An old crook-backed woman with a cane came creeping up the hill, coughing.
"Are you bringing my bird, my pearls, my dog?" she cried out to him. "Look—wrong punishes itself. I and no other was your friend Walther, your Hugo."
"God in Heaven!" said Eckbert softly to himself. "In what terrible solitude I have spent my life."
"And Bertha was your sister."
Eckbert fell to the ground.
"Why did she desert me so deceitfully? Otherwise everything would have ended beautifully—her probation-time was already over. She was the daughter of a knight, who had a shepherd bring her up—the daughter of your father."
"Why have I always had a presentiment of these facts?" cried Eckbert.
"Because in your early youth you heard your father tell of them. On his wife's account he could not bring up this daughter himself, for she was the child of another woman."
Eckbert was delirious as he breathed his last; dazed and confused he heard the old woman talking, the dog barking, and the bird repeating its song.