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.

“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.