"No, on my life!" answered the Baron of Eppenfeld. "Nay more, I never intended to do it. I would have seized them, and kept them in some secret place, to bring them forth when the time served. But--"
"Have you the bond?" asked the voice.
"Two days ago, I could have said Yes," was the Baron's answer; "but they have sacked and razed my castle, and all the papers--for there were letters many--have either been taken or burnt."
"Now, speak the truth," said the Black Rider; "Who has the papers?"
"Count Frederick of Leiningen had them," answered the Baron; "but, doubtless, he gave them to his worthy and right noble friend of Ehrenstein."
"What became of the child and the mother?" asked the voice again.
"I cannot tell," replied the captive. "They had received timely notice, it would seem, of my errand, and had fled ere I reached Ulm; but I have heard that both died of the fever at Regensburg, not a year after. It is true, too; for those who told me knew what they said. So I swore to the Count that they were dead; but because I could bring no one to prove that they perished in the Danube, he would not pay the rest, and I kept the bond."
"Who read to you the Count's letters, and wrote your answers," inquired his interrogator; "for you are no clerk yourself?"
"A shaveling--a priest I had with me then," said the Baron. "He had fled to me from Würtzburg, where he had killed a man in a fray about a woman; but he is dead now, the good clerk. He drank half a hogshead of red wine in a week, which made him so sleepy he never woke again."
"No more of him," cried the voice sternly. "So the mother and the child died of the fever. Now, speak; Who were they?"