Behind him came a sunburnt, hardy man, wearing the white mantle and
black fleur-de-lis-pointed cross of the Teutonic Order. A thrill
passed through Ebbo's veins as he beheld the man who to him
represented the murderer of his brother and both his grandfathers,
the cruel oppressor of his father, and the perpetrator of many a more
remote, but equally unforgotten, injury. And in like manner Sir
Dankwart beheld the actual slayer of his father, and the heir of a
long score of deadly retribution. No wonder then that, while the
Emperor spoke a few words of salutation and inquiry, gracious though
not familiar, the two foes scanned one another with a shiver of
mutual repulsing, and a sense that they would fain have fought it out
as in the good old times.
However, Ebbo only beheld a somewhat dull, heavy, honest-looking
visage of about thirty years old, good-nature written in all its flat
German features, and a sort of puzzled wonder in the wide light eyes
that stared fixedly at him, no doubt in amazement that the mighty
huge-limbed Wolfgang could have been actually slain by the
delicately-framed youth, now more colourless than ever in consequence
of the morning's fast.
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