"The Judge!" he murmured, "the Avenger, to avenge all wrongs at last!"
And there was a flash of fierce joy on his face, such as might have gleamed in the eyes of his heathen forefathers, dying in the slaughter of their foes.
But as she saw it, the quiet delight faded from the mother's face, and she said tenderly,—
"Our little wrongs, beloved, what will they seem when we see the nail-prints on His hands and feet?"
"They will not seem little to Him!" replied Bruno sternly.
It was an old controversy between them, and the only one. She had long ceased to carry on her side of it in any way but in silent prayer.
For the wrong was great, and the doing of it as fresh in her memory as ever;—the day when her husband's kinsman, Baron Ivo, had entered their castle and treacherously massacred all who would not acknowledge him to be the rightful lord; had bound Baron Bruno to a pillar, and had him blinded, and then had turned them out with their helpless babe into the frost and snow of the winter night, to wander whither they would, or die.
Many weary months they had roamed up and down through the land, seeking redress, until the babe had died. But the enemy was strong, and it was an age when right could only be held by might. And though many pitied, none ventured to take up the blinded Baron's cause. And so at last they crept back to the old city, and found a dwelling beside a brook in the forest, not far from the city gate, yet in a secret place, where no one need see them. And Bruno made baskets from the osiers, and she sold them.
And the poor sightless eyes were healed, but not the heart.
Again and again she had begun to hope the bitter yearning for vengeance would be softened. Sometimes when his voice faltered as they said the Lord's Prayer; sometimes when his hand quivered in hers as they knelt together by the great cross before the hermit's cave; and especially when, their little Hilda was born, the child of their poverty, the sunbeam of their dark days.