“And hear you all,” continued Eberhard, “she shall rule all, and never be trampled on more. Grandame, you understand?”
The old woman seemed confounded, and cowered in her chair without speaking. Christina, almost dismayed by this silence, would have suggested to Ebbo to say something kind or consoling; but at that moment she was struck with alarm by his renewed inquiry for his brother.
“Friedel! Was not he with thee?”
“No; I never saw him!”
Ebbo flew up the stairs, and shouted for his brother; then, coming down, gave orders for the men to go out on the mountain-side, and search and jodel. He was hurrying with them, but his mother caught his arm. “O Ebbo, how can I let you go? It is dark, and the crags are so perilous!”
“Mother, I cannot stay!” and the boy flung his arms round her neck, and whispered in her ear, “Friedel said it would be a treacherous attack, and I called him a craven. Oh, mother, we never parted thus before! He went up the hillside. Oh, where is he?”
Infected by the boy’s despairing voice, yet relieved that Friedel at least had withstood the temptation, Christina still held Ebbo’s hand, and descended the steps with him. The clear blue sky was fast showing the stars, and into the evening stillness echoed the loud wide jodeln, cast back from the other side of the ravine. Ebbo tried to raise his voice, but broke down in the shout, and, choked with agitation, said, “Let me go, mother. None know his haunts as I do!”
“Hark!” she said, only grasping him tighter.
Thinner, shriller, clearer came a far-away cry from the heights, and Ebbo thrilled from head to foot, then sent up another pealing mountain shout, responded to by a jodel so pitched as to be plainly not an echo. “Towards the Red Eyrie,” said Hans.
“He will have been to the Ptarmigan’s Pool,” said Ebbo, sending up his voice again, in hopes that the answer would sound less distant; but, instead of this, its intonations conveyed, to these adepts in mountain language, that Friedel stood in need of help.