nd that when they were married Otto of Wolbergen had left the
church with a broken heart.

But such stories are old songs that have been sung before.

Clatter! clatter! Jingle! jingle! It was a full-armed knight that came
riding up the steep hill road that wound from left to right and right to
left amid the vineyards on the slopes of St. Michaelsburg. Polished helm
and corselet blazed in the noon sunlight, for no knight in those days
dared to ride the roads except in full armor. In front of him the
solitary knight carried a bundle wrapped in the folds of his coarse gray
cloak.

It was a sorely sick man that rode up the heights of St. Michaelsburg.
His head hung upon his breast through the faintness of weariness and
pain; for it was the Baron Conrad.

He had left his bed of sickness that morning, had saddled his horse in
the gray dawn with his own hands, and had ridden away into the misty
twilight of the forest without the knowledge of anyone excepting the
porter, who, winking and blinking in the bewilderment of his broken
slumber, had opened the gates to the sick man, hardly knowing what he
was doing, until he beheld his master far away, clattering down the
steep bridle-path.

Eight leagues had he ridden that day with neither a stop nor a stay; but
now at last the end of his journey had come, and he drew rein under the
shade of the great wooden gateway of St. Michaelsburg.

He reached up to the knotted rope and gave it a pull, and from within
sounded the answering ring of the porter's bell. By and by a little
wicket opened in the great wooden portals, and the gentle, wrinkled face
of old Brother Benedict, the porter, peeped out at the strange iron-clad
visitor and the great black war-horse, streaked and wet with the sweat
of the journey, flecked and dappled with flakes of foam. A few words
passed between them, and then the little window was closed again; and
within, the shuffling pat of the sandalled feet sounded fainter and
fainter, as Brother Benedict bore the message from Baron Conrad to Abbot
Otto, and the mail-clad figure was left alone, sitting there as silent
as a statue.

By and by the footsteps sounded again; there came a noise of clattering
chains and the rattle of the key in the lock, and the rasping of the
bolts dragged back. Then the gate swung slowly open, and Baron Conrad
rode into the shelter of the White Cross, and as the hoofs of his
war-horse clashed upon the stones of the courtyard within, th