But the promise that Andreas would not part from him lingered in Dickon's ears, and uplifted his heart as he waited reverentially to hear again the gentle, convinced, and loving accents of the German youth.
At last Andreas spoke—as if he had not paused, and yet with a strange new wailing weakness in his voice:—
"And if the saints willed, thus might we win our way back to Augsburg. But that may never be, for I shall die here, here where I lie, and thou wilt turn to wild beast or robber when I am gone, and brave, goodly Augsburg will press on, leading all men, with never a thought of poor little me, dead here in the forest."
Dickon would have spoken in homely protest, but the change on his friend's face scared him to dumbness. Not even the flame-light could make it ruddy now. In the eyes there was a dimmed, far-away look which chilled Dickon's blood.
"Aye, when I lie forgotten here,"—the thin, saddened voice went on in increasing slowness,—"there the old gray walls and tiled gables will be, with the storks making their nests in the spring, and the convent boys singing at daybreak in the streets, and the good housewives stopping in the market-place on their way home from mass, and the smell of new grass and blossoms in the air ... and when Christmas comes I shall not know it ... these eyes shall not look again on the Tannenbaum. Woe! woe!"
"Is that the tree?" asked Dickon, some impulse to words and action stirring vaguely in his frightened heart.
"Aye," groaned Andreas, "the beautiful tree with candles blazing on its branches and shining gifts." He followed on in a weak murmuring of foreign words, seemingly without meaning.
Dickon bent one intent, long glance upon this childish, waxen face before him. Then he plucked a burning bough from the fire, and without a word pushed the bushes aside and plunged into the outer darkness of the forest.
After some time he returned, bearing an armful of rushes. He warmed himself for a moment, and then, seated so that Andreas might not observe his work, began with his knife to cut these down into lengths of a span, and to strip off all but a winding rim of their outer cover.
Then he hacked with his knife into the frozen boar's carcass. Cutting out portions of white, hard fat, he melted these a little at the fire, and then rolled them thinly between his palms about the trimmed rushes. This done, he flayed off a part of the boar's skin, scorched off the bristles, rubbed it all with ashes, and spreading it over his sallet, sliced it into a rude semblance of fine thongs.