, if you will condescend
to make use of us. If not, I shall ask you to accept what money you need
for your journey, so that you may travel north unmolested, while I take
my way in the other direction."

"How can I repay the money," she demanded, "if I do not know who and
what you are?"

"I shall send for it, either to your Castle of Sayn, or the Convent of
Nonnenwerth. You need be under no obligation to me."

"But," cried the girl with a sob, "I am already under obligation to you;
an obligation which I cannot repay."

"Oh yes, you can."

"How?"

"By coming with me, who will persuade you, as readily as you did with
your guardian, who coerced you."

"I am an ungrateful simpleton," she murmured. "Of course your way is the
right one, and I am quite helpless if you desert me."

"There," cried Roland, with enthusiasm, "you have more than repaid
whatever you may owe."

After breakfasting at St. Goarhausen and purchasing the horses, they
journeyed down the rough road that extended along the right bank of the
Rhine. Roland and Hilda rode side by side, the other two following some
distance to the rear. The young man maintained a gloomy silence, and the
girl, misapprehending his thoughts, remained silent also, with downcast
eyes, seeing nothing of the beautiful scenery they were passing. Every
now and then Roland cast a sidelong glance at her, and his melancholy
deepened as he remembered how heedlessly he had pledged his word to the
three Archbishops regarding his marriage.

"I see," she said at last, "that I have offended you more seriously than
I feared."

"No, no," he assured her. "There is a burden that I cannot cast from my
mind."

"May I know what it is?"

"I dare not tell you, Hilda. I have been a fool. I am in the position of
a man who must break his oath and live dishonored, or keep it, and
remain for ever unhappy. Which would you do were you in my place?"

"Once given, I should keep my oath," she replied promptly, "unless those
who accepted it would release me."

Roland shook his head.

"They will not release me," he said dolefully.

Again they rode together in silence, content to be near each other,
despite the young man's alternations of elation and despair. 'Twas, all
in all, a long summer's day of sweet unhappiness for each.

One of Roland's reasons for choosing the right bank of the Rhine was to
avoid the important city of Coblentz, with its inevitable questioning,
and it was late afternoon