“A rest will soon cure that,” said Ebbo, seating himself as he spoke on a settle near the hall fire; but the next moment a strange wild low shriek from his mother made him start up and spring to her side. She stood with hands clasped, and wondering eyes. The pilgrim—his hat on the ground, his white head and rugged face displayed—was gazing as though devouring her with his eyes, murmuring, “Unchanged! unchanged!”
“What is this!” thundered the young Baron. “What are you doing to the lady?”
“Hush! hush, Ebbo!” exclaimed Christina. “It is thy father! On thy knees! Thy father is come! It is our son, my own lord. Oh, embrace him! Kneel to him, Ebbo!” she wildly cried.
“Hold, mother,” said Ebbo, keeping his arm round her, though she struggled against him, for he felt some doubts as he looked back at his walk with the stranger, and remembered Heinz’s want of recognition. “Is it certain that this is indeed my father?”
“Oh, Ebbo,” was the cry of poor Christina, almost beside herself, “how could I not be sure? I know him! I feel it! Oh, my lord, bear with him. It is his wont to be so loving! Ebbo, cannot you see it is himself?”
“The young fellow is right,” said the stranger, slowly. “I will answer all he may demand.”
“Forgive me,” said Ebbo, abashed, “forgive me;” and, as his mother broke from him, he fell upon his knee; but he only heard his father’s cry, “Ah! Stine, Stine, thou alone art the same,” and, looking up, saw her, with her face hidden in the white beard, quivering with a rapture such as he had never seen in her before. It seemed long to him ere she looked up again in her husband’s face to sob on: “My son! Oh! my beautiful twins! Our son! Oh, see him, dear lord!” And the pilgrim turned to hear Ebbo’s “Pardon, honoured father, and your blessing.”
Almost bashfully the pilgrim laid his hand on the dark head, and murmured something; then said, “Up, then! The slayer of Schlangenwald kneeling! Ah! Stine, I knew thy little head was wondrous wise, but I little thought thou wouldst breed him up to avenge us on old Wolfgang! So slender a lad too! Ha! Schneiderlein, old rogue, I knew thee,” holding out his hand. “So thou didst get home safe?”
“Ay, my lord; though, if I left you alive, never more will I call a man dead,” said Heinz.
“Worse luck for me—till now,” said Sir Eberhard, whose tones, rather than his looks, carried perfect conviction of his identity. It was the old homely accent, and gruff good-humoured voice, but with something subdued and broken in the tone. His features had grown like his father’s, but he looked much older than ever the hale old mountaineer had done, or than his real age; so worn and lined was his face, his skin tanned, his eyelids and temples puckered by burning sun, his hair and beard white as the inane of his old mare, the proud Adlerstein port entirely gone. He stooped even more without his staff than with it; and, when he yielded himself with a sigh of repose to his wife’s tendance, she found that he had not merely the ordinary hurts of travelling, but that there were old festering scars on his ankles. “The gyves,” he said, as she looked up at him, with startled, pitying eyes. “Little deemed I that they would ever come under thy tender hands.” As he almost timidly smoothed the braid of dark hair on her brow—“So they never burnt thee for a witch after all, little one? I thought my mother would never keep her hands off thee, and used to fancy I heard the crackling of the flame.”