"I should despise you, if you had given me any other reply," said she, "and you have justly presumed, that for such an expedition, it would not be necessary to ask my leave. But have you not thought of saying Good-bye?" added she, in low reproachful accents. Ekkehard was embarrassed. "There are many nobler and better men leaving your castle to-day. The Abbots and knights will surround you;--how then could I think of taking a special leave of you, even if ..." his voice broke off. The Duchess looked into his eyes. Neither said a word. "I have brought you something which is to serve you in battle," said she after a while, drawing out a precious sword with a rich shoulder-belt, from under her mantle. A white agate adorned the hilt. "It is the sword of Sir Burkhard, my late husband. Of all the arms he possessed, he valued this the most. 'With that blade one could split rocks, without breaking it,' he said many a time. You will wear it to-day with honour." She held out the sword to him; Ekkehard received it in silence. His coat-of-mail he had already put on under his habit. Now he buckled on the shoulder-belt, and then seized the hilt with his right hand, as if the enemy were already facing him. "I have got something else for you," continued Dame Hadwig. On a silk ribbon, she wore a golden locket round her neck. This she now drew forth. It was a crystal, covering an insignificant looking splinter of wood. "If my prayers should not suffice, then this relic will protect you. It is a splinter of the holy cross, which the Empress Helena discovered. Wherever this relic is, wrote the Greek patriarch who attested its genuineness, there will be peace, happiness and pure air.--May it now bring a blessing to you in the coming battle." She leaned towards him, to hang the jewel round his neck. Quickly he bent his knees to receive it; but it had long been hanging round his neck, and still he knelt before her. She passed her hand lightly over his curly hair, and there was a peculiarly soft and half sad expression on the usually haughty countenance. Ekkehard had bent his knee at the name of the holy cross, but now he felt as if he must kneel down a second time before her, who was thus graciously thinking of him. A budding affection requires some time to understand itself clearly, and in matters of love, he had not learned to reckon and count, as in the verses of Virgil, or he might have guessed, that she who had taken him away from his quiet cloister-cell,--that she who on that evening on the Hohenkrähen, had looked on him so tenderly, and now again on the morning of battle, was standing before him, as Dame Hadwig was at that moment, might well have expected some words out of the depth of his heart,--perhaps even more than words only.