“Do you wonder, Walter, why I am not lying pale with horror at this day? Do not ask me! Do not ask me! I only know that I am like the bird who has broken his cage and whose wings are catching the air. I may have leisure for dread and trembling some time; to think of the awful end of Aunt Theckla, and--that woman. But now I remember only this. I have you, and I am free!” Our chosen troop was at length mounted; Adolf, Gunter, Andrea, two Blankenburgers, Ilsa, Moritz, and myself. I was the last to swing into the saddle. I should have known that my wounded thigh was paining me, but I never felt it. Out of the gray Ost-tor we thundered. The good steeds under us had been chafing long. We felt their lengthening gallops as they caught the road. For a long time Ilsa and I flew on side by side through the soft air of the deepening evening. We did not speak often. From time to time we talked with our eyes, and a flash told all we would say. We whirled through the little red-roofed Hessian villages, now down the winding river roads, now under a steep where a black pinnacled castle cast over us its jagged shadows. The blue smocked peasant girls stopped to marvel at us, we flew so fast. As we rode I fell to musing on how it was scarce four years since that other early evening when I had rowed with Marianna upon the yellow Tiber beneath the domes of Rome. Four years! Four centuries seemed that hour away. As I looked on Ilsa and her tossing hair, felt the great sword now at my side and thought on the manful task ahead, I strove to go back to those other hours, the long dalliance over Theocritus’s Idylls and Lorenzo’s love sonnets, the tinkling lutes in the rose gardens, the rustle of fans and silk, the delicate minstrelsy, the soft words and the sensuous glances. Vanished! All vanished--to a past as dim as Egypt and her fabled kings! I knew now I was a true son of the fighting North, whose music had been the jangling ring mail and the snort of the speeding stallions. I felt my breath come fiercely like the hard blasts of the Baltic wind, and my blood was aglow as the blood of many a Regenstein had glowed when they spurred on the hostile hundreds. I had found my bride. Yes! And I had found my true faith in God and in myself. Wherefore should I not rejoice in life’s fair span? “Walter,” spoke Ilsa, riding very close, “wherefore is your face so set and stern?” “Is it?” was my reply. “Then I was thinking of Dr. Luther and his peril.” “We will save him! We will save him!” she kept repeating. “The dear God has been with us this day. After the rest--how can we fail?”