d he fell to the ground bleeding and insensible. We completed
the rout of the heathens: then I had the wounded knight brought into the
castle; and my pale Verena glowed as lilies in the light of the morning
sun, and Weigand opened his eyes with a smile when he was brought near
her. He refused to be taken into any room but the small one close to
this where the armour is now placed; for he said that he felt as if
it were a cell like that which he hoped soon to inhabit in his quiet
cloister. All was done after his wish: my sweet Verena nursed him, and
he appeared at first to be on the straightest road to recovery; but his
head continued weak and liable to be confused by the slightest emotion,
his walk was rather a falling than a walking, and his cheeks were
colourless. We could not let him go. When we were sitting here together
in the evening, he used always to come tottering into the hall through
the low doorway; and my heart was sad and wrathful too, when the soft
eyes of Verena beamed so sweetly on him, and a glow like that of the
evening sky hovered over her lily cheeks. But I bore it, and I could
have borne it to the end of our lives,--when, alas! Verena went into a
cloister!"

His head fell so heavily on his folded hands, that the stone table
seemed to groan beneath it, and he remained a long while motionless as a
corpse. When he again raised himself up, his eyes glared fearfully as he
looked round the hall, and he said to Folko: "Your beloved Hamburghers,
Gotthard Lenz, and Rudlieb his son, they have much to answer for! Who
bid them come and be shipwrecked so close to my castle?"

Folko cast a piercing look on him, and a fearful inquiry was on the
point of escaping his lips, but another look at the trembling Gabrielle
made him silent, at least for the present moment, and the knight Biorn
continued his narrative.

"Verena was with her nuns, I was left alone, and my despair had driven
me throughout the day through forest and brook and mountain. In the
twilight I returned to my deserted castle, and scarcely was I in the
hall, when the little door creaked, and Weigand, who had slept through
all, crept towards me and asked: 'Where can Verena be?' Then I became as
mad, and howled to him, 'She is gone mad, and so am I, and you also, and
now we are all mad!' Merciful Heaven, the wound on his head burst open,
and a dark stream flowed over his face--ah! how different from the
redness when Verena met him at the castle-gate;