"Where is she?" asked the priest.
"About a mile from here—I will take you there." The Baron of Stramen seemed not to listen, for he sat motionless; but his son manifested much interest.
"Shall I go with you?" he said to the missionary.
"No, my child, remain with your father."
Albert de Hers had started up at the peasant's announcement, and followed Father Omehr out of the apartment.
"Permit me," he said, "to accompany you; I feel that the call is intended for me too. This ring," he continued, holding up his finger, "was given me in my youth by Rodolph of Suabia; in a moment of folly and sin, I parted with it. After an interval of more than twenty years, it was restored to Rodolph by this Bertha, without a word of explanation. He gave it to me the night before his death"—here the baron paused an instant—"and informed me how and from whom he had received it. I resolved to seek out the woman on my return; for if she be the Bertha to whom I gave this ring, even in her madness she may throw light upon an event hitherto involved in mystery."
"You mean the death of Sir Sandrit's brother?"
"Yes."
"I see no reason to oppose your wish," said the missionary; "perhaps the mercy of God may choose to reveal what we vainly have endeavored to discover."
It was not known how Bertha had escaped from the castle on the fatal night when it was fired and its inmates put to the sword. Her insanity might have shielded her; or she might have availed herself of the confusion and darkness to elude observation, or extricated herself by some secret passage. A peasant thought he had seen her, by moonlight, walking along the moat of the castle, some days after the hostile army had disappeared; but his account was discredited until she appeared by daylight to the surviving vassals of Stramen, when they emerged from the forest in which they had taken refuge. At the time of the return of the soldiers of Stramen, she was much thinner and walked with difficulty, rarely issuing from her retreat in the ravine, to which she had again retired. On the morning of Margaret's funeral she could be seen, pale and haggard, tottering toward the grave-yard. The simple peasants recoiled before the ghastly figure, which, tall and trembling, with a black gown and death-white face, passed among them like a spectre. Before she reached the church she fell senseless to the ground. The humanity of those who observed her triumphed over their fears, and they bore her to a newly finished house hard by.