"
"Prove! He could not choose but die with three such wounds, as the
old ruffian knows. I shall bless the day, Sir Friedmund, when I see
you or your brother give back those strokes! A heavy reckoning be
his."
"We all deem that line only meant to cross our designs," said
Friedel. "Yet, Heinz, I would I knew how to find out what passed
when thou wast gone. Is there no servant at the inn--no retainer of
Schlangenwald that aught could be learnt from?"
"By St. Gertrude," roughly answered the Schneiderlein, "if you cannot
be satisfied with the oath of a man like me, who would have given his
life to save your father, I know not what will please you."
Friedel, with his wonted good-nature, set himself to pacify the
warrior with assurances of his trust; yet while Ebbo plunged more
eagerly into plans for the bridge-building, Friedel drew more and
more into his old world of musings; and many a summer afternoon was
spent by him at the Ptarmigan's Mere, in deep communings with
himself, as one revolving a purpose.
Christina could not but observe, with a strange sense of foreboding,
that, while one son was more than ever in the lonely mountain
heights, the other was far more at the base.
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