The gentle nursing and the new interests made her improve in health,
so that her father was delighted, and Christina began to hope for a
return home. Sometimes the two girls would take the air, either, on
still days, upon the battlements, where Ermentrude watched the
Debateable Ford, and Christina gazed at the Danube and at Ulm; or
they would find their way to a grassy nook on the mountain-side,
where Christina gathered gentians and saxifrage, trying to teach her
young lady that they were worth looking at, and sighing at the
thought of Master Gottfried's wreath when she met with the asphodel
seed-vessels. Once the quiet mule was brought into requisition; and,
with her brother walking by her, and Sorel and his daughter in
attendance, Ermentrude rode towards the village of Adlerstein. It
was a collection of miserable huts, on a sheltered slope towards the
south, where there was earth enough to grow some wretched rye and
buckwheat, subject to severe toll from the lord of the soil. Perched
on a hollow rock above the slope was a rude little church, over a
cave where a hermit had once lived and died in such odour of sanctity
that, his day happening to coincide with that of St.
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