During this conversation, Audifax had remained timidly standing at the door, but when the raven now made its way towards him, he was afraid and ran up to Ekkehard; from thence he saw the stone by the hearth, and walked up to it; for the fear even of twenty ravens would not have prevented him from examining a curious stone. Lifting the garment which was spread over it, he beheld some strange, weather-beaten figures carved on it.
At that moment Ekkehard's eye fell also on the stone. It was a Roman altar, and had doubtless been erected on those heights by cohorts, who at the command of their Emperor had left their camp in luxurious Asia, for the inhospitable shores of the Bodensee. A youth, in a flowing mantle and with Phrygian cap, was kneeling on a prostrate bull,--the Persian God of light, Mithras; who gave new hope and strength to the fast sinking faith of the Romans.
An inscription was nowhere visible. For a considerable time Ekkehard stood examining it; for with the exception of a golden coin bearing the head of Vespasian, which had been found in the moor at Rapperswyl, by some dependants of the monastery, and some carved stones among the church treasures, his eye had never before beheld any carving of the olden times; but from the shape and look of the thing, he guessed at its being some silent witness of a bygone world.
"Whence comes the stone?" asked he.
"I have been questioned more than enough now," defiantly said the old woman. "Find an answer for yourself."
The stone might have said a good deal for itself, if stones were gifted with speech, for a goodly piece of history often clings to such old and weather-beaten ruins. What do they teach us? That the races of men, come and go like the leaves; that spring produces and autumn destroys, and that all their thinkings and doings, last but a short span of time. After them, there come others, talking in other tongues and creating other forms. That which was holy before, is then pulled down and despised, and that which was condemned, becomes holy in its place. New Gods mount the throne,--and it is well if their altars are not erected on the bodies of too many victims....
Ekkehard saw another meaning in the stone's being in the hut of the woman of the wood.
"You worship that man on the bull!" he cried vehemently. The old woman took up a stick standing by the fire-place, and with a knife made two notches in it. "Tis the second insult you have offered me," she said hoarsely. "What have we to do with yonder stone image?"
"Then speak out. How is it that the stone comes to be here?"
"Because we took pity on it," replied she. "You, who wear the tonsure and monk's habit, probably will not understand that. The stone stood outside, on yonder projecting rock, which must have been a consecrated spot, on which many have knelt probably, in the olden times. But in the present days nobody heeded it. The people here about, dried their crab-apples, or split their wood on it; just as it suited them; and the cruel rain has been washing away the figures. 'The sight of the stone grieves me,' said my mother one day. It was once something holy, but the bones of those, who have known and worshipped the man on it, have long been bleached white,--and the man in the flowing mantle looks as if he were freezing with the cold. So we took it up, and placed it beside the hearth, and it has never harmed us as yet. We know how the old Gods feel, when their altars are shattered; for ours also have been dethroned. You need not begrudge its rest to the old stone."