lonely church, hearing the various sounds without, and imagining that her father had forgotten her, and that he and all the rest were drinking, and then what would become of her? Why had she quitted old Ursel's protection?
Hours of waiting and nameless alarm must have passed, for the sun was waxing low, when at length she heard steps coming up the hermit's cell, and a head rose above the pavement which she recognized with a wild throb of joy, but, repressing her sense of gladness, she only exclaimed, 'Oh, where is my father!'
'I have sent him to the toll at the Gemsbock's Pass,' replied Sir Eberhard, who had by this time come up the stairs, followed by Brother Peter and the two lay assistants. Then, as Christina turned on him her startled, terrified eyes in dismay and reproach for such thoughtlessness, he came towards her, and, bending his head and opening his hand, he showed on his palm two gold rings. 'There, little one,' he said; 'now shalt thou never again shut me out.'
Her senses grew dizzy. 'Sir,' she faintly said, 'this is no place to delude a poor maiden.'
'I delude thee not. The brother here waits to wed us.'
'Impossible! A burgher maid is not for such as you.'
'None but a burgher maid will I wed,' returned Sir Eberhard, with all the settled resolution of habits of command. 'See, Christina, thou art sweeter and better than any lady in the land; thou canst make me what she-- the blessed one who lies there--would have me. I love thee as never knight loved lady. I love thee so that I have not spoken a word to offend thee when my heart was bursting; and'--as he saw her irrepressible tears--'I think thou lovest me a little.'
'Ah!' she gasped with a sob, 'let me go.'
'Thou canst not go home; there is none here fit to take charge of thee. Or if there were, I would slay him rather than let thee go. No, not so,' he said, as he saw how little those words served his cause; 'but without thee I were a mad and desperate man. Christina, I will not answer for myself if thou dost not leave this place my wedded wife.'
'Oh!' implored Christina, 'if you would only betroth me, and woo me like an honourable maiden from my home at Ulm!'
'Betroth thee, ay, and wed thee at once,' replied Eberhard, who, all along, even while his words were most pleading, had worn a look and manner of determined authority and strength, good-natured indeed, but resolved. 'I am not going to miss my opportunity, or baulk the friar.'
The friar, who had meantime been making a few needful arrangements for the ceremony, advanced towards them. He was a good-humoured, easy-going man, who came prepared to do any office that came in his way on such festival days at the villages round; and peasant marriages at such times were not uncommon. But something now staggered him, and he said anxiously -
'This maiden looks convent-bred! Herr Reiter, pardon me; but if this be the breaking of a cloister, I can have none of it.'
'No such thing,' said Eberhard; 'she is town-bred, that is all.'
'You would swear to it, on the holy mass yonder, both of you?' said the friar, still suspiciously.
'Yea,' replied Eberhard, 'and so dost thou, Christina.'
This was the time if ever to struggle against her destiny. The friar would probably have listened to her if she had made any vehement opposition to a forced marriage, and if not, a few shrieks would have brought perhaps Father Norbert, and certainly the whole population; but the horror and shame of being found in such a situation, even more than the probability that she might meet with vengeance rather than protection, withheld her. Even the friar could hardly have removed her, and this was her only chance of safety from the Baroness's fury. Had she hated and loathed Sir Eberhard, perhaps she had striven harder, but his whole demeanour constrained and quelled her, and the chief effort she made against yielding was the reply, 'I am no cloister maid, holy father, but--'
The 'but' was lost in the friar's jovial speech. 'Oh, then, all is well! Take thy place, pretty one, there, by the door, thou know'st it should be in the porch, but--ach, I understand!' as Eberhard quietly drew the bolt within. 'No, no, little one, I have no time for bride scruples and coyness; I have to train three dull-headed louts to be Shem, Ham, and Japhet before dark. Hast confessed of late?'
'This morning, but--' said Christina, and 'This morning,' to her great joy, said Eberhard, and, in her satisfaction thereat, her second 'but' was not followed up.
The friar asked their names, and both gave the Christian name alone; then the brief and simple rite was solemnized in its shortest form. Christina had, by very force of surprise and dismay, gone through all without signs of agitation, except the quivering of her whole frame, and the icy coldness of the hand, where Eberhard had to place the ring on each finger in turn.
But each mutual vow was a strange relief to her long-tossed and divided mind, and it was rest indeed to let her affection have its will, and own him indeed as a protector to be loved instead of shunned. When all was over, and he gathered the two little cold hands into his large one, his arm supporting her trembling form, she felt for the moment, poor little thing, as if she could never be frightened again.
Parish registers were not, even had this been a parish church, but Brother Peter asked, when he had concluded, 'Well, my son, which of his flock am I to report to your Pfarrer as linked together?'
'The less your tongue wags on that matter till I call on you, the better,' was the stern reply. 'Look you, no ill shall befall you if you are wise, but remember, against the day I call you to bear witness, that you have this day wedded Baron Eberhard von Adlerstein the younger, to Christina, the daughter of Hugh Sorel, the Esquire of Ulm.'
'Thou hast played me a trick, Sir Baron!' said the friar, somewhat dismayed, but more amused, looking up at Eberhard, who, as Christina now saw, had divested himself of his gilt spurs, gold chain, silvered belt and horn, and eagle's plume, so as to have passed for a simple lanzknecht. 'I would have had no such gear as this!'
'So I supposed,' said Eberhard coolly.
'Young folks! young folks!' laughed the friar, changing his tone, and holding up his finger slyly; 'the little bird so cunningly nestled in the church to fly out my Lady Baroness! Well, so thou hast a pretty, timid lambkin there, Sir Baron. Take care you use her mildly.'
Eberhard looked into Christina's face with a smile, that to her, at least, was answer enough; and he held out half a dozen links of his gold chain to the friar, and tossed a coin to each of the lay brethren.
'Not for the poor friar himself,' explained Brother Peter, on receiving this marriage fee; 'it all goes to the weal of the brotherhood.'
'As you please,' said Eberhard. 'Silence, that is all! And thy friary--?'
'The poor house of St. Francis at Offingen for the present, noble sir,' said the priest. 'There will you hear of me, if you find me not. And now, fare thee well, my gracious lady. I hope one day thou wilt have more words to thank the poor brother who has made thee a noble Baroness.'
'Ah, good father, pardon my fright and confusion,' Christina tried to murmur, but at that moment a sudden glow and glare of light broke out on the eastern rock, illuminating the fast darkening little church with a flickering glare, that made her start in terror as if the fires of heaven were threatening this stolen marriage; but the friar and Eberhard both exclaimed, 'The Needfire alight already!' And she recollected how often she had seen these bonfires on Midsummer night shining red on every hill around Ulm. Loud shouts were greeting the uprising flame, and the people gathering thicker and thicker on the slope. The friar undid the door to hasten out into the throng, and Eberhard said he had left his spurs and belt in the hermit's cell, and must return thither, after which he would walk home with his bride, moving at the same time towards the stair, and thereby causing a sudden scuffle and fall. 'So, master hermit,' quoth Eberhard, as the old man picked himself up, looking horribly frightened; 'that's your hermit's abstraction, is it? No whining, old man, I am not going to hurt thee, so thou canst hold thy tongue. Otherwise I will smoke thee out of thy hole like a wild cat! What, thou aiding me with my belt, my lovely one? Thanks; the snap goes too hard for thy little hands. Now, then, the fire will light us gaily down the mountain side.'
But it soon appeared that to depart was impossible, unless by forcing a way through the busy throng in the full red glare of the firelight, and they were forced to pause at the opening of the hermit's cave, Christina leaning on her husband's arm, and a fold of his mantle drawn round her to guard her from the night-breeze of the mountain, as they waited for a quiet space in which to depart unnoticed. It was a strange, wild scene! The fire was on a bare, flat rock, which probably had been yearly so employed ever since the Kelts had brought from the East the rite that they had handed on to the Swabians--the Beltane fire, whose like was blazing everywhere in the Alps, in the Hartz, nay, even in England, Scotland, and on the granite points of Ireland. Heaped up for many previous days with faggots from the forest, then apparently inexhaustible, the fire roared and crackled, and rose high, red and smoky, into the
