Her
heart was very sad, and the omen of the burning wheel so continually
haunted her that even in her sleep that night she saw its brief
course repeated, beheld its rapid fall and extinction, and then
tracked the course of the sparks that darted from it, one rising and
gleaming high in air till it shone like a star, another pursuing a
fitful and irregular, but still bright course amid the dry grass on
the hillside, just as she had indeed watched some of the sparks on
that night, minding her of the words of the Allhallow-tide legend:
"Fulgebunt justi et tanquam scintillae in arundinete discurrent"--a
sentence which remained with her when awake, and led her to seek it
out in her Latin Bible in the morning.
Reluctantly had she gone down to the noontide meal, feeling, though
her husband and father were far less of guardians than they should
have been, yet that there was absolute rest, peace, and protection in
their presence compared with what it was to be alone with Freiherrinn
Kunigunde and her rude women without them. A few sneers on her
daintiness and uselessness had led her to make an offer of assisting
in the grand chopping of sausage meat and preparation of winter
stores, and she had been answered with contempt that my young lord
would not have her soil her delicate hands, when one of the maids who
had been sent to fetch beer from the cellar came back with startled
looks, and the exclamation, "There is the Schneiderlein riding up the
Eagle's Ladder upon Freiherr Ebbo's white mare!"
All the women sprang up together, and rushed to the window, whence
they could indeed recognize both man and horse; and presently it
became plain that both were stained with blood, weary, and spent;
indeed, nothing but extreme exhaustion would have induced the man-at-
arms to trust the tired, stumbling horse up such a perilous path.
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