rformed none but the most common tricks of
jugglery, and related only well-known tales, so that the tire-woman felt
wearied and indifferent and, ashamed of having brought the stranger, she
stole away unnoticed. Several other maidens followed her example, and,
as these withdrew, the old crone twisted her mouth into a smile,
and repeated the same hideous confidential wink towards the lady.
Hildegardis could not understand what attracted her in the jests and
tales of the bronze-coloured woman; but so it was, that in her whole
life she had never bestowed such attention on the words of any one.
Still the old woman went on and on, and already the night looked
dark without the windows, but the attendants who still remained with
Hildegardis had sunk into a deep sleep, and had lighted none of the wax
tapers in the apartment.

Then, in the dusky gloom, the dark old crone rose from the low seat on
which she had been sitting, as if she now felt herself well at ease,
advanced towards Hildegardis, who sat as if spell-bound with terror,
placed herself beside her on the purple couch, and embracing her in her
long dry arms with a hateful caress, whispered a few words in her ear.
It seemed to the lady as if she uttered the names of Froda and Edwald,
and from them came the sound of a flute, which, clear and silvery as
were its tones, seemed to lull her into a trance. She could indeed
move her limbs, but only to follow those sounds, which, like a silver
network, floated round the hideous form of the old woman. She moved from
the chamber, and Hildegardis followed her through all her slumbering
maidens, still singing softly as she went, "Ye maidens, ye maidens, I
wander by night."

Without the castle, accompanied by squire and groom, stood the gigantic
Bohemian warrior; he laid on the shoulders of the crone a bag of gold so
heavy that she sank half whimpering, half laughing, on the ground; then
lifted the entranced Hildegardis on his steed, and galloped with her
silently into the ever-deepening gloom of night.

"All ye noble lords and knights, who yesterday contended gallantly for
the prize of victory and the hand of the peerless Hildegardis, arise,
arise! saddle your steeds, and to the rescue! The peerless Hildegardis
is carried away!"

Thus proclaimed many a herald through castle and town in the bright red
dawn of the following day; and on all sides rose the dust from the tread
of knights and noble squires along those roads by which so