They threaded the forest, not in the circling blind mazes which Agnes had followed when alone, but in the straight path which Harun found for them, and it was not long before they heard the brooklet brawling, and Agnes clapped her hands.
“The hut, the stream, and the Dragon’s Dale! The dear Dragon’s Dale!”
But they might not tarry, and Martha saw with joy that the red banner of Ulrich still was flying above the Wartburg.
“Not too late!”
Again they plunged into the greenwood, but now by familiar paths. Agnes’s feet were heavy now, but she did not falter. Presently there was a clatter of armour, and tall men-at-arms in plated hauberks stood across their path,—an outpost of the besiegers.
“Who comes!”
But when Witch Martha declared who her companion might be, and when the soldiers saw that the maid was indeed of their own master’s face and eyes, and that her dress, though torn, was that of a great lady, the dapper Freiherr, their young chief, swept his plumed cap across his knees in knightly homage, and the shout flew up the slopes of the Wartburg, through all the assailants’ camp:—
“Found! found! found! the little lady, the Gräfin!”
Then how Graf Ludwig turned from the attack, with his feet almost in the castle court, there is no need to tell.