"This, my father sends you," said she, "because you have preached so finely, and have spoken well of our mountains,--and if anybody should try to harm you, you are to remember that the Ebenalp is near."
She threw some handsful of hazel-nuts into the pail. "These, I have gathered for you," added she, "and if you like them, I know where to find more."
Before Ekkehard could offer his thanks, she had disappeared in the subterranean passage.
"Dark-brown are the hazel-nuts,
And brown like they, am I
And he who would my lover be,
Must be the same as I!"
she sang archly, whilst going away.
A melancholy smile rose to Ekkehard's lips.
The tempest in his heart had not yet been quite appeased. Faint murmurs were yet reverberating within; like the thunderclaps of an Alpine storm, which are repeated by innumerable echoes from the mountains.
A huge, flat piece of rock had fallen down beside his cavern. Melting snow had undermined it in the spring. It resembled a grave-stone, and he christened it inwardly, the grave of his love. There he often sat. Sometimes, he fancied the Duchess and himself lying under it; sleeping the calm sleep of the dead; and he sat down on it, and looked over the pine-clad mountains far away towards the Bodensee,--dreaming. It was not well that he could see the lake from his cell, as the sight called up continual painful recollections. Often, his heart was brimful with bitter, angry pain; often again he would strain his eyes in the direction of the Untersee of an evening, and whisper soft messages to the passing winds. For whom were they meant?
His dreams at night were generally wild and confused. He would find himself in the castle-chapel, and the everlasting lamp was rocking over the Duchess's head as it did then; but when he rushed towards her, she had the face of the woman of the wood, and grinned at him scoffingly. When he awoke from his uneasy slumbers in the early morning, his heart would often beat wildly, and the words of Dame Hadwig, "oh, schoolmaster, why didst thou not become a warrior?" persecuted him, till the sun had risen high in the sky, or the appearance of Benedicta would banish them.
Often again, he would throw himself down on the short, soft grass on the slope, and ponder over the last months of his life. In the pure, keen Alpine air, figures and events assumed clearer and more objective outlines before his inward eye, and he was tormented by the thought that he had behaved shyly and foolishly, and had not even succeeded in fulfilling his task by telling a story like Praxedis and Master Spazzo.