"The night wasted," continued the count, "without that they found it over-long, I trow; and before they were aware, the dawn began to appear. Then Eginhard would fain have gone the way he came, across the court, but the heavens had betrayed them. The snow had fallen and covered the ground so that he could not step without leaving the trace." "Body of Saint Fridolin!" cried Lady Adelaide, again; "that was the judgment of Heaven upon her for betraying the honor of the king." "Even if it were," Count Stephen rejoined, "the Princess Emma is not one to be lightly daunted, even by the judgments of Heaven. She was well aware what would befall her lover if the track of his footsteps were found leading from her window, but she trusted that her royal father, who has not been able to rein in his own blood over well, might be moved to forgive her, if it appeared that the transgression had been hers, and that she had sought her lover's chamber." "It is ever the woman who sacrifices herself to the man," muttered Lady Adelaide. Erna still listened to the tale in silence, while her cousin watched her with penetrating gaze. "So the princess took the scribe on her shoulders," the knight went on, making no reply to the dame's interjection, "and carried him across the court to his own window, so that only her tracks would appear in the snow." "Body of Saint Fridolin!" ejaculated Lady Adelaide, for the third time. "Is it thus that they do at court? And what said her father when he was told that she had been with the scribe Eginhard?" "As fate would have it," the count answered, pulling at the long silky ears of the hound which lay at his side, "the king himself had been that morn troubled in his sleep, and had risen to stand by the window looking out at the newly fallen snow before that the court was astir to besmirch it with their footsteps; and with his own eyes he saw his daughter carry her lover across the place." "What did he?" asked Erna, raising her eyes from her embroidery for the first time since the tale began. "Oh, he doubtless cursed for a little, and then he remembered himself, like the wise man that he is, that it were well not to make a bad matter worse, and that love is free and not to be constrained even by the bidding of a king." He looked into her eyes as he answered thus, and so significant a glance accompanied his last words that hers fell before it. She flushed and once more fixed her attention upon her embroidery, while Count Stephen went on to relate how Charlemagne had told the tale before the whole court to the shaming of the offenders, and had then forgiven them and had them married out of hand. Then, when he had replied to the questions of Lady Adelaide, who found this gossip a most savory morsel under her tongue, he suddenly caught up a lute that lay near him upon the cushioned window-ledge, and running his fingers across the strings with a swift rattling of tinkling notes, sang not unmusically this song: