"The Lady Abbess," Erna continued, "was worst of all there; and on her birth-night she made a great feast for all the nuns. They sat and drank wine, and out of doors there was a bitter, bitter storm. And just at midnight there came a knocking at the gate. The Lady Abbess, flushed with wine, told the little novice, who would neither eat nor drink herself, to go and see who was there. So the little novice went, and found an old, old man, all drenched with the rain, and weak with hunger and cold. So she went to the Lady Abbess, and begged that she might be allowed to let the old man in, lest he perish with cold and hunger before morning." "Why should she care?" the knight asked, as Erna paused and looked over the dark-blue lake as if she could see the scene she described. "Oh, I told thee that she was not wicked like the rest." "But would it be wicked not to care for a worthless, broken-down old man that one never saw before?" The countess smiled upon him. "When thou askest me questions like that," she responded, "I know that thou art laughing at me or trying to tease me." A strange look flitted across the face of the baron, but he only replied by a smile. "But the Lady Abbess," went on Erna, determined to finish the tale she had begun, "would not allow the gates to be opened. 'Thou mayest throw him down thy bread, if thou choosest,' she told the little novice; 'but thou wilt get no more in its place.' So the little novice wrapped the bread up in the only blanket she had for her bed, and threw it down to the old pilgrim, and then she had to shut the window and leave him there in the cold. That very hour the water began to roll into the valley, though where it came from no one could tell; and it rose, and rose, and rose. And the wicked nuns ran to the top of their towers, but it was of no use, for the water rose over those until they were all drowned, and there was this lake." "And didn't even the little novice escape?" "Oh, yes; there came a boat, shining all like gold, and took the little novice off of the top of the tower; but when the others tried to get into it, it glided away and left them." She crossed herself as she finished. Albrecht raised his eyes from the blue lake to the blue sky above them, and sighed, a sign of sadness Erna had never seen in him before. "Why dost thou sigh?" she asked him. "Because thou hast taught me to," he answered, with the wistful look of a loving animal in his eyes. Then he laughed gleefully. "Should not one sigh for the poor drowned nuns?" he asked. "Yes," Erna said gravely; "they lost their souls." "Always their souls," her companion responded impulsively. "Why is it that it is always the soul of which one speaks?" "Because," she answered, with the same air she would have worn had his question been a reasonable one, "the soul is all; it is this which makes us different from the animals." "And the nixies," he added; "and the undines, and the kobolds."