, covering
his wounds, whispering holy and loving words. And when the morrow
brake, there below were the throng, mocking her all they might, and
calling her by every evil name their tongues might utter."

"How could she hear it, and abide?" [bear] broke forth Bertram.

"Did she hear it?" answered Wilfred in the same low voice. "Ah, child!
love is stronger than death. So, when all was over--when Count
Rudolph's eyes had looked their last upon her--when his voice had
whispered the last loving word--`Gertrude, thou hast been faithful until
death!'--and it was not till high noon,--then she laid her hand upon his
eyes, and clomb down from the wheel, and went back to her void and
lonely home. Boy, I never heard of any woman greater than Gertrude von
der Wart." [Note 2.]

"I marvel how she bare it!" said Bertram, under his breath.

"And to worsen her sorrow," added Wilfred, "when day brake, came the
Duke's Grace of Austria, and his sister, Queen Agnes of Hungary, and all
their following, to behold the scene--men and women amongst whom she had
dwelt, that had touched hand or lip with her many a time--all mocking
and jibing. Methinks that were not the least bitter thing for her to
see--if by that time she could see anything, save Rudolph in his agony,
and God in His Heaven."

"And after that--she died, of force?" said Bertram, clinging still to
the proper and conventional close of the tale.

"She was alive thirty years thereafter," replied Wilfred quietly,
turning his attention to a bunch of leaves which ended a bough of his
tree.

Bertram privately thought this a lame and impotent conclusion. For a
few minutes he sat thinking deeply, while Wilfred sketched in silence.

"Father Wilfred!" the boy broke forth at last, "why letteth God such
things be?"

"If thou canst perceive the answer to that, lad, thou hast sharper sight
than I. God knoweth. But what He doth, we know not now. Passing that
word, none other response cometh unto us from Him unto whose eyes alone
is present the eternal future."

"Must we then never know it?" asked Bertram drearily.

"Ay--`thou shalt know hereafter.' Yet this behest [promise] is given
alonely unto them that sue the Lamb whithersoever He goeth above; and
they which begin not that suing through the mire of the base court,
shall never end it in the golden banquet hall."

"But what is it to sue the Lamb?" replied Bertram almost impatiently.

Wilfred laid down his pen, and loo