"Instantly, Your Excellency."
Egon received the papers, took his leave, and hastened to his quarters, where he ordered his horse saddled at once. Five minutes later saw him on his way.
CHAPTER LVI.
The Capellenberg, of Chapel Mountain, which had probably borne originally another name, but was so called by the Germans because it bore a chapel, was only a small height, partly covered with forests. It was the last outrunner of the mountains at this side, and formed here the border of the German troops. A company of the Seventh Regiment was stationed in the farms which lay scattered over its side. Their position was rightly considered very hard and most dangerous.
The chapel lay desolate and lonely, half buried in the deep snow. Priests and choir had long since fled, and the little edifice bore traces of destruction everywhere, for hot battles had been fought around this height. Walls and roof still stood intact, but a part of the ceiling had fallen, and the wind whistled through the shattered windows. Behind it rose the forest, clad in ice and snow, and all this lay in the uncertain light of the half-moon which was now visible in the heavily clouded sky, shedding her ghostly light upon the surroundings, only to again quickly disappear.
It was an icy winter night, as at that time at Rodeck, and, as then, the horizon was lit up by a dark reddish glow; but no aurora beamed here in gorgeous beauty; the glow which flared here in the north bore witness of battles fought all around; it had its origin in burning villages and farms; the awful signs of the flame of war, which were reflected in the skies.
A lonely sentinel stood here with gun on shoulder--Hartmut von Falkenried.
His eyes hung on the flaming horizon, the dark masses of cloud shone there blood-red, and from time to time a shower of fiery sparks burst from the seething smoke which rested over the earth.
Glow and flame there; ice and night here! The cold, which had been intense already during the day, now grew to the breath of ice, in which all life seemed to become stark, and which chilled the lonely sentinel to the very marrow.
Although he was not the only one who had to do this hard duty, his comrades had not been spoiled by years of life in the Orient and the balmy air of Sicily. Hartmut had not lived through a northern winter since his boyhood; this cold grew disastrous to him, for it seemed to change the blood in his veins into ice.