His
mother's exclamation showed that her son had been wanting to her; and
she looked fuller than ever of bliss when Ebbo gravely stood before
his father, and presented him with the good old sword that he had
sent to his unborn son.
"You are like to use it more than I,--nay, you have used it to some
purpose," said he. "Yet must I keep mine old comrade at least a
little while. Wife, son, sword, should make one feel the same man
again, but it is all too wonderful!"
All that evening, and long after, his hand from time to time sought
the hilt of his sword, as if that touch above all proved to him that
he was again a free noble in his own castle.
The story he told was thus. The swoon in which Heinz had left him
had probably saved his life by checking the gush of blood, and he had
known no more till he found himself in a rough cart among the
corpses. At Schlangenwald's castle he had been found still
breathing, and had been flung into a dungeon, where he lay
unattended, for how long he never knew, since all the early part of
the time was lost in the clouds of fever.
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