"Worse luck for me--till now," said Sir Eberhard, whose tones, rather
than his looks, carried perfect conviction of his identity. It was
the old homely accent, and gruff good-humoured voice, but with
something subdued and broken in the tone. His features had grown
like his father's, but he looked much older than ever the hale old
mountaineer had done, or than his real age; so worn and lined was his
face, his skin tanned, his eyelids and temples puckered by burning
sun, his hair and beard white as the inane of his old mare, the proud
Adlerstein port entirely gone. He stooped even more without his
staff than with it; and, when he yielded himself with a sigh of
repose to his wife's tendance, she found that he had not merely the
ordinary hurts of travelling, but that there were old festering scars
on his ankles. "The gyves," he said, as she looked up at him, with
startled, pitying eyes. "Little deemed I that they would ever come
under thy tender hands." As he almost timidly smoothed the braid of
dark hair on her brow--"So they never burnt thee for a witch after
all, little one? I thought my mother would never keep her hands off
thee, and used to fancy I heard the crackling of the flame.
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