“Nay,” said Ebbo, with boyish lordliness, “make me not a spoiler.”
“If the signorini should ever come to Genoa,” continued the trader, “and would honour Gian Battista dei Battiste with a call, his whole house would be at their feet.”
“Thanks; I would that we could see strange lands!” said Ebbo. “But come, Friedel, the sun is high, and I locked them all into the castle to make matters safe.”
“May the liberated captive know the name of his deliverers, that he may commend it to the saints?” asked the merchant.
“I am Eberhard, Freiherr von Adlerstein, and this is Freiherr Friedmund, my brother. Farewell, sir.”
“Strange,” muttered the merchant, as he watched the two boys turn down the pass, “strange how like one barbarous name is to another. Eberardo! That was what we called il Tedesco, and, when he once told me his family name, it ended in stino; but all these foreign names sound alike. Let us speed on, lest these accursed peasants should wake, and be beyond the control of the signorino.”
“Ah!” sighed Ebbo, as soon as he had hurried out of reach of the temptation, “small use in being a baron if one is to be no better mounted!”
“Thou art glad to have let that fair creature go free, though,” said Friedel.
“Nay, my mother’s eyes would let me have no rest in keeping him. Otherwise—Talk not to me of gladness, Friedel! Thou shouldst know better. How is one to be a knight with nothing to ride but a beast old enough to be his grandmother?”
“Knighthood of the heart may be content to go afoot,” said Friedel. “Oh, Ebbo, what a brother thou art! How happy the mother will be!”