Felix cœli porta!”
And the stream as it purled through the Annathal, the birds as they answered the talking pines, the wind as it crooned over the green sea of the Thuringerwald,—all swelled the echoing chorus,—
“Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen!”
Graf Ludwig strove to penetrate Witch Martha’s secret when he thanked her for the service done his child. Would she not come to Goslar? Would she not forsake her uncanny art and be a nurse and governess to the little Gräfin? She had only refusals. She would tell nothing of her life-story,—which Ludwig guessed must have been a strange one,—she would not quit the forest. She only accepted a little gold “that she might not vex him.”
“The greenwood covers many a secret, and let it cover mine,” was her answer.
So she kissed Maid Agnes twice, and with Zodok and Zebek a-croaking on her shoulders vanished under the trees. Harun gave one regretful howl above a new grave, and trotted after. Nor did Agnes ever see the witch again.
As for Ulrich and Franz, Michael and Clement, they solemnly swore to go immediately to Rome and perform any penance commanded by the Holy Father, and the Graf sent them on their way (first smiting off their thumbs to keep them from temptation); but whether they ended in heaven or elsewhere is known best by the recording angel. However, Freiherr Gustav, whom Ludwig left in the Wartburg, warned perchance by Martha, pounced on Fritz the Masterless full soon, and hanged him and Dame Gerda high—thus proving that ravens bear ill luck, and also leaving two less sinners in an overwicked world.
As for Maid Agnes,—“Maid” no more, but “The Most Gracious Gräfin,”—she became a great lady in the North Country. Still, though she grew worldly-wise, stately, and the wife of a very duke, every year she went on pilgrimage to a certain shrine near Eisenach. And if any one marvelled at her piety, her daughters always said:—
“Our mother came rightly by her holiness; her grandfather was a true-born saint.”
Thus, for many years, until the pillage and sack of the Peasants’ War, the good folk of Thuringia went on pilgrimage to the little shrine under the talking tree in the Dragon’s Dale, and to their prayers failed not to add, “Sancte Hieronyme Eisenachæ, ora pro nobis.”