“Never, Friedel! I will never see her so used again. I released this man solely to show that she is to rule here.—Yes, I know all about freebooting being a deadly sin, and moreover that it will bring the League about our ears; and it was a cowardly trick of Jobst to put those branches in the stream. Did I not go over it last night till my brain was dizzy? But still, it is but living and dying like our fathers, and I hate tameness or dullness, and it is like a fool to go back from what one has once begun.”
“No; it is like a brave man, when one has begun wrong,” said Friedel.
“But then I thought of the grandame triumphing over the gentle mother—and I know the mother wept over her beads half the night. She shall find she has had her own way for once this morning.”
Friedel was silent for a few moments, then said, “Let me tell thee what I saw yesterday, Ebbo.”
“So,” answered the other brother.
“I liked not to vex my mother by my tidings, so I climbed up to the tarn. There is something always healing in that spot, is it not so, Ebbo? When the grandmother has been raving” (hitherto Friedel’s worst grievance) “it is like getting up nearer the quiet sky in the stillness there, when the sky seems to have come down into the deep blue water, and all is so still, so wondrous still and calm. I wonder if, when we see the great Dome Kirk itself, it will give one’s spirit wings, as does the gazing up from the Ptarmigan’s Pool.”
“Thou minnesinger, was it the blue sky thou hadst to tell me of?”
“No, brother, it was ere I reached it that I saw this sight. I had scaled the peak where grows the stunted rowan, and I sat down to look down on the other side of the gorge. It was clear where I sat, but the ravine was filled with clouds, and upon them—”
“The shape of the blessed Friedmund, thy patron?”
“Our patron,” said Friedel; “I saw him, a giant form in gown and hood, traced in grey shadow upon the dazzling white cloud; and oh, Ebbo! he was struggling with a thinner, darker, wilder shape bearing a club. He strove to withhold it; his gestures threatened and warned! I watched like one spell-bound, for it was to me as the guardian spirit of our race striving for thee with the enemy.”