“The devil!” burst out Theurdank. “Well! that might have been a pretty mess! A Turkish slave, saidst thou! What year chanced all this matter—thy grandfather’s murder and all the rest?”
“The year before my birth,” said Ebbo. “It was in the September of 1475.”
“Ha!” muttered Theurdank, musing to himself; “that was the year the dotard Schenk got his overthrow at the fight of Rain on Sare from the Moslem. Some composition was made by them, and old Wolfgang was not unlikely to have been the go-between. So! Say on, young knight,” he added, “let us to the matter in hand. How rose the strife that kept back two troops from our—from the banner of the empire?”
Ebbo proceeded with the narration, and concluded it just as the bell now belonging to the chapel began to toll for compline, and Theurdank prepared to obey its summons, first, however, asking if he should send any one to the patient. Ebbo thanked him, but said he needed no one till his mother should come after prayers.
“Nay, I told thee I had some leechcraft. Thou art weary, and must rest more entirely;”—and, giving him little choice, Theurdank supported him with one arm while removing the pillows that propped him, then laid him tenderly down, saying, “Good night, and the saints bless thee, brave young knight. Sleep well, and recover in spite of the leeches. I cannot afford to lose both of you.”
Ebbo strove to follow mentally the services that were being performed in the chapel, and whose “Amens” and louder notes pealed up to him, devoid of the clear young tones that had sung their last here below, but swelled by grand bass notes that as much distracted Ebbo’s attention as the memory of his guest’s conversation; and he impatiently awaited his mother’s arrival.
At length, lamp in hand, she appeared with tears shining in her eyes, and bending over him said,
“He hath done honour to our blessed one, my Ebbo; he knelt by him, and crossed him with holy water, and when he led me from the chapel he told me any mother in Germany might envy me my two sons even now. Thou must love him now, Ebbo.”
“Love him as one loves one’s loftiest model,” said Ebbo—“value the old castle the more for sheltering him.”
“Hath he made himself known to thee?”