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Updated: June 25, 2025
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!
"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."
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!
"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."
"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.
"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?"
"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 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!
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.
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!
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