Albrecht

by Arlo Bates

"The ring," Albrecht answered with a seriousness which impressed her, and which yet rendered her only the more anxious to possess the jewel, "had indeed strange powers, but they were unhallowed ones. It were not fitting that a Christian avail himself of the spells which have been wrought by sinful sorceresses."

"Thou art truly become virtuous," Erna retorted with a tone in which she had never before spoken to her husband. "Good sooth, when thou camest to Rittenberg I heard nothing of scruples so nice!"

Albrecht turned and regarded her with a glance so reproachful and so full of pain that she could not bear it. She struck her palfrey sharply with her whip, and dashed recklessly down the hill, crying out to Count Stephen, who had been in advance a little until she thus ran by him, to race with her. Tears of vexation were in her eyes as she dashed down the woodland path, and the sting of her own words wounded her to the quick. She became recklessly gay, and all through the afternoon when she was not separated from her cousin by the chances of the chase she jested and laughed with demonstrative merriment.

Through the thickets where the leaves had begun to fall, under pine boughs which had strewn the ground thick with brown spicy needles year after year until the horses' feet bounded upon an elastic cushion, past rocks violet in the sun and rose-hued in the half shadows, over meadows set with jewel-tinted autumn flowers, sped the hunt, the mellow baying of the deep-mouthed hounds ringing out upon the air, and the horn from time to time waking all the echoes into inspiring music. Erna kept well to the front. She had never ridden so recklessly, and never before had the passion of the sport so fired her blood. She was, moreover, trying to escape from the smart of the taunt which she had flung at her husband, and her palfrey flew so fast that sometimes she even led the way for the huntsmen to follow.

Count Stephen was never far away from her. Close behind or beside her as the ways through which they sped allowed him, he pressed forward with the countess; and Erna was well aware that he had set himself to keep with her, and that his quest that day was not simply the stag which was fleeing before the deep-baying hounds, but rather the love of the woman with whom he went crashing through the thickets where the leaves came down in showers about the horses and the wood-scents rose balsamic or musky under the beat of the swift hoofs of their steeds. She was so conscious of his presence that she could not look at him, but kept her face turned away, urging her palfrey forward rather as if she were fleeing than as if she were of the band of pursuers.

And now and then, too, she had a strange sense that she was not alone with her companion, but as if some unseen creature were following and were watching her. She tried to shake off the notion; but when the thickets rustled after they had both drawn rein to listen for the hounds and to recover again the trail which they had for a moment lost, she had started and shivered, remembering the sprites of the wood that have the power of walking invisible. Then she would glance at the count and backward to where Fastrade strove to urge her palfrey forward lest she lose track of her mistress altogether, and with a new smile upon her lips would once more rush madly forward.

The hunt was not long. It was swift and dashing, the stag seeming to exhaust himself in one grand burst at the outset; and before the light of the autumn afternoon had waned the yelping of the hounds and the baying of the beagles told that they were almost upon their prey. Erna and Count Stephen were riding desperately, following the trail; but now the countess, who knew the country better than her companion, suddenly struck off along the side of a hill which the hunt had crossed.

"Come this way," she called back over her shoulder to her cousin. "We shall intercept them thus at the end of the valley. The stag has doubled."

He followed without hesitation, and in brief space they burst through a thicket to find themselves at the head of a little valley carpeted with turf still green and untouched by the frost, and set around with beech trees whose leaves were shining with the slanting beams of the sun, which shot through a break in the hills at their left hand. The whole vale was illumined with the red light, and into it, just as they came out of the wood, dashed a superb stag of ten, the dogs already at his throat; and close upon his track, almost within arm's length, madly rode Albrecht.

"I thought the baron had been behind," Count Stephen exclaimed in astonishment.