the girths with his own hand; and the
little troop, waving a parting salute, swept over the drawbridge, and
were soon lost among the trees.

About the same hour, or a little earlier, the Lord of Hers, with a small
retinue, had set out in an opposite direction, but on the same mission.
Rodolph had long seen that King Henry's unprincipled ambition threatened
the liberties of religion and of Austria, and he only paused for the
Papal excommunication to throw off all allegiance to a monarch who could
not be safely trusted. That excommunication was impending, and, as may
be easily conjectured, the duke was making a rapid circuit of his
dominions, to unite his barons more closely to his interests; to warn
them to prepare for the approaching struggle; to confirm the weak and
wavering in their fidelity; inspire the resolves of those who were true
and firm, and make all the pulses of the circle of Suabia throb in
concert to the action of one grand moving power. To gain time, the Lord
of Hers had been despatched to the provinces bordering upon the Rhine
with letters from Rodolph to the principal barons there, while the duke
himself, with Henry of Stramen, followed the Danube.

For many months there had been no active warfare between the hostile
houses, though the feud had lost none of its venom. But age was
stiffening the impetuosity of the old barons; and their sons, no longer
urged on by the battle-cry of their sires, listened with more attention
to the advice and representations of their spiritual instructors.
Gilbert of Hers was not inclined to take an injury to his breast, and
hug it there; but the bold and frequent incursions of Henry of Stramen
had induced him to retaliate rather in a spirit of rivalry than of
revenge. Henry of Stramen inherited all his father's implacability, but
he had often yielded to his sister's solicitation to dedicate to the
chase the day he had devoted to a descent upon the lordship of Hers. The
troubled condition of Germany had also diverted the chiefs from the
disputes of their firesides to the civil wars of the empire; and neither
the Lord of Hers nor the Baron of Stramen gave much attention to aught
else than the league that Rodolph was forming against Henry IV of the
house of Franconia.

Gilbert, left almost without a companion--for the good priest Herman,
whose time was divided between his pastoral duties, his prayers, and his
studies, saw him but at intervals--found time to hang very heavi