"
"Why should I baulk him? Why should I deny my office to the dying?"
said Norbert.
"Alas! holy father, thou art new to this country, and know'st not
these men of blood! It is a snare to make the convent ransom thee,
if not worse. The Freiherrinn is a fiend for malice, and the
Freiherr is excommunicate."
"I know it, my son," said Norbert; "but wherefore should their child
perish unassoilzied?"
"Art coming, priest?" shouted Eberhard, from his stand at the mouth
of the cave.
And, as Norbert at once appeared with the pyx and other appliances
that he had gone to fetch, the Freiherr held out his hand with an
offer to "carry his gear for him;" and, when the monk refused, with
an inward shudder at entrusting a sacred charge to such unhallowed
hands, replied, "You will have work enow for both hands ere the
castle is reached."
But Father Norbert was by birth a sturdy Switzer, and thought little
of these Swabian Alps; and he climbed after his guide through the
most rugged passages of Eberhard's shortest and most perpendicular
cut without a moment's hesitation, and with agility worthy of a
chamois.
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