So the squire and one of the men-at-arms rode off into the forest to take the road to Castle Waldstein in the Neiderwasser valley, to fetch the _Morgengabe_, the gift of gold or of gems which the bridegroom gives to the bride on the morning after their marriage; and the knight abode at Rittenberg, being always by the side of Erna, so that it was not strange that the two became more and more like to each other in their thoughts with every day that the sun brought on its rising to the Ober-Schwarzwald. And so the time wore until the day before that set for the wedding morn, and on that day arrived the squire who had been sent to the castle of Waldstein. VIII OF THE EVE BEFORE THE WEDDING. With the squire came the foster-father of Baron Albrecht, and a singular-looking mortal did he prove to be. He had apparently been a tall man and a strong, but that one of his ankles was lame, as if it had been houghed, either by some accident of warfare or by the cruelty of some enemy, so that he must needs forever thenceforth go halting through life. His eyes were keen and piercing, and there was in them a sinister gleam, a smouldering evil fierceness, from which Erna shrank in dread, although for the sake of Albrecht she strove to conceal her feelings and to treat the newly come guest not only with kindness but with warmth. The sight of his burning eyes, his shaggy hair which hung in tumbled black masses about his shoulders, his knotted powerful hands, which he had an uncanny fashion of clenching as he talked or as he thought deeply, together with his sunburned face, seamed and marred by deep lines which might tell of both sins and sufferings to the eye that was wise enough to read them, made her shudder; and when she thought how this strange man had been the companion of Albrecht, she no longer wondered that her lover should show so little knowledge or sympathy with spiritual things, since in the keeping of Herr von Zimmern had his youth been passed. The dependants of the household were one and all afraid of the new-comer, and indeed some among them were ready to swear on the book of the Gospels that this was the same man that in the guise of a beggar had been in the castle just before the going of Count Stephen von Rittenberg. They muttered among themselves that there was evil in the cripple, and Elsa even whispered in the ear of her mistress, crossing herself not a little meanwhile, that it was believed among the folk of the castle that Von Zimmern was really some demon of the forest who was striving to win power over the soul of Baron Albrecht, that he might lure it to destruction.