"Your Gods?" said Ekkehard, "who are your Gods?"
"That you ought to know best, for you have driven them away, and banished them into the depths of the lake. In the floods below, everything has been buried. The ancient rights and the ancient Gods! We can see them no more, and know but the places where our fathers have worshipped them, before the Franks and the cowl-bearing men had come. But when the winds are shaking the tops of yonder oak-tree, you may hear their wailing voices in the air; and on consecrated nights, there is a moaning and roaring in the forest, and a shining of lights; whilst serpents are winding themselves round the stems of the trees; and over the mountains you hear a rustling of wings, of despairing spirits, that have come to look at their ancient home."
Ekkehard crossed himself.
"I tell it thus as I know it," continued the old woman. "I do not wish to offend the Saviour, but he has come as a stranger into the land. You serve him in a foreign tongue, which we cannot understand. If he had sprung up from our own ground, then we might talk to him, and should be his most faithful worshippers, and maybe things would then fare better in Allemannia."
"Woman!" cried Ekkehard wrathfully, "we will have thee burned ..."
"If it be written in your books that trees grow up, to burn old woman with, very well. I have lived long enough. The lightning has lately paid a visit to the woman of the wood,"--pointing to a dark stripe on the wall,--"the lightning has spared the old woman."
After this she cowered down before the hearth, and remained there motionless like a statue. The flickering coals threw a fitful, varying light on her wrinkled face.
"Tis well," said Ekkehard as he left the chamber. Audifax was very glad when he could see the blue sky again over his head. "There they sat together," said he pointing upwards.
"I will go and look at it, whilst thou goest back to the Hohentwiel, and sendest over two men with hatchets. And tell Otfried the deacon of Singen to come and bring his stole and mass-book with him."
Audifax bounded away, whilst Ekkehard went up to the top of the Hohenkrähen.