"Are you afoot?"
"The Baron von Brunfels, wishing me speed, gave me a horse, to which I am only now becoming accustomed. I left it at the village below in care of a soldier, it being my intention to travel to-night to the valley of the Brodenbach, and rest at the castle of Ehrenburg."
"Ehrenburg can wait for its news of the Emperor. Go, therefore, up the Brodenbach valley as was your first determination, but continue on past the castle until you come to the Frankfort road. Rest then if you must, but know that the sooner you reach Frankfort the better will you please the Baron."
Rodolph called to Steinmetz, who again blindfolded the monk, and accompanied by Emperor and captain the Palmer was set once more outside the walls, and disappeared in the night down the hill towards Alken.
CHAPTER XXXII. "FOR YOUR LOVE I WOULD DEFY FATE."
The Countess Tekla spent the greater portion of her time waiting upon her aunt, who, never having known a true friend in her life before, clung to the girl with a pathetic insistence, unhappy if Tekla was out of her sight. The natural positions of the two seemed reversed; the elder woman leaning dependently on the younger, and looking to her for protection, as a child looks to its mother. When Tekla was busy in the courtyard garden her aunt would sit on the balcony and watch her every movement with a dumb, tender affection that was most touching. The elder rarely spoke, and never smiled except when Tekla looked up to her with a smile on her own pretty lips.
Rodolph often wished the aunt were not quite so much the shadow of the niece, but there was such love between the two women that he never ventured to suggest to Tekla his hope that he might be permitted now and then to enjoy her companionship unshared. He worked with her in the garden, and often said that he expected to make horticulture his occupation when the siege was over, so expert had he become under the charming instruction of his fair teacher.
When winter intervened, and the spring came again, Rodolph jokingly suggested that they should plant grain instead of flowers, as there was still no sign that the Archbishops were becoming tired of their undertaking. The second winter passed, and a second spring found the living line around the castle still intact, thus Rodolph's former jest began to take a grimmer meaning, for provisions were indeed running low, and the two years' supply, which seemed at first almost inexhaustible, was now coming to an end, yet not a pound of wheat or a gallon of wine had succeeded in getting through the cordon drawn by the stubborn Archbishops. Rodolph had counted on a quarrel between the two commanders ere this, but there was no indication of dissension in the opposing camp. The bitter persistence of the siege he laid to the account of the Archbishop of Treves, and in this he was right. There was, however, one grain of consolation in its continuance; so long as the armies of the Archbishops were encircling Thuron, they were out of mischief elsewhere, and the rest of Germany was at peace. Rodolph could not help thinking that if it came to a fight the troops would hardly be as warlike as they had shown themselves two years before, when the siege began, for the sound of revelry came up each night from the camp, and the idle men were industriously drinking their thousand gallons of wine each day, which tended more to hilarity than discipline. Nevertheless, they held tightly to the castle, and there was no relaxing of the lines that surrounded it. On several occasions attempts were made to get through by one or other belonging to the garrison, but in each case without success. The deserters were turned back, the officers refusing even to make prisoners of them.