In the life of the late Count von Rittenberg it had fallen to the lot of Father Christopher to see not a few strange things. He had accompanied that warrior in several of his campaigns, and he had seen the fierce Huns and the gigantic Saxons, with their barbaric ornaments of beaten gold, their dress of skins, and their strange weapons. He had more than once pondered in his mind whether these hordes of the dark North had human souls, at least before the Church had set upon them the seal of baptism and thus forever marked them as separated from the beasts of the field or the forest which to the eye of the priest they so much resembled.

All that he had hitherto seen, however, faded into insignificance in his mind when compared with that which was now daily before his eyes. He seemed to himself sometimes involved in some strange dream from which he might at any moment awake with only a more or less confused remembrance of what it had been. His old vague questionings concerning the souls of the Huns recurred to his mind; but the perplexing thing was that they who really had souls should have so completely seemed to lack them, while Baron Albrecht, with his magnificent beauty, his manly bearing, his knightly skill and courtesy, should have in truth been without an immortal spirit. The secret of which the priest had been made the repository so absorbed his attention that he could scarcely give either thought or interest to anything else, and not infrequently did Erna laughingly assure him that his one occupation in life seemed to have become watching her husband.

It was noticeable how much Erna had changed since she had known Albrecht. Even Father Christopher, who so deeply loved her that he had secretly regarded her as perfection and therefore could conceive of no possible alteration in her, was not so blind that he failed to appreciate that she was a different creature from the white, calm maiden, with unstirred soul, who had welcomed the baron on the morning when he had ridden with call of bugle and gleam of jewelled armor out of the gloom of the pine forest below the castle. Whether this change was one for which to be glad Father Christopher could not determine. His love for Erna and his loyalty to the Von Rittenbergs rendered it impossible for him to feel that it was not an improvement that now Erna should be gay where she had hitherto been calm, that she should be jocund where she had before been only happy, that she should apparently have discovered the delights of the eye, of the body, and of the world, and exchanged her former innocence for a more worldly wisdom; and yet all this confused him. He could not think it wrong that now the countess adorned herself with the splendid gems of which her caskets were so well filled; especially as she had bestowed upon the Madonna in the castle chapel jewels that would have bought the entire holding as it had been before Baron von Waldstein's coming. He did not find it in his heart to reprove or indeed even to blame her newly developed fondness for hawking, a sport for which her husband had a strong inclination and in which he had also unusual skill. He could not condemn her gay raiment, her frequent laughter, her increased attention to the comforts and luxuries of the castle. There was nothing in all this which was sinful, there was not even anything which was not eminently fitting to the youth of the countess, her estate, and her condition.

And yet the mind of the priest was somehow strangely troubled. Perhaps his inner consciousness apprehended a change in Erna that was so subtile as not to be tangible to the outward sense. Certain it is that a doubt so vague that he could not have defined it even to himself, but so real that it filled him with a shadowy fear of coming evil, weighed upon the soul of Father Christopher whenever he thought of his mistress and of the effect which this marriage had wrought upon her character.

When it came, however, to attaching any blame to Baron Albrecht, the mind of Father Christopher drew back at once. Here he had no doubt in one way. He could not but feel that if any harm came to Erna through this marriage it would be from the fact that her husband had been born in the accursed, soulless race of kobolds; but his sentiment of love, of respect, almost of reverence for Albrecht was developing so rapidly that he could not even then attach any blame to the baron personally.

The possibilities of spiritual life, of high aspirations, which had been opened to Albrecht when upon the kobold had dawned the glorious light of a soul seemed at first to dazzle him. He walked as a man in a dream, or as a prophet who hears voices and sees visions. His joyous, sensuous, wild nature did not, it is true, at once lose its strength. He was the inciter of the countess to the sports of which under his guidance she began to be fond, her former dread of giving pain to the defenceless animals yielding to the delights of the excitement of the chase; he infused into her a new gayety, an animal zest in life, a sensuous eagerness to seize upon the joy of the moment and to forget past and future; he inoculated her, in a word, with the spirit of his being as he had existed hitherto, of the kobold not yet fully transformed into a man, although the process of this transformation had begun at the moment when he had been gifted with a human soul.

As for the Lady Adelaide, she was thoroughly delighted with the change which had come to Rittenberg. This, she declared, was like the gay times when Erna's father was still alive, and the castle was the rendezvous of many bold and merry knights and dames. She began to bring from the recesses of her memory numberless tales of the old time, and now she was pleased to find that her grand-niece would listen to histories and scandals which hitherto she had refused to hear. Lady Adelaide assured Elsa, in those confidential moments during which that damsel was engaged in assisting her at her toilet, that the baron had quite made the countess over, and that the transformation was little short of a miracle.

"Heaven knows what a prude she was," Lady Adelaide would say, long years of habitual freedom of intercourse with her damsel having brought her to a degree of intimacy in her speech with Elsa which was unusual with one of the latter's station; "she used to blush, God's blood! at the mere mention of a man; and as for having any witty talk with her, I might as well have gone to the chapel for a cosey chat with the Virgin on the altar, Heaven save the mark! Now it is all quite different, and I can have some real comfort in gossiping with her."

"Yes, doubtless marriage is a wonderful thing," demurely responded Elsa, who was betrothed to the steward of the castle, and was only waiting to assure herself that she could not possibly do better before she took the irrevocable step of marrying him. "It has changed the countess much; and her husband, too, meseems."

"That is to say, he does not chuck thee under the chin any more, or kiss thee in the corridors. Well, beshrew me, but 'tis quite as well. Little does it increase the peace of the family to have the lord of it too fond of the damsels. Baron Albrecht has improved quite as much as she, to my thinking. He is not so bold and reckless. I used continually to dread lest perchance he should do some outlandish thing. He seemed like a mad creature when the mood was on him, and his tricks frightened me wellnigh out of my five wits."

"But always was he good-humored," Elsa returned.

"Oh, of a truth; but lawless was he as the wild wind in the pine forest. It made no difference against whose feelings he hurtled. Now he is so much more human. Meseems now that Erna is in sooth happily married, and with Baron Albrecht's wealth there seems to be nothing lacking."

It was certainly true that to all outward appearance the marriage of Erna and Albrecht was a fortunate one. Every day they seemed to be brought more and more closely together. The countess lost that reserve and unworldiness which her aunt had stigmatized as austerity; the baron gained those spiritual qualities the lack of which had been his only deficiency. Each found in the other new experiences, fresh fields, an unexplored region of pleasure. Life at Rittenberg was wellnigh ideal. The accustomed occupations of the wife were full of novelty and of attractiveness to the husband. The pair read together in Erna's few but well-loved books, and when the wildness of the storm-sprites kept them within doors they found in these and the talk to which what they read gave rise the means of passing many a happy hour. Here Erna took the lead, and Albrecht was like her pupil. In the more active, out-of-door sports and in-door revelry it was to Albrecht that the initiative fell. Each had much to teach and much to learn, and in teaching and learning alike were both happy.

All this Father Christopher watched with eagerness born of his love for the young couple and his desire for their spiritual welfare. Could he have been sure that this state of things would continue, he would have been fully contented and happy in regard to them, and he was wholly unable to explain to himself what possible grounds there could be for doubting that Albrecht and Erna would still live together in mutual helpfulness and pleasure. Yet in his mind was the vague form of some doubt which he could not name but which he could not banish. It might be that he was accustomed to being confronted by the fact that all spiritual good is the price of hard struggle, and he unconsciously waited to see in what form would come the contest in which Albrecht must sooner or later fight with the powers of darkness for the soul which he seemed to have won and to enjoy without a battle. He felt, too, that the powers of the forest, the evil spirits of the waste and the night, would not yield up Albrecht without a struggle, and his was the attitude of one who waits for coming conflict.

One summer morning the priest came into the great hall of the castle to find Albrecht and Erna standing together at the window looking out at the weather. It had been raining at intervals ever since daybreak, and great masses of broken cloud were trailing their ragged edges over the far-spreading forests of pine that covered the mountain slopes. Now and then the sky would lighten as if the storm were ended, but again it would lower, and the rain come dashing down, swept by the wind against the castle windows.

"I am sure that the rain is over," Erna said persuasively, as Father Christopher came within hearing. "We can get to horse now, and by the time we are well under way the sun will be shining. Besides, what does it matter if it does not clear off? We shall not mind that if we can but get into the open."

"In the first place," returned Albrecht, smiling upon her and then turning to look out again over hill and valley and up at the stormy sky, "Meseemeth it is soon to rain very heavily; and in the second place, I am not sorry that we should be kept at home to-day that we may go on with those words in the scroll of Saint Cuthbert we were called away from yesterday."

"But the reading can always be done," was Erna's answer, "and who knows when we can ride? Besides," she added, a dazzling smile parting her beautiful lips, "we can read Saint Cuthbert when for very age we cannot ride."

The priest did not stay to hear how the matter was settled, but went on his way down the long hall; yet as he went he thought wonderingly of the strange fact that it should be Erna who urged for pleasure, and Albrecht who desired that the time be given to pious employment.