“With this sword. Didst know it?” said Ebbo, drawing the weapon, and giving it to the old man, who held it for a few moments, weighed it affectionately, and with a long low sigh restored it, saying, “It is well. You and that blade have paid off the score. I should be content. Let me dismount. I know my way to the hermitage.”
“Nay, what is this?” said Ebbo; “thou must have rest and food. The hermitage is empty, scarce habitable. My mother will not be balked of the care of thy bleeding feet.”
“But let me go, ere I bring evil on you all. I can pray up there, and save my soul, but I cannot see it all.”
“See what?” said Ebbo, again trying to see his guest’s face. “There may be changes, but an old faithful follower of my father’s must ever be welcome.”
“Not when his wife has taken a new lord,” growled the stranger, bitterly, “and he a Wildschloss! Young man, I could have pardoned aught else!”
“I know not who you may be who talk of pardoning my lady-mother,” said Ebbo, “but new lord she has neither taken nor will take. She has refused every offer; and, now that Schlangenwald with his last breath confessed that he slew not my father, but sold him to the Turks, I have been only awaiting recovery from my wound to go in search of him.”
“Who then is yonder child, who told me she was Wildschloss?”
“That child,” said Ebbo, with half a smile and half a blush, “is my wife, the daughter of Wildschloss, who prayed me to espouse her thus early, that so my mother might bring her up.”
By this time they had reached the castle court, now a well-kept, lordly-looking enclosure, where the pilgrim looked about him as one bewildered. He was so infirm that Ebbo carefully helped him up the stone stairs to the hall, where he already saw his mother prepared for the hospitable reception of the palmer. Leaving him at the entrance, Ebbo crossed the hall to say to her in a low voice, “This pilgrim is one of the old lanzknechts of my grandfather’s time. I wonder whether you or Heinz will know him. One of the old sort—supremely discontented at change.”
“And thou hast walked up, and wearied thyself!” exclaimed Christina, grieved to see her son’s halting step.