The next morning, with Adolf, Gunter, Andrea, and a few other stout fellows for escort, Ilsa and I rode away. It was another June day of living green and light and fire. In the castle court all were gathered to wish us god-speed; but my master stood out from the company, and we bowed our heads to take his blessing. First he gripped me hard by the hand, and spoke the words he afterward used touching his own glad marriage. “Walter, go forth with grateful heart, and be sure of this, God’s highest gift on earth is to have a pious, cheerful, God-fearing, home-keeping wife.” Then more clearly he spoke in the hearing of them all. “Dearest friends, depart. And know that now are days when the spirit of the Lord is returned to the earth, when old evils are passing away, when all things are becoming new. Yea! even now may the word of the prophet be fulfilled. ‘It shall come to pass that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your old men shall see visions, and your young men shall dream dreams. The sun shall be turned into smoke, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come. But it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered.’” Silently he kissed both Ilsa and myself upon our foreheads. We mounted and called “_Auf wiedersehen!_” I at least with a catching of the throat. “_Auf wiedersehen!_” answered Dr. Luther. And so we rode down the rocky way from the Wartburg. A long time we went silently through the glorious country. Our horses were headed North. Far, far away we could see the swelling crests of the Harzland. We were riding homeward. “Did ever folk go forth on a fairer day,” spoke I, at last, for the sake of breaking a silence growing tense. Ilsa tossed the blue tassel on her hat. “Or with fairer hearts within,” she answered, with that sweet mingling of grave and gay which made all people love her. “Oh! I have joy in the greenwood, in the brooks and in the flowers, the sun on the slopes, the shimmering in the trees; but it is a joy not as in the old days at Blankenburg. For then even over the sun’s great disk hung the shadow of the over mastering fear, the fear of God’s pitiless wrath. And now, lo! the bands are broken, the prisons are emptied, the shadows are gone. The dear God is our father, the blessed Christ is our elder brother, we need not priest, nor mass, nor vows, nor pilgrimage to go to them. Wherefore then should not the world be bright? All this we owe to the love of heaven.” “And under heaven,” I added reverently, “to the friar of Wittenberg, Martin Luther.” AFTERWORD