"I!" cried Count Stephen, with sudden rage. "God's wounds, dost thou take me for a villain such as thou?"
He flung himself upon Herr Frederich so forcibly that they both went down among the feet of the horses together. He caught the cripple by the throat with one hand, while with the other he drew his dagger.
"Take this to the Huns in token!" he exclaimed, dealing the fallen man stab after stab; "and this, and this!"
The other struggled fiercely for a moment. It was so dark there on the ground that the count struck at him blindly, and it was only when the blow had been repeated several times that the cripple was quiet. Count Stephen held him by the throat in his powerful grasp until he ceased to struggle; when he rose he became aware that Herr Zimmern's horse had escaped into the darkening forest. It was only from the chance that as he leaped from his own steed the rein had been thrown over the broken limb of a tree by which he was standing that he was not himself left horseless.
"God's blood!" ejaculated Count Stephen, wiping his dagger on the doublet of the dead man; "there is one less knave in the world."
He touched the corse contemptuously with his foot, wondering why Herr Frederich had so bitterly hated Albrecht, and for the moment considering that, after all, Herr von Zimmern had been his only ally at Rittenberg, and that it was not wise to have disposed of him thus. Yet when he reflected that if he had been left alive it would have been simply that he might have opportunity to bring in the dreaded Huns to devastate the land, he was satisfied that it had been well to kill the knave and put an end to his scheming. Count Stephen knew what the Huns were. They had overrun not a little of the country in the neighborhood of his home; and as he thought of them he became well pleased with himself for having slain one who would have helped the heathen.
But even the pleasure of having killed a varlet who would have given the land to the fire and the spear of the Huns could not for long put Count Stephen from the thought of Erna. He got upon his horse, and rode slowly toward the castle, as completely forgetting the dead man behind him as if he had never existed, and leaving the body to the wolves with as little compunction as if it had been the carcass of a hound.
He wondered how Erna would receive him, and whether she would have said anything to her husband of the happening in the forest; and at last he bethought him of a means by which he might test her feelings.
"I will send her word," he said to himself, "that I wish to take my leave. Surely, if she forgive me, or if there is hope for me, I shall be able to tell it when I see her. She cannot be so angry as to refuse to come; and besides, she would fear that her husband should ask the reason if she treated me with disdain. She must at least come to bid me farewell, if not to urge upon me a longer stay; surely she must come."
And with this design in his mind, Count Stephen rode on more briskly, reaching the castle a little before sunset.