e slope,
rejoicing with his playfellows over its swift descent towards the
valley, until they noticed with what frightful speed its bulk increased
as it sped over its snowy road, till at last, like a terrible avalanche,
it swept away a herdsman's hut--fortunately an empty one. Now, also, his
heedlessness had set in motion a mass which constantly rolled onward,
and how terrible might be the harm it would do!

If Hartmann, the Emperor's son, were only there! He confided everything
to him, for he was sure of his silence. Both his duty as a knight and
his conscience forbade him to relate his experiences and ask counsel
from any one else.

He was still absorbed in these gloomy thoughts when, just before
reaching the Walch, he heard Biberli's deep sigh. Here, behind and
beside the frames of the cloth weavers, stood the tents before which the
followers and soldiers of the princes and dignitaries who had come to
the Reichstag were still sitting around the camp fire, carousing and
laughing.

Any interruption was welcome to him, and to Biberli it seemed like a
deliverance to be permitted to use his poor endangered tongue, for his
master had asked what grief oppressed him.

"If you desired to know what trouble did not burden my soul I could find
a speedier answer," replied Biberli piteously. "Oh, this night, my lord!
What has it not brought upon us and others! Look at the black clouds
rising in the south. They are like the dark days impending over us poor
mortals."

Then he confided to Heinz his fears for himself and Katterle. The
knight's assurance that he would intercede for him and, if necessary,
even appeal to the Emperor's favour, somewhat cheered his servitor's
drooping spirits, it is true, but by no means restored his composure,
and his tone was lugubrious enough as he went on:

"And the poor innocent girl in the Ortlieb house! Your little lady, my
lord, broke the bread she must now eat herself, but the other, the older
E."

"I know," interrupted the knight sorrowfully. "But if the gracious
Virgin aids us, they will continue to believe in the wager Cordula von
Montfort----"

"She! she!" Biberli exclaimed, enthusiastically waving his stick aloft.
"The Lord created her in a good hour. Such a heart! Such friendly
kindness! And to think that she interposed so graciously for you--you,
Sir Heinz, to whom she showed the favour of combing your locks, as if
you were already her promised husband, and who afterwards, for an