y
public note of herself or any deed she did. This lady had not been wed
long time, when the Emperor Albright died. And he died by poison. Some
among his following had given it; and his judges sat to try whom. God
wot who it were, and assoil [forgive] him! But some men thought that
his cousin, Sir Henry of Luxemburg, which was Emperor at after him, had
been more in his place at the bar than on the bench. The sentence of
the court was that divers men were cast for death. And one of them thus
convinced [convicted] was the young Count von der Wart."

"But was he not innocent, Father?"

"He was innocent. But he was doomed to the awful death of the wheel,
and he suffered it."

"Pity of his soul!" cried Bertram indignantly.

"And when the news was brought to the Lady Gertrude, she went white as
death, and fell back in a swoon into the arms of my mother."

"And she was borne to her bed, and brake her heart, and so died!"
interjected Bertram, who thought that this would be the proper poetical
ending of the story.

"Thou shalt hear. When the day of execution came, a great throng of men
gathered in the market-place for to see the same. And when all was
done,"--Wilfred evidently shrank from any lingering over the harrowing
details--"when the dusk fell, and the prisoners had suffered their
torments, such as yet overlived were left bound on the wheel to die
there. Left, amid the jeers and mockings of the fool [foolish] throng,
which dispersed not, but waited to behold their woe--left, with unbound
wounds, to the chill night, and with no mercy to look for saving mercy
of God. But no sooner were the executioners gone, than, lapped in a
furred cloak, the Lady Gertrude left her house, and went out into the
midst of the cruel, taunting crowd."

"But what did she?"

Wilfred's answer was in that low, tremulous voice, which would have
hinted to a more experienced listener that his sympathies were deeply
stirred by the story he was telling.

"She climbed up on the great wheel, lad, and sat upon the rim of it; and
she did off her fur cloak, and laid it over her dying lord; and when
that served not, so strong was the shivering which had seized him, she
stripped off her gown, and spread that over him likewise. And when in
his death-thirst he craved for water, she clomb down again, and drew
from the well in her shoe, for she had nought else:--and there sat she,
all that woeful night, giving him to drink, bathing his brows