Christina could not be quite at ease with Theurdank in her son’s room, but she had no choice, and she knew that Heinz was watching on the turret stair, out of hearing indeed, but as ready to spring as a cat who sees her young ones in the hand of a child that she only half trusts.
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! Once indeed, after a bear hunt, we fully thought the castle stood before us, and lo! it was all a cruel snow mist in that mocking shape. I was even about to climb our last Eagle’s Step, as I thought, when behold, it proved to be the very brink of the abyss.”
“Ah! these ravines are well-nigh as bad as those of the Inn. I’ve known what it was to be caught on the ledge of a precipice by a sharp wind, changing its course, mark’st thou, so swiftly that it verily tore my hold from the rock, and had well-nigh swept me into a chasm of mighty depth. There was nothing for it but to make the best spring I might towards the crag on the other side, and grip for my life at my alpenstock, which by Our Lady’s grace was firmly planted, and I held on till I got breath again, and felt for my footing on the ice-glazed rock.”
“Ah!” said Eberhard with a long breath, after having listened with a hunter’s keen interest to this hair’s-breadth escape, “it sounds like a gust of my mountain air thus let in on me.”
“Truly it is dismal work for a lusty hunter to lie here,” said Theurdank, “but soon shalt thou take thy crags again in full vigour, I hope. How call’st thou the deep gray lonely pool under a steep frowning crag sharpened well-nigh to a spear point, that I passed yester afternoon?”
“The Ptarmigan’s Mere, the Red Eyrie,” murmured Ebbo, scarcely able to utter the words as he thought of Friedel’s delight in the pool, his exploit at the eyrie, and the gay bargain made in the streets of Ulm, that he should show the scaler of the Dom steeple the way to the eagle’s nest.
“I remember,” said his guest gravely, coming to his side. “Ah, boy! thy brother’s flight has been higher yet. Weep freely; fear me not. Do I not know what it is, when those who were over-good for earth have found their eagle’s wings, and left us here?”
Ebbo gazed up through his tears into the noble, mournful face that was bent kindly over him. “I will not seek to comfort thee by counselling thee to forget,” said Theurdank. “I was scarce thine elder when my life was thus rent asunder, and to hoar hairs, nay, to the grave itself, will she be my glory and my sorrow. Never owned I brother, but I trow ye two were one in no common sort.”
“Such brothers as we saw at Ulm were little like us,” returned Ebbo, from the bottom of his heart. “We were knit together so that all will begin with me as if it were the left hand remaining alone to do it! I am glad that my old life may not even in shadow be renewed till after I have gone in quest of my father.”