+obtaining some certainty; and at last, when my impetuosity had
+brought on the fatal battle, it was he who bought with his own life
+the avowal of your captivity.  I had hoped to have fulfilled
+Friedel's trust, and to have redeemed my own backwardness; but it is
+not to be.  While I was yet lying helpless on my bed, the Emperor has
+taken it out of my power.  Mother, you receive him from Friedel's
+hands, after all."
+
+"And well am I thankful that so it should be," said Christina.  "Ah,
+Ebbo! sorely should I have pined with anxiety when thou wast gone.
+And thy father knows that thou hadst the full purpose."
+
+"Yea, I know it," said the old man; "and, after all, small blame to
+him even if he had not.  He never saw me, and light grieves the heart
+for what the eye hath not seen."
+
+"But," added the wife, "since the Romish king freed you, dear lord,
+cared he not better for your journey than to let you come in this
+forlorn plight?"
+
+This, it appeared, was far from being his deliverer's fault.  Money
+had been supplied, and Sir Eberhard had travelled as far as Aosta
+with a party of Italian merchants; but no sooner had he parted with
+them than he was completely astray.  His whole experience of life had
+been as a robber baron or as a slave, and he knew not how to take
+care of himself as a peaceful traveller; he suffered fresh extortions
+at every stage, and after a few days was plundered by his guides,
+beaten, and left devoid of all means of continuing the journey to
+which he could hardly hope for a cheerful end.  He did not expect to
+find his mother living,--far less that his unowned wife could have
+survived the perils in which he had involved her; and he believed
+that his ancestral home would, if not a ruin, be held by his foes, or
+at best by the rival branch of the family, whose welcome of the
+outlawed heir would probably be to a dungeon, if not a halter.  Yet
+the only magnet on earth for the lonely wanderer was his native
+mountain, where from some old peasant he might learn how his fair
+young bride had perished, and perhaps the sins of his youth might be
+expiated by continual prayer in the hermitage chapel where his sister
+lay buried, and whence he could see the crags for which his eye and
+heart had craved so long with the home-sickness of a mountaineer.
+
+And now, when his own Christina had welcomed him with all the
+overflow of her loving heart, unchanged save that hers had become a
+tenderer yet more dignified loveliness; when his gallant son, in all
+the bloom of young manhood, received him with dutiful submission;
+when the castle, in a state of defence, prosperity, and comfort of
+which he had never dreamt, was again his own;--still the old man was
+bewildered, and sometimes oppressed almost to distress.  He had, as
+it were, fallen asleep in one age of the world, and wakened in
+another, and it seemed as if he really wished to defer his wakening,
+or else that repose was an absolute novelty to him; for he sat dozing
+in his chair in the sun the whole of the next day, and scarcely
+spoke.
+
+Ebbo, who felt it a necessity to come to an understanding of the
+terms on which they were to stand, tried to refer matters to him, and
+to explain the past, but he was met sometimes by a shake of the head,
+sometimes by a nod--not of assent, but of sleep; and his mother
+advised him not to harass the wearied traveller, but to leave him to
+himself at least for that day, and let him take his own time for
+exertion, letting things meantime go on as usual.  Ebbo obeyed, but
+with a load at his heart, as he felt that all he was doing was but
+provisional, and that it would be his duty to resign all that he had
+planned, and partly executed, to this incompetent, ignorant rule.  He
+could certainly, when not serving the Emperor, go and act for himself
+at Thekla's dower castle of Felsenbach, and his mother might save
+things from going to utter ruin at Adlerstein; but no reflection or
+self-reproach could make it otherwise than a bitter pill to any
+Telemachus to have to resign to one so unlike Ulysses in all but the
+length of his wanderings,--one, also, who seemed only half to like,
+and not at all to comprehend, his Telemachus.
+
+Meantime Ebbo attended to such matters as were sure to come each day
+before the Herr Freiherr.  Now it was a question whether the stone
+for the mill should be quarried where it would undermine a bit of
+grass land, or further on, where the road was rougher; now Berend's
+swine had got into Barthel's rye, and Barthel had severely hurt one
+of them--the Herr Freiherr's interference could alone prevent a
+hopeless quarrel; now a waggon with ironwork for the mill claimed
+exemption from toll as being for the Baron:  and he must send down
+the toll, to obviate injustice towards Schlangenwald and Ulm.  Old
+Ulrich's grandson, who had run away for a lanzknecht, had sent a
+letter home (written by a comrade), the Baron must read and answer
+it.  Steinmark's son wanted to be a poor student:  the Herr Freiherr
+must write him a letter of recommendation.  Mother Grethel's ewe had
+fallen into a cleft; her son came to borrow a rope, and ask aid, and
+the Baron must superintend the hoisting the poor beast up again.
+Hans had found the track of a wolf, and knew the hole where a litter
+of cubs abode; the Freiherr, his wolf-hound, and his spear were
+wanted for their destruction.  Dietrich could not tell how to manage
+his new arquebus:  the Baron must teach him to take aim.  Then there
+was a letter from Ulm to invite the Baron to consult on the tax
+demanded by the Emperor for his Italian war, and how far it should
+concern the profits of the bridge; and another letter from the
+Markgraf of Wurtemburg, as chief of the Swabian League, requesting
+the Lord of Adlerstein to be on the look-out for a band of robbers,
+who were reported to be in neighbouring hills, after being hunted out
+of some of their other lurking-places.
+
+That very night, or rather nearly at the dawn of a summer morning,
+there was a yelling below the castle, and a flashing of torches, and
+tidings rang through it that a boor on the outskirts of the mountain
+had had his ricks fired and his cattle driven by the robbers, and his
+young daughters carried off.  Old Sir Eberhard hobbled down to the
+hall in time to see weapons flashing as they were dealt out, to hear
+a clear decided voice giving orders, to listen to the tramp of horse,
+and watch more reitern pass out under the gateway than ever the
+castle had counted in his father's time.  Then he went back to his
+bed, and when he came down in the morning, found all the womankind of
+the castle roasting and boiling.  And, at noon, little Thekla came
+rushing down from the watch-tower with news that all were coming home
+up the Eagle's Steps, and she was sure HER baron had sent her, and
+waved to her.  Soon after, HER baron in his glittering steel rode his
+cream-coloured charger (once Friedel's) into the castle court,
+followed by his exultant merrymen.  They had overtaken the thieves in
+good time, made them captives, and recovered the spoil unhurt; and
+Heinz and Koppel made the castle ring with the deed of their young
+lord, who had forced the huge leader of the band to the earth, and
+kept him down by main strength till they could come to bind him.
+
+"By main strength?" slowly asked Sir Eberhard, who had been stirred
+into excitement.
+
+"He was a loose-limbed, awkward fellow," said Ebbo, "less strong than
+he looked."
+
+"Not only that, Sir," said Heinz, looking from his old master to his
+young one; "but old iron is not a whit stronger than new steel,
+though the one looks full of might, and you would think the other but
+a toy."
+
+"And what have you done with the rogues' heads?" asked the old
+knight.  "I looked to see them on your spears.  Or have you hung
+them?"
+
+"Not so, Sir," said Ebbo.  "I sent the men off to Stuttgard with an
+escort.  I dislike doing execution ourselves; it makes the men so
+lawless.  Besides, this farmer was Schlangenwalder."
+
+"And yet he came to you for redress?"
+
+"Yes, for Sir Dankwart is at his commandery, and he and I agreed to
+look after each other's lands."
+
+Sir Eberhard retired to his chair as if all had gone past his
+understanding, and thence he looked on while his son and wife
+hospitably regaled, and then dismissed, their auxiliaries in the
+rescue.
+
+Afterwards Christina told her son that she thought his father was
+rested, and would be better able to attend to him, and Ebbo, with a
+painful swelling in his heart, approached him deferentially, with a
+request that he would say what was his pleasure with regard to the
+Emperor, to whom acknowledgments must in the first place be made for
+his release, and next would arise the whole question of homage and
+investiture.
+
+"Look you here, fair son," said Sir Eberhard, rousing himself, "these
+things are all past me.  I'll have none of them.  You and your Kaisar
+understand one another, and your homage is paid.  It boots not
+changing all for an old fellow that is but come home to die."
+
+"Nay, father, it is in the order of things that you should be lord
+here."
+
+"I never was lord here, and, what is more, I would not, and could not
+be.  Son, I marked you yesterday.  You are master as never was my
+poor father, with all the bawling and blows that used to rule the
+house, while these fellows mind you at a word, in a voice as quiet as
+your mother's.  Besides, what should I do with all these mills and
+bridges of yours, and Diets, and Leagues, and councils enough to
+addle a man's brain?  No, no; I could once slay a bear, or strike a
+fair stroke at a Schlangenwalder, but even they got the better of me,
+and I am good for nothing now but to save my soul.  I had thought to
+do it as a hermit up there; but my little Christina thinks the saints
+will be just as well pleased if I tell my beads here, with her to
+help me, and I know that way I shall not make so many mistakes.  So,
+young Sir, if you can give the old man a corner of the hearth while
+he lives, he will never interfere with you.  And, maybe, if the
+castle were in jeopardy in your absence, with that new-fangled road
+up to it, he could tell the fellows how to hold it out."
+
+"Sir--dear father," cried the ardent Ebbo, "this is not a fit state
+of things.  I will spare you all trouble and care; only make me not
+undutiful; take your own place.  Mother, convince him!"
+
+"No, my son," said Sir Eberhard; "your mother sees what is best for
+me.  I only want to be left to her to rest a little while, and repent
+of my sinful life.  As Heinz says, the rusty old iron must lie by
+while the new steel does the work.  It is quiet that I need.  It is
+joy enough for me to see what she has made you, and all around.  Ah!
+Stine, my white dove, I knew thine was a wise head; but when I left
+thee, gentle little frightened, fluttering thing, how little could I
+have thought that all alone, unaided, thou wouldst have kept that
+little head above water, and made thy son work out all these changes-
+-thy doing--and so I know they are good and seemly.  I see thou hast
+made him clerkly, quick-witted, and yet a good knight.  Ah! thou
+didst tell me oft that our lonely pride was not high nor worthy fame.
+Stine, how didst do it?"
+
+"I did it not, dear husband; God did it for me.  He gave the boys the
+loving, true tempers that worked out the rest!  He shielded them and
+me in our days of peril."
+
+"Yes, father," added Ebbo, "Providence guarded us; but, above all,
+our chief blessing has been the mother who has made one of us a holy
+saint, and taught the other to seek after him!  Father, I am glad you
+see how great has been the work of the Dove you brought to the
+Eagle's Nest."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV:  THE STAR AND THE SPARK
+
+
+
+The year 1531 has begun, and Schloss Adlerstein remains in its
+strength on the mountain side, but with a look of cultivation on its
+environs such as would have amazed Kunigunde.  Vines run up trellises
+against the rocks; pot-herbs and flowers nestle in the nooks;
+outbuildings cluster round it; and even the grim old keep has a range
+of buildings connected with it, as if the household had entirely
+outgrown the capacities of the square tower.
+
+Yet the old hall is still the chief place of assembly, and now that
+it has been wainscoted, with a screen of carved wood to shut off the
+draughty passages, and a stove of bright tiles to increase the
+warmth, it is far more cheerful.  Moreover, a window has been opened
+showing the rich green meadow below, with the bridge over the
+Braunwasser, and the little church, with a spire of pierced lace-
+work, and white cottages peeping out of the retreating forest.
+
+That is the window which the Lady Baroness loves.  See her there, the
+lovely old lady of seventy-five--yes, lovelier than ever, for her
+sweet brown eyes have the same pensive, clear beauty, enhanced by the
+snowy whiteness of her hair, of which a soft braid shows over the
+pure pale brow beneath the white band, and sweeping black veil, that
+she has worn by right for twenty years.  But the slight form is
+active and brisk, and there are ready smiles and looks of interest
+for the pretty fair-haired maidens, three in number, who run in and
+out from their household avocations to appeal to the "dear
+grandmother," mischievously to tell of the direful yawns proceeding
+from brothers Ebbo and Gottfried over their studies with their tutor,
+or to gaze from the window and wonder if the father, with the two
+brothers, Friedel Max and Kasimir, will return from Ulm in time for
+the "mid-day eating."
+
+Ah! there they are.  Quick-eyed Vittoria has seen the cavalcade
+first, and dances off to tell Ermentrude and Stine time enough to
+prepare their last batch of fritters for the new-comers; Ebbo and
+Gotz rush headlong down the hillside; and the Lady Baroness lays down
+her distaff, and gazes with eyes of satisfied content at the small
+party of horsemen climbing up the footpath.  Then, when they have
+wound out of sight round a rock, she moves out towards the hall-door,
+with a light, quick step, for never yet has she resigned her great
+enjoyment, that of greeting her son on the steps of the porch--those
+steps where she once met such fearful news, but where that memory has
+been effaced by many a cheerful welcome.
+
+There, then, she stands, amid the bright throng of grandchildren,
+while the Baron and his sons spring from their horses and come up to
+her.  The Baron doffs his Spanish hat, bends the knee, kisses her
+hand, and receives her kiss on his brow, with the fervour of a life-
+devotion, before he turns to accept the salutation of his daughters,
+and then takes her hand, with pretty affectionate ceremony, to hand
+her back to her seat.  A few words pass between them.  "No,
+motherling," he says, "I signed it not; I will tell you all by and
+by."
+
+And then the mid-day meal is served for the whole household, as of
+old, with the salt-cellar in the middle, but with a far larger
+company above it than when first we saw it.  The seven young folks
+preserve a decorous silence, save when Fraulein Ermentrude's
+cookeries are good-naturedly complimented by her father, or when
+Baron Friedmund Maximilianus breaks out with some wonderful fact
+about new armour seen at Ulm.  He is a handsome, fair, flaxen-haired
+young man--like the old Adlersteins, say the elder people--and full
+of honest gaiety and good nature, the special pride of his sisters;
+and no sooner is the meal over, than, with a formal entreaty for
+dismissal, all the seven, and all the dogs, move off together, to
+that favourite gathering-place round the stove, where all their merry
+tongues are let loose together.
+
+To them, the Herr Vater and the Frau Grossmutter seem nearly of the
+same age, and of the same generation; and verily the eighteen years
+between the mother and son have dwindled into a very small difference
+even in appearance, and a lesser one in feeling.  She is a youthful,
+beautiful old lady; he a grave, spare, worn, elderly man, in his full
+strength, but with many a trace of care and thought, and far more of
+silver than of brown in his thin hair and pointed beard, and with a
+melancholy thoughtfulness in his clear brown eyes--all well
+corresponding with the gravity of the dress in which he has been
+meeting the burghers of Ulm; a black velvet suit--only relieved by
+his small white lace ruff, and the ribbon and jewel of the Golden
+Fleece, the only other approach to ornament that he wears being that
+ring long ago twisted off the Emperor Maximilian's chain.  But now,
+as he has bowed off the chaplain to his study, and excused himself
+from aiding his two gentlemen-squires in consuming their krug of
+beer, and hands his mother to her favourite nook in the sunny window,
+taking his seat by her side, his features assume an expression of
+repose and relaxation as if here indeed were his true home.  He has
+chosen his seat in full view of a picture that hangs on the
+wainscoted wall, near his mother--a picture whose pure ethereal
+tinting, of colour limpid as the rainbow, yet rich as the most
+glowing flower-beds; and its soft lovely pose, and rounded outlines,
+prove it to be no produce even of one of the great German artists of
+the time, but to have been wrought, under an Italian sky, by such a
+hand as left us the marvellous smile of Mona Lisa.  It represents two
+figures, one unmistakably himself when in the prime of life, his brow
+and cheeks unfurrowed, and his hair still thick, shining brown, but
+with the same grave earnestness of the dark eye that came with the
+early sense of responsibility, and with the first sorrow of his
+youth.  The other figure, one on which the painter evidently loved to
+dwell, is of a lady, so young that she might almost pass for his
+daughter, except for the peculiar, tender sweetness that could only
+become the wife and mother.  Fair she is as snow, with scarce a
+deepening of the rose on cheek, or even lip, fragile and transparent
+as a spiritual form, and with a light in the blue eyes, and a grace
+in the soft fugitive smile, that scarce seems to belong to earth; a
+beauty not exactly of feature, but rather the pathetic loveliness of
+calm fading away--as if she were already melting into the clear blue
+sky with the horizon of golden light, that the wondrous power of art
+has made to harmonize with, but not efface, her blue dress, golden
+hair, white coif, and fair skin.  It is as if she belonged to that
+sky, and only tarried as unable to detach herself from the clasp of
+the strong hand round and in which both her hands are twined; and
+though the light in her face may be from heaven, yet the whole
+countenance is fixed in one absorbed, almost worshipping gaze of her
+husband, with a wistful simplicity and innocence on devotion, like
+the absorption of a loving animal, to whom its master's presence is
+bliss and sunshine.  It is a picture to make light in a dark place,
+and that sweet face receives a loving glance, nay, an absolutely
+reverent bend of the knightly head, as the Baron seats himself.
+
+"So it was as we feared, and this Schmalkaldic League did not suit
+thy sense of loyalty, my son?" she asks, reading his features
+anxiously.
+
+"No, mother.  I ever feared that further pressure would drive our
+friends beyond the line where begin schism and rebellion; and it
+seems to me that the moment is come when I must hold me still, or
+transgress mine own sense of duty.  I must endure the displeasure of
+many I love and respect."
+
+"Surely, my son, they have known you too long and too well not to
+respect your motives, and know that conscience is first with you."
+
+"Scarce may such confidence be looked for, mother, from the most
+part, who esteem every man a traitor to the cause if he defend it not
+precisely in the fashion of their own party.  But I hear that the
+King of France has offered himself as an ally, and that Dr. Luther,
+together with others of our best divines, have thereby been startled
+into doubts of the lawfulness of the League."
+
+"And what think you of doing, my son?"
+
+"I shall endeavour to wait until such time as the much-needed General
+Council may proclaim the ancient truth, and enable us to avouch it
+without disunion.  Into schism I WILL not be drawn.  I have held
+truth all my life in the Church, nor will I part from her now.  If
+intrigues again should prevail, then, Heaven help us!  Meantime,
+mother, the best we can, as has ever been your war-cry."
+
+"And much has been won for us.  Here are the little maidens, who,
+save Vittoria, would never have been scholars, reading the Holy Word
+daily in their own tongue."
+
+"Ach, I had not told you, mother!  I have the Court Secretary's
+answer this day about that command in the Kaisar's guards that my
+dear old master had promised to his godson."
+
+"Another put-off with Flemish courtesy, I see by thy face, Ebbo."
+
+"Not quite that, mother.  The command is ready for the Baron
+Friedmund Maximilianus von Adlerstein Wildschloss, and all the rest
+of it, on the understanding that he has been bred up free from all
+taint of the new doctrine."
+
+"New?  Nay, it is the oldest of all doctrine."
+
+"Even so.  As I ever said, Dr. Luther hath been setting forth in
+greater clearness and fulness what our blessed Friedel and I learnt
+at your knee, and my young ones have learnt from babyhood of the true
+Catholic doctrine.  Yet I may not call my son's faith such as the
+Kaisar's Spanish conscience-keepers would have it, and so the boy
+must e'en tarry at home till there be work for his stout arm to do."
+
+"He seems little disappointed.  His laugh comes ringing the loudest
+of all."
+
+"The Junker is more of a boy at two-and-twenty than I ever recollect
+myself!  He lacks not sense nor wit, but a fray or a feast, a chase
+or a dance, seem to suffice him at an age when I had long been
+dwelling on matters of moment."
+
+"Thou wast left to be thine own pilot; he is but one of thy gay crew,
+and thus even these stirring times touch him not so deeply as thou
+wert affected by thine own choice in life between disorderly freedom
+and honourable restraint."
+
+"I thought of that choice to-day, mother, as I crossed the bridge and
+looked at the church; and more than ever thankful did I feel that our
+blessed Friedel, having aided me over that one decisive pass, was
+laid to rest, his tender spirit unvexed by the shocks and divisions
+that have wrenched me hither and thither."
+
+"Nay; not hither and thither.  Ever hadst thou a resolute purpose and
+aim."
+
+"Ever failed in by my own error or that of others--What, thou
+nestling here, my little Vittoria, away from all yonder prattle?"
+
+"Dear father, if I may, I love far best to hear you and the
+grandmother talk."
+
+"Hear the child!  She alone hath your face, mother, or Friedel's
+eyes!  Is it that thou wouldst be like thy noble Roman godmother, the
+Marchesa di Pescara, that makes thee seek our grave company, little
+one?"
+
+"I always long to hear you talk of her, and of the Italian days, dear
+father, and how you won this noble jewel of yours."
+
+"Ah, child, that was before those times!  It was the gift of good
+Kaisar Max at his godson's christening, when he filled your sweet
+mother with pretty spite by persuading her that it was a little
+golden bear-skin."
+
+"Tell her how you had gained it, my son."
+
+"By vapouring, child; and by the dull pride of my neighbours.
+Heard'st thou never of the siege of Padua, when we had Bayard, the
+best knight in Europe, and 500 Frenchmen for our allies?  Our
+artillery had made a breach, and the Kaisar requested the French
+knights to lead the storm, whereto they answered, Well and good, but
+our German nobles must share the assault, and not leave them to fight
+with no better backers than the hired lanzknechts.  All in reason,
+quoth I, and more shame for us not to have been foremost in our
+Kaisar's own cause; but what said the rest of our misproud chivalry?
+They would never condescend to climb a wall on foot in company with
+lanzknechts!  On horseback must their worships fight, or not at all;
+and when to shame them I called myself a mountaineer, more used to
+climb than to ride, and vowed that I should esteem it an honour to
+follow such a knight as Bayard, were it on all fours, then cast they
+my burgher blood in my teeth.  Never saw I the Kaisar so enraged; he
+swore that all the common sense in the empire was in the burgher
+blood, and that he would make me a knight of the noblest order in
+Europe to show how he esteemed it.  And next morning he was gone!  So
+ashamed was he of his own army that he rode off in the night, and
+sent orders to break up the siege.  I could have torn my hair, for I
+had just lashed up a few of our nobles to a better sense of honour,
+and we would yet have redeemed our name!  And after all, the Chapter
+of proud Flemings would never have admitted me had not the heralds
+hunted up that the Sorels were gentlemen of blood and coat armour
+long ago at Liege.  I am glad my father lived to see that proved,
+mother.  He could not honour thee more than he did, but he would have
+been sorely grieved had I been rejected.  He often thought me a
+mechanical burgher, as it was."
+
+"Not quite so, my son.  He never failed to be proud of thy deeds,
+even when he did not understand them; but this, and the grandson's
+birth, were the crowning joys of his life."
+
+"Yes, those were glad triumphant years, take them all in all, ere the
+Emperor sent me to act ambassador in Rome, and we left you the two
+elder little girls and the boy to take care of.  My dear little
+Thekla!  She had a foreboding that she might never see those children
+more, yet would she have pined her heart away more surely had I left
+her at home!  I never was absent a week but I found her wasted with
+watching for me."
+
+"It was those weary seven years of Italy that changed thee most, my
+son."
+
+"Apart from you, mother, and knowing you now indeed to be widowed,
+and with on the one hand such contradictory commands from the Emperor
+as made me sorely ashamed of myself, of my nation, and of the man
+whom I loved and esteemed personally the most on earth, yet bound
+there by his express command, while I saw my tender wife's health
+wasting in the climate day by day!  Yet still, while most she gasped
+for a breath of Swabian hills, she ever declared it would kill her
+outright to send her from me.  And thus it went on till I laid her in
+the stately church of her own patroness.  Then how it would have
+fared with me and the helpless little ones I know not, but for thy
+noble godmother, my Vittoria, the wise and ready helper of all in
+trouble, the only friend thy mother had made at Rome, and who had
+been able, from all her heights of learning and accomplishment, to
+value my Thekla's golden soul in its simplicity.  Even then, when too
+late, came one of the Kaisar's kindest letters, recalling me,--a
+letter whose every word I would have paid for with a drop of my own
+blood six weeks before! and which he had only failed to send because
+his head was running on the plan of that gorgeous tomb where he is
+not buried!  Well, at least it brought us home to you again once
+more, mother, and, where you are, comfort never has been utterly
+absent from me.  And then, coming from the wilful gloom of Pope Leo's
+court into our Germany, streamed over by the rays of Luther's light,
+it was as if a new world of hope were dawning, as if truth would no
+longer be muffled, and the young would grow up to a world far better
+and purer than the old had ever seen.  What trumpet-calls those were,
+and how welcome was the voice of the true Catholic faith no longer
+stifled!  And my dear old Kaisar, with his clear eyes, his unfettered
+mind--he felt the power and truth of those theses.  He bade the
+Elector of Saxony well to guard the monk Luther as a treasure.  Ah!
+had he been a younger man, or had he been more firm and resolute,
+able to act as well as think for himself, things might have gone
+otherwise with the Church.  He could think, but could not act; and
+now we have a man who acts, but WILL not think.  It may have been a
+good day for our German reputation among foreign princes when Charles
+V. put on the crown; but only two days in my life have been as
+mournful to me as that when I stood by Kaisar Max's death-bed at
+Wells, and knew that generous, loving, fitful spirit was passing away
+from the earth!  Never owned I friend I loved so well as Kaisar Max!
+Nor has any Emperor done so much for this our dear land."
+
+"The young Emperor never loved thee."
+
+"He might have treated me as one who could be useful, but he never
+forgave me for shaking hands with Luther at the Diet of Worms.  I
+knew it was all over with my court favour after I had joined in
+escorting the Doctor out of the city.  And the next thing was that
+Georg of Freundsberg and his friends proclaimed me a bigoted Papist
+because I did my utmost to keep my troop out of the devil's holiday
+at the sack of Rome!  It has ever been my lot to be in disgrace with
+one side or the other!  Here is my daughter's marriage hindered on
+the one hand, my son's promotion checked on the other, because I have
+a conscience of my own, and not of other people's!  Heaven knows the
+right is no easy matter to find; but, when one thinks one sees it,
+there is nothing to be done but to guide oneself by it, even if the
+rest of the world will not view it in the same light."
+
+"Nothing else!  I doubt me whether it be ever easy to see the
+veritably right course while still struggling in the midst.  That is
+for after ages, which behold things afar off; but each man must needs
+follow his own principle in an honest and good heart, and assuredly
+God will guide him to work out some good end, or hinder some evil
+one."
+
+"Ay, mother.  Each party may guard one side or other of the truth in
+all honesty and faithfulness; he who cannot with his whole heart cast
+in his lot with either,--he is apt to serve no purpose, and to be
+scorned."
+
+"Nay, Ebbo, may he not be a witness to the higher and more perfect
+truth than either party have conceived?  Nor is inaction always
+needful.  That which is right towards either side still reveals
+itself at the due moment, whether it be to act or to hold still.  And
+verily, Ebbo, what thou didst say even now has set me on a strange
+thought of mine own dream, that which heralded the birth of thyself
+and thy brother.  As thou knowest, it seemed to me that I was
+watching two sparkles from the extinguished Needfire wheel.  One rose
+aloft and shone as a star!"
+
+"My guiding-star!"
+
+"The other fulfilled those words of the Wise Man.  It shone and ran
+to and fro in the grass.  And surely, my Ebbo, thy mother may feel
+that, in all these dark days of perplexity and trial, the spark of
+light hath ever shone and drawn its trail of brightness in the gloom,
+even though the way was long, and seemed uncertain."
+
+"The mother who ever fondled me WILL think so, it may be!  But, ah!
+she had better pray that the light be clearer, and that I may not
+fall utterly short of the star!"
+
+
+Travellers in Wurtemburg may perhaps turn aside from glorious old
+Ulm, and the memories of the battlefields around it, to the romantic
+country round the Swabian mountains, through which descend the
+tributaries of the Danube.  Here they may think themselves fortunate
+if they come upon a green valley, with a bright mountain torrent
+dashing through it, fresh from the lofty mountain, with terraced
+sides that rise sheer above.  An old bridge, a mill, and a neat
+German village lie clustered in the valley; a seignorial mansion
+peeps out of the forest glades; and a lovely church, of rather late
+Gothic, but beautifully designed, attracts the eye so soon as it can
+be persuaded to quit the romantic outline of the ruined baronial
+castle high up on one of the mountain ledges.  Report declares that
+there are tombs in the church well worth inspection.  You seek out an
+old venerable blue-coated peasant who has charge of the church.
+
+"What is yonder castle?"
+
+"It is the castle of Adlerstein."
+
+"Are the family still extant?"
+
+"Yea, yea; they built yonder house when the Schloss became ruinous.
+They have always been here."
+
+The church is very beautiful in its details, the carved work of the
+east end and pulpit especially so, but nothing is so attractive as
+the altar tomb in the chantry chapel.  It is a double one, holding
+not, as usual, the recumbent effigies of a husband and wife, but of
+two knights in armour.
+
+"Who are these, good friend?"
+
+"They are the good Barons Ebbo and Friedel."
+
+Father and son they appear to be, killed at the same time in some
+fatal battle, for the white marble face of one is round with youth,
+no hair on lip nor chin, and with a lovely peaceful solemnity, almost
+cheerfulness, in the expression.  The other, a bearded man, has the
+glory of old age in his worn features, beautiful and restful, but it
+is as if one had gone to sleep in the light of dawn, the other in the
+last glow of sunset.  Their armour and their crests are alike, but
+the young one bears the eagle shield alone, while the elder has the
+same bearing repeated upon an escutcheon of pretence; the young man's
+hands are clasped over a harp, those of the other over a Bible, and
+the elder wears the insignia of the order of the Golden Fleece.  They
+are surely father and son, a maiden knight and tried warrior who fell
+together?
+
+"No," the guide shakes his head; "they are twin brothers, the good
+Barons Ebbo and Friedel, who were born when their father had been
+taken captive by the Saracens while on a crusade.  Baron Friedel was
+slain by the Turks at the bridge foot, and his brother built the
+church in his memory.  He first planted vines upon the mountains, and
+freed the peasants from the lord's dues on their flax.  And it is
+true that the two brothers may still be seen hovering on the
+mountain-side in the mist at sunset, sometimes one, sometimes both."
+
+You turn with a smile to the inscription, sure that those windows,
+those porches, that armour, never were of crusading date, and ready
+to refute the old peasant.  You spell out the upright Gothic letters
+around the cornice of the tomb, and you read, in mediaeval Latin,
+
+
+"Orate pro Anima Friedmundis Equitis Baronis Adlersteini.  A. D.
+mccccxciii"
+
+
+Then turn to the other side and read -
+
+
+"Hic jacet Eberardus Eques Baro Adlersteini.  A.D. mdxliii.  Demum"
+
+
+Yes, the guide is right.  They are brothers, with well-nigh a
+lifetime between their deaths.  Is that the meaning of that strange
+Demum?
+
+Few of the other tombs are worth attention, each lapsing further into
+the bad taste of later ages; yet there is one still deserving
+admiration, placed close to the head of that of the two Barons.  It
+is the effigy of a lady, aged and serene, with a delicately-carved
+face beneath her stiff head-gear.  Surely this monument was erected
+somewhat later, for the inscription is in German.  Stiff, contracted,
+hard to read, but this is the rendering of it
+
+
+"Here lies Christina Sorel, wife of Eberhard, xxth Baron von
+Adlerstein, and mother of the Barons Eberhard and Friedmund.  She
+fell asleep two days before her son, on the feast of St. John,
+mdxliii.
+
+"Her children shall rise up and call her blessed.
+
+"Erected with full hearts by her grandson, Baron Friedmund
+Maximilianus, and his brothers and sisters.  Farewell."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of The Dove in the Eagle's Nest, by Yonge
+
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