“The saint will rage,” objected Michael.
“If your wisdom knows a better salve against the little pains of hanging, I am listening,” laughed Clement, dryly. Whereat Ulrich leaped up with a jangle of armour.
“Priest Clement has the only sense. Be Jerome saint or devil, he must not keep the maid. Out, every man and lad; arm heavily, and away to the Dragon’s Dale!”
Therefore it befell that an hour later, just as the sun was scattering the last mists of the morning, the Baron led out his force,—an hundred odd of as hardened sinners as ever put on harness. Nevertheless it took all his oaths, and the well-grounded fears of a swift voyage to a nether country, to make the file advance when they began to enter the charmed region around the Dragon’s Dale.
When they reached the cross where burgomaster Gottfred had been stricken, even Michael the Breaker wished to halt and pray. Ulrich and Clement walked behind with their lances to prod on the laggards. They reached the mouth of the Dragon’s Dale, and every man stood irresolute, nigh convinced that the first wight inside the ravine would be frozen into a black stone in a twinkling. Yet as they scuffled and shrank, lo! straight out from the wall of rock came running the saint himself, his white hair spread like a lion’s mane, wild fire in his eyes, his hands upraised now in prayer, now in cursings.
“In the name of the Lord Christ,—where? where?”
“Where, what?” demanded Ulrich, trembling, but not so much as before; there was nothing awesome in the hermit now.
“The maid! Maid Agnes, the Graf’s daughter? She has vanished. You have stolen her. Oh! may the curse of God light swift on you!”
He was nigh crazed, and a mere madman was not very terrifying. So they plucked up courage, and stood their ground.
“Hark you, greybeard,” warned the Baron, roughly; “it is for the wench we are come ourselves. Do you think we would rout you out of your accursed den without fair cause? The maid we will have, or by the Trinity,—” he broke off, the threat unfinished, and glared on the hermit, who appeared utterly unstrung. For an instant he seemed only the shambling dotard.