It was Ekkehard,--and the place where he knelt, was the "Wildkirchlein."
He had reached the valley in safety on his stone horse, after Praxedis had freed him. The next morning found him weary and exhausted at the door of old Moengal, at Radolfszell.
"Oh, that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people and go from them!" said he in the words of the prophet, after he had told the parish-priest all that had happened to him.
Then, the old man pointed over towards the Säntis. "Thou art right," said Moengal. "The holy Gallus did the same. 'Into the wilderness will I go, and there shall I wait for Him, who will restore my soul's health.' Perhaps he would never have become a saint, if he had thought and acted differently. Try to conquer thy grief. When the eagle feels sick, and his eyes grow dim, then he rises heavenwards, as far as his wings will carry him. The nearness of the sun gives a new youth. Do thou the same. I know a bonny nook for thee to recover thy health in."
He then described the road to Ekkehard.
"Thou wilt find a man up there," continued he, "who has not seen much of the world for the last twenty years. His name is Gottshalk. Give him my greeting, and let us hope that God has forgiven him his trespasses."
The parish-priest did not say for what sin his old friend was doing penance up there. He had once been sent to Italy, when times were bad, to buy corn. When he came to Verona, he was well received by the quarrelsome bishop Ratherius, and he held his devotions in the venerable cathedral, where the remains of St. Anastasia lay unlocked in a golden shrine; and the church was deserted, and the Devil tempted Gottshalk to take a keepsake to Germany. So, he took as much of the saint's body as he could carry away under his habit; an arm, a foot and some spine-bones, and secretly departed with his spoil. But from that hour he had lost his inward peace. By day and night, the saint appeared to him in her torn and mutilated condition; walking with crutches and demanding back her arm and her foot. Over mountains and Alpine glens she followed him, and threateningly approached him even on the threshold of his own cloister. Then he threw away the stolen limbs, and fled half maddened to the heights of the Säntis; there, to expiate his heavy sin in the hermit's cell which he erected for himself.
For two days old Moengal secreted his young friend in his cell, and then he rowed him across the lake during the night-time. "Don't go back to thy convent," said he when they were about to part company, "lest their tittle-tattle should be the ruin of thee. Jeers and derision are worse than punishment. 'Tis true that thou deservest some lecturing; but that must be done for thee, by the fresh mountain-breezes, which are better entitled to set thee right again, than thy fellow-monks."
A spear and a wolf's skin were his parting gifts to Ekkehard.
Shyly and stealthily he continued his journey at night-time, and it was with bitterness of heart that like a stranger he passed his monastery, which still bore visible traces of the ravages of the Huns. Some windows were lighted up, and seemed to beckon to him; but he only hurried onwards the quicker. The Abbot's cell in the mountains, he also passed by, without entering. He did not wish to be recognized by anyone belonging to the monastery.