“So, thou brokest the mystic branch; thy heart failed thee.”
“Oh, it should not fail me again.”
“Yet a means? Name it; I care not what—I will obey.”
“Thou shalt sign a solemn pledge.”
“Surely, Bertram, surely.”
The white knight took a quivering paper, from his very bosom, as it seemed; dipped a reed in an ink horn at his side, and offered both to the young knight.
As he was about to take them his hand trembled—not from fear, but because of a soft hymn which welled forth from the cathedral—a hymn of praise, sung by reverend old monks and faithful nuns.
“What! dost thou again tremble?”
“’Tis the hymn my mother often sang to me in the days of my innocent childhood. Hark, again!”