The mellow sunlight fell through the window upon old Ursela, as she sat in the warmth with her distaff in her hands while Otto lay close to her feet upon a bear skin, silently thinking over the strange story of a brave knight and a fiery dragon that she had just told him. Suddenly Ursela broke the silence.
“Little one,” said she, “thou art wondrously like thy own dear mother; didst ever hear how she died?”
“Nay,” said Otto, “but tell me, Ursela, how it was.”
“Tis strange,” said the old woman, “that no one should have told thee in all this time.” And then, in her own fashion she related to him the story of how his father had set forth upon that expedition in spite of all that Otto’s mother had said, beseeching him to abide at home; how he had been foully wounded, and how the poor lady had died from her fright and grief.
Otto listened with eyes that grew wider and wider, though not all with wonder; he no longer lay upon the bear skin, but sat up with his hands clasped. For a moment or two after the old woman had ended her story, he sat staring silently at her. Then he cried out, in a sharp voice, “And is this truth that you tell me, Ursela? and did my father seek to rob the towns people of their goods?”
Old Ursela laughed. “Aye,” said she, “that he did and many times. Ah! me, those days are all gone now.” And she fetched a deep sigh. “Then we lived in plenty and had both silks and linens and velvets besides in the store closets and were able to buy good wines and live in plenty upon the best. Now we dress in frieze and live upon what we can get, and sometimes that is little enough, with nothing better than sour beer to drink. But there is one comfort in it all, and that is that our good Baron paid back the score he owed the Trutz-Drachen people not only for that, but for all that they had done from the very first.”
Thereupon she went on to tell Otto how Baron Conrad had fulfilled the pledge of revenge that he had made Abbot Otto, how he had watched day after day until one time he had caught the Trutz-Drachen folk, with Baron Frederick at their head, in a narrow defile back of the Kaiserburg; of the fierce fight that was there fought; of how the Roderburgs at last fled, leaving Baron Frederick behind them wounded; of how he had kneeled before the Baron Conrad, asking for mercy, and of how Baron Conrad had answered, “Aye, thou shalt have such mercy as thou deservest,” and had therewith raised his great two-handed sword and laid his kneeling enemy dead at one blow.
Poor little Otto had never dreamed that such cruelty and wickedness could be. He listened to the old woman’s story with gaping horror, and when the last came and she told him, with a smack of her lips, how his father had killed his enemy with his own hand, he gave a gasping cry and sprang to his feet. Just then the door at the other end of the chamber was noisily opened, and Baron Conrad himself strode into the room. Otto turned his head, and seeing who it was, gave another cry, loud and quavering, and ran to his father and caught him by the hand.
“Oh, father!” he cried, “oh, father! Is it true that thou hast killed a man with thy own hand?”
“Aye,” said the Baron, grimly, “it is true enough, and I think me I have killed many more than one. But what of that, Otto? Thou must get out of those foolish notions that the old monks have taught thee. Here in the world it is different from what it is at St. Michaelsburg; here a man must either slay or be slain.”