"
"If there were more like you, lady," returned Theurdank, "deadly
feuds would soon be starved out. May I to your son? I have more to
say to him, and I would fain hear his views of the storm."
Christina could not be quite at ease with Theurdank in her son's
room, but she had no choice, and she knew that Heinz was watching on
the turret stair, out of hearing indeed, but as ready to spring as a
cat who sees her young ones in the hand of a child that she only half
trusts.
Ebbo lay eagerly watching for his visitor, who greeted him with the
same almost paternal kindness he had evinced the night before, but
consulted him upon the way from the castle. Ebbo confirmed his
mother's opinion that the path was impracticable so long as the snow
fell, and the wind tossed it in wild drifts.
"We have been caught in snow," he said, "and hard work have we had to
get home! Once indeed, after a bear hunt, we fully thought the
castle stood before us, and lo! it was all a cruel snow mist in that
mocking shape. I was even about to climb our last Eagle's Step, as I
thought, when behold, it proved to be the very brink of the abyss.
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