"Thou heardst! and didst not cast his insolence in his teeth?" cried Ebbo.

"How could I," laughed Friedel, "when the echo was casting back in my teeth my own shout to thee? I could only laugh with Rudiger."

"The chief delight I could have, next to getting home, would be to lay that fellow Rudiger on his back in the tilt-yard," said Ebbo.

But, as Rudiger was by four years his senior, and very expert, the upshot of these encounters was quite otherwise, and the young gentlemen were disabused of the notion that fighting came by nature, and found that, if they desired success in a serious conflict, they must practise diligently in the city tilt-yard, where young men were trained to arms. The crossbow was the only weapon with which they excelled; and, as shooting was a favourite exercise of the burghers, their proficiency was not as exclusive as had seemed to Ebbo a baronial privilege. Harquebuses were novelties to them, and they despised them as burgher weapons, in spite of Sir Kasimir"s a.s.surance that firearms were a great subject of study and interest to the King of the Romans. The name of this personage was, it may be feared, highly distasteful to the Freiherr von Adlerstein, both as Wildschloss"s model of knightly perfection, and as one who claimed submission from his haughty spirit. When Sir Kasimir spoke to him on the subject of giving his allegiance, he stiffly replied, "Sir, that is a question for ripe consideration."

"It is the question," said Wildschloss, rather more lightly than agreed with the Baron"s dignity, "whether you like to have your castle pulled down about your ears."

"That has never happened yet to Adlerstein!" said Ebbo, proudly.

"No, because since the days of the Hohenstaufen there has been neither rule nor union in the empire. But times are changing fast, my Junker, and within the last ten years forty castles such as yours have been consumed by the Swabian League, as though they were so many walnuts."

"The sh.e.l.l of Adlerstein was too hard for them, though. They never tried."

"And wherefore, friend Eberhard? It was because I represented to the Kaiser and the Graf von Wurtemberg that little profit and no glory would accrue from attacking a crag full of women and babes, and that I, having the honour to be your next heir, should prefer having the castle untouched, and under the peace of the empire, so long as that peace was kept. When you should come to years of discretion, then it would be for you to carry out the intention wherewith your father and grandfather left home."

"Then we have been protected by the peace of the empire all this time?" said Friedel, while Ebbo looked as if the notion were hard of digestion.

"Even so; and, had you not freely and n.o.bly released your Genoese merchant, it had gone hard with Adlerstein."

"Could Adlerstein be taken?" demanded Ebbo triumphantly.

"Your grandmother thought not," said Sir Kasimir, with a shade of irony in his tone. "It would be a troublesome siege; but the League numbers 1,500 horse, and 9,000 foot, and, with Schlangenwald"s concurrence, you would be a.s.suredly starved out."

Ebbo was so much the more stimulated to take his chance, and do nothing on compulsion; but Friedel put in the question to what the oaths would bind them.

"Only to aid the Emperor with sword and counsel in field or Diet, and thereby win fame and honour such as can scarce be gained by carrying prey to yon eagle roost."

"One may preserve one"s independence without robbery," said Ebbo coldly.

"Nay, lad: did you ever hear of a wolf that could live without marauding? Or if he tried, would he get credit for so doing?"

"After all," said Friedel, "does not the present agreement hold till we are of age? I suppose the Swabian League would attempt nothing against minors, unless we break the peace?"

"Probably not; I will do my utmost to give the Freiherr there time to grow beyond his grandmother"s maxims," said Wildschloss. "If Schlangenwald do not meddle in the matter, he may have the next five years to decide whether Adlerstein can hold out against all Germany."

"Freiherr Kasimir von Adlerstein Wildschloss," said Eberhard, turning solemnly on him, "I do you to wit once for all that threats will not serve with me. If I submit, it will be because I am convinced it is right. Otherwise we had rather both be buried in the ruins of our castle, as its last free lords."

"So!" said the provoking kinsman; "such burials look grim when the time comes, but happily it is not coming yet!"

Meantime, as Ebbo said to Friedel, how much might happen-a disruption of the empire, a crusade against the Turks, a war in Italy, some grand means of making the Diet value the sword of a free baron, without chaining him down to gratify the greed of hungry Austria. If only Wildschloss could be shaken off! But he only became constantly more friendly and intrusive, almost paternal. No wonder, when the mother and her uncle made him so welcome, and were so intolerably grateful for his impertinent interference, while even Friedel confessed the reasonableness of his counsels, as if that were not the very sting of them.

He even asked leave to bring his little daughter Thekla from her convent to see the Lady of Adlerstein. She was a pretty, flaxen- haired maiden of five years old, in a round cap, and long narrow frock, with a little cross at the neck. She had never seen any one beyond the walls of the nunnery; and, when her father took her from the lay sister"s arms, and carried her to the gallery, where sat Hausfrau Johanna, in dark green, slashed with cherry colour, Master Gottfried, in sober crimson, with gold medal and chain, Freiherrinn Christina, in silver-broidered black, and the two Junkern stood near in the shining mail in which they were going to the tilt yard, she turned her head in terror, struggled with her scarce known father, and shrieked for Sister Grethel.

"It was all too sheen," she sobbed, in the lay sister"s arms; "she did not want to be in Paradise yet, among the saints! O! take her back! The two bright, holy Michaels would let her go, for indeed she had made but one mistake in her Ave."

Vain was the attempt to make her lift her face from the black serge shoulder where she had hidden it. Sister Grethel coaxed and scolded, Sir Kasimir reproved, the housemother offered comfits, and Christina"s soft voice was worst of all, for the child, probably taking her for Our Lady herself, began to gasp forth a general confession. "I will never do so again! Yes, it was a fib, but Mother Hildegard gave me a bit of marchpane not to tell-" Here the lay sister took strong measures for closing the little mouth, and Christina drew back, recommending that the child should be left gradually to discover their terrestrial nature. Ebbo had looked on with extreme disgust, trying to hurry Friedel, who had delayed to trace some lines for his mother on her broidery pattern. In pa.s.sing the step where Grethel sat with Thekla on her lap, the clank of their armour caused the uplifting of the little flaxen head, and two wide blue eyes looked over Grethel"s shoulder, and met Friedel"s sunny glance. He smiled; she laughed back again. He held out his arms, and, though his hands were gauntleted, she let him lift her up, and curiously smoothed and patted his cheek, as if he had been a strange animal.

"You have no wings," she said. "Are you St. George, or St. Michael?"

"Neither the one nor the other, pretty one. Only your poor cousin Friedel von Adlerstein, and here is Ebbo, my brother."

It was not in Ebbo"s nature not to smile encouragement at the fair little face, with its wistful look. He drew off his glove to caress her silken hair, and for a few minutes she was played with by the two brothers like a newly-invented toy, receiving their attentions with pretty half-frightened graciousness, until Count Rudiger hastened in to summon them, and Friedel placed her on his mother"s knee, where she speedily became perfectly happy, and at ease.

Her extreme delight, when towards evening the Junkern returned, was flattering even to Ebbo; and, when it was time for her to be taken home, she made strong resistance, clinging fast to Christina, with screams and struggles. To the lady"s promise of coming to see her she replied, "Friedel and Ebbo, too," and, receiving no response to this request, she burst out, "Then I won"t come! I am the Freiherrinn Thekla, the heiress of Adlerstein Wildschloss and Felsenbach. I won"t be a nun. I"ll be married! You shall be my husband," and she made a dart at the nearest youth, who happened to be Ebbo.

"Ay, ay, you shall have him. He will come for you, sweetest Fraulein," said the perplexed Grethel, "so only you will come home!

n.o.body will come for you if you are naughty."

"Will you come if I am good?" said the spoilt cloister pet, clinging tight to Ebbo.

"Yes," said her father, as she still resisted, "come back, my child, and one day shall you see Ebbo, and have him for a brother."

Thereat Ebbo shook off the little grasping fingers, almost as if they had belonged to a noxious insect.

"The matron"s coif should succeed the widow"s veil." He might talk with scholarly contempt of the new race of Bohemian impostors; but there was no forgetting that sentence. And in like manner, though his grandmother"s allegation that his mother had been bent on captivating Sir Kasimir in that single interview at Adlerstein, had always seemed to him the most preposterous of all Kunigunde"s forms of outrage, the recollection would recur to him; and he could have found it in his heart to wish that his mother had never heard of the old lady"s designs as to the oubliette. He did most sincerely wish Master Gottfried had never let Wildschloss know of the mode in which his life had been saved. Yet, while it would have seemed to him profane to breathe even to Friedel the true secret of his repugnance to this meddlesome kinsman, it was absolutely impossible to avoid his most distasteful authority and patronage.

And the mother herself was gently, thankfully happy and unsuspicious, basking in the tender home affection of which she had so long been deprived, proud of her sons, and, though anxious as to Ebbo"s decision, with a quiet trust in his foundation of principle, and above all trusting to prayer.

CHAPTER XIV: THE DOUBLE-HEADED EAGLE

One summer evening, when shooting at a bird on a pole was in full exercise in the tilt-yard, the sports were interrupted by a message from the Provost that a harbinger had brought tidings that the Imperial court was within a day"s journey.

All was preparation. Fresh sand had to be strewn on the arena. New tapestry hangings were to deck the galleries, the houses and balconies to be brave with drapery, the fountain in the market-place was to play Rhine wine, all Ulm was astir to do honour to itself and to the Kaisar, and Ebbo stood amid all the bustle, drawing lines in the sand with the stock of his arblast, subject to all that oppressive self-magnification so frequent in early youth, and which made it seem to him as if the Kaisar and the King of the Romans were coming to Ulm with the mere purpose of destroying his independence, and as if the eyes of all Germany were watching for his humiliation.

"See! see!" suddenly exclaimed Friedel; "look! there is something among the tracery of the Dome Kirk Tower. Is it man or bird?"

"Bird, folly! Thou couldst see no bird less than an eagle from hence," said Ebbo. "No doubt they are about to hoist a banner."

"That is not their wont," returned Sir Kasimir.

"I see him," interrupted Ebbo. "Nay, but he is a bold climber! We went up to that stage, close to the balcony, but there"s no footing beyond but crockets and canopies."

"And a bit of rotten scaffold," added Friedel. "Perhaps he is a builder going to examine it! Up higher, higher!"

"A builder!" said Ebbo; "a man with a head and foot like that should be a chamois hunter! Shouldst thou deem it worse than the Red Eyrie, Friedel?"

"Yea, truly! The depth beneath is plainer! There would be no climbing there without-"

"Without what, cousin?" asked Wildschloss.

"Without great cause," said Friedel. "It is fearful! He is like a fly against the sky."

"Beaten again!" muttered Ebbo; "I did think that none of these town- bred fellows could surpa.s.s us when it came to a giddy height! Who can he be?"

"Look! look!" burst out Friedel. "The saints protect him! He is on that narrowest topmost ledge-measuring; his heel is over the parapet-half his foot!"

"Holding on by the rotten scaffold pole! St. Barbara be his speed; but he is a brave man!" shouted Ebbo. "Oh! the pole has broken."