“Pfui, Friedel; what boots heart without spur? I am sick of being mewed up here within these walls of rock! No sport, not even with falling on a traveller. I am worse off than ever were my forefathers!”
“But how is it? I cannot understand,” asked Friedel. “What has changed thy mind?”
“Thou, and the mother, and, more than all, the grandame. Listen, Friedel: when thou camest up, in all the whirl of eagerness and glad preparation, with thy grave face and murmur that Jobst had put forked stakes in the stream, it was past man’s endurance to be baulked of the fray. Thou hast forgotten what I said to thee then, good Friedel?”
“Long since. No doubt I thrust in vexatiously.”
“Not so,” said Ebbo; “and I saw thou hadst reason, for the stakes were most maliciously planted, with long branches hid by the current; but the fellows were showing fight, and I could not stay to think then, or I should have seemed to fear them! I can tell you we made them run! But I never meant the grandmother to put yon poor fellow in the dungeon, and use him worse than a dog. I wot that he was my captive, and none of hers. And then came the mother; and oh, Friedel, she looked as if I were slaying her when she saw the spoil; and, ere I had made her see right and reason, the old lady came swooping down in full malice and spite, and actually came to blows. She struck the motherling—struck her on the face, Friedel!”
“I fear me it has so been before,” said Friedel, sadly.
“Never will it be so again,” said Ebbo, standing still. “I took the old hag by the hands, and told her she had ruled long enough! My father’s wife is as good a lady of the castle as my grandfather’s, and I myself am lord thereof; and, since my Lady Kunigunde chooses to cross me and beat my mother about this capture, why she has seen the last of it, and may learn who is master, and who is mistress!”
“Oh, Ebbo! I would I had seen it! But was not she outrageous? Was not the mother shrinking and ready to give back all her claims at once?”
“Perhaps she would have been, but just then she found thou wast not with me, and I found thou wast not with her, and we thought of nought else. But thou must stand by me, Friedel, and help to keep the grandmother in her place, and the mother in hers.”
“If the mother will be kept,” said Friedel. “I fear me she will only plead to be left to the grandame’s treatment, as before.”