"Poor Geiger-Onkel!" said Sidonia. "How wet you must be!"
"Nay, the night had turned fine then; it was the least of my hardships. But at dawn this restless spirit of mine set me to rousing the castle—and a fine time of it I have given them! His Excellency, however, was found dead drunk in his hall, so that I could get little out of him. The lady is convinced that you, comrade, have eloped with her niece, by some devious road——"
"Devious enough," said Steven, with a short laugh.
But Sidonia had become grave. "I am glad, at least, that he was drunk," she said, with judicial air.
"I left my Lady Burgravine planning hysterics. But I have given orders in the household, as if I were master of all. No flogging of Geiger-Hans now, nor setting of dogs upon him! 'Tis I command this morning. I have marshalled his Excellency's servants: there are some half-dozen fellows searching the rocks already. And here, by the way, comes one bright youth. Observe how he looks under the brambles and the bushes. He will not leave a mouse-hole unprodded for your corpses."
"Shall we not bid him get breakfast for us all?" cried Sidonia, gaily. "'Tis the least Wellenshausen can do for you this morning, Herr Graf!"
She sprang upwards lightly, her small face, wan with fatigue, laughing back at them over her shoulder. The fiddler and Steven stood side by side watching her.
"Well," said the former, after a pause, "are you inclined to go and break bread again in the house whose stones plotted your death? Or will you take the safe way down the mountain to the cushions of your berline, and cry: 'Drive on, postilion'?"
Steven regarded the speaker a moment or two before replying. It seemed to the young man as if that long, black night had cut him off from his own purblind youth. He felt himself years older, weighted with life.
"I am going back to the Burg," he said, and set off climbing.