"I have noticed that spear before," Count Stephen said, turning toward his cousin. "How came it there? Did the baron in sooth throw it across the hall?" "Yea," she answered; and then she was silent because there came over her a feeling that she had been untrue to her husband by the leaning toward her companion of which she had been half conscious in her secret heart. "It was indeed a shrewd shot," observed Count Stephen, looking upward to the spear, which was high above their heads. Erna did not reply. Suddenly there came into her mind, with the picture of that evening when the spear was thrown, the remembrance of the ring which had been given her by Herr von Zimmern and taken from her by Albrecht. She tried to recall exactly what had been said, but she had forgotten her husband's words, only half heard when they were spoken. She wondered why the ring had never been restored to her, and dimly she recalled to mind the fact that it had been engraved with symbols which had looked to her in the brief moment she had seen the jewel, strange and mysterious. "Albrecht," she said to him when they had mounted and were riding out of the courtyard into the way which led down the hill, "dost thou not remember the ring that Herr von Zimmern would have given me on the eve of our wedding day?" A faint shadow crossed his face. He did not look toward her, but pretended to busy himself with the bridle of his horse. "Yes," he said, "I remember it. It was overbold of him." "I see not that; but that is no matter now. What I was wondering was that thou didst never give me the jewel." "Hast thou not rings enough?" he asked lightly, although Erna could see that her words troubled him. "I will give thee more jewels if so be that there were not enough in the caskets." "But why not that ring?" Erna persisted, urged on by a secret conviction that here was some mystery. "I seem to remember that Herr von Zimmern said something about wonderful powers in that ring which other jewels have not. I would have the chance to test the matter for myself." "The ring," Albrecht answered with a seriousness which impressed her, and which yet rendered her only the more anxious to possess the jewel, "had indeed strange powers, but they were unhallowed ones. It were not fitting that a Christian avail himself of the spells which have been wrought by sinful sorceresses." "Thou art truly become virtuous," Erna retorted with a tone in which she had never before spoken to her husband. "Good sooth, when thou camest to Rittenberg I heard nothing of scruples so nice!"