CHAPTER XXI.

INTO THE FOREST'S HEART.

Before Elspeth Reinheit was aware of the providential character of the deliverance from her persecutors, she found herself descending the familiar, tortuous, narrow valley of the Erbstrom, along which the houses of the village of Ruhla are strung for fully a couple of miles. After a stony descent the regiment reached a tolerable inn, wherein Nigel could gain speech in something like connected fashion with the girl.

It seemed that from the day that Nigel burst into the house at Magdeburg Pastor Rad had conceived a violent jealousy in regard to Elspeth, to whom previously he had paid such attentions as indicated a project of marriage. Elspeth had till that time received his attentions with a kind of dutiful acquiescence; but as from that time his manner towards her changed into one of sullen suspicion, out of which arose interminable inquiries as to her relations with the Scottish captain of musketeers, so her mood of acquiescence had changed also into one of complete indifference, not altogether free from a little feminine spite. Unable to get any definite confession from her which would have condemned her, the minister had brooded over his own fancied wrongs along with the very real wrongs done to his fellow Lutherans at Magdeburg, and had finally concluded that she was possessed by a lying devil, who took pleasure in defeating him. This was a blow to his spiritual pride, and he had arranged to bring the matter to the test of a public discipline. To what lengths he might have gone in his extraordinary fury, supported as he was by the general renown he was just then enjoying as a prophet of Protestantism, it was impossible to say. He was a fanatic, and a genuine believer in his own fanaticism, spurred on by a bitter residuum of admiration and desire for the maiden he had once fully intended to marry. As for the congregations he had summoned from every hamlet, little and big, for miles round, it was sufficient for them to have heard the bruit of the possession to believe it implicitly. Even the very lawyers believed in such things, and unlearned persons were not prone to doubt what lawyers and clergy unitedly agreed was so. That she was a girl of the richer class of farmers, and therefore above most of themselves in social consideration, was in itself an inducement to believe ill of her. They had come to the assembly as to a holiday, with their wives and provisions, their pipes and tabors. There was to be a general muster afterwards of a military character, for had they not promised to raise a corps in aid of John George the Elector of Saxony, who was on the eve of rebellion against the Emperor?

The question Nigel now put to Elspeth was as to her next destination. Her home was a little to the north of Eisenach, but her father was a man who concerned himself more to stand well in the eyes of his neighbours, and especially those who bought and sold with him, than one to stand up starkly for his daughter's good name and safety. He had made a protest of sorts against her being haled before the congregations on such a charge, but he had not stood out long before the onslaught of Pastor Rad and some of the lay brethren. What had happened before might happen again. Elspeth felt no surety in being restored at present to the parental homestead.

"Have you no more powerful friends who could give you refuge till Pastor Rad grows tired of his folly?"

"There is the Lady Ottilie of Thüringen!" said Elspeth. "I know not where we may find her just now. She comes and goes like the forest deer. She is sometimes at the Wartburg! If she were there, the Landgravine would take me in, and Pastor Rad would never lay hands on me."

A strange eager light came into Nigel's face as the name of the mysterious Ottilie fell innocently and naturally from the girl's lips.

"Who is she, this Lady Ottilie?" he asked in a tone of calculated indifference. "Is she of the Landgrave's family?"

Elspeth opened her own blue eyes more widely, and considered Nigel's face with a calm gaze as she replied--

"She may be of their kin. I do not know. She is possessed of influence with them, and they treat her with much honour."

They made plans together, for Elspeth knew every path through the forest, and after an hour or so Nigel gave orders to mount again. Sergeant Blick had improvised a pillion, and Elspeth was mounted this time behind a solid German trooper, to whose belt she held tightly. She rode a few paces behind Nigel, who was busy for a mile or two unfolding to Hildebrand the inner history of the incident, and his own plans.

So they rode on to a spot where a ridge of high open ground divides the thick forest valleys leading northwards from the one by which they had come. It is called Hohe Sonne. Here Hildebrand assumed command of the regiment, and was to lead them to the right by the road called Weinstrasse and halt them at the edge of the forest, two miles to the east of the town of Eisenach, while Nigel with Sergeant Blick and four trustworthy troopers should make their way on foot with Elspeth through the Annathal to the Wartburg. By this forest path they would be under cover all the way. Their task accomplished, Nigel and his party could rejoin the regiment. In the present state of Thüringia, stirred from end to end as it evidently had been, Nigel was bent on keeping as much as possible to the open road, and not allowing his force to be entangled in any tumult in the towns.

At first the pathway led gently downwards through a wide undulating area of forest, which gradually contracted to a long sinuous ravine flanked by steep walls of rock. The sound of voices carried far along this rock-bound way in the stillness, that was broken by nothing but the light splashing of the brook and the "pink-pink" call of the birds.

Nigel and Elspeth Reinheit were far in front, for they were lighter of foot, and both eager, though from different causes. He was desirous to surrender his charge, pretty and young as she was, into safe keeping, for Nigel had never played philanderer. He was also involuntarily full of the tumult, at once a wonder to himself and a pleasure, that came over him at the thought of Ottilie von Thüringen.

Elspeth in her ingenuous way was only too glad to leave the soldiers in the rear, in order to savour the unspoken delight she felt at being alone in the forest with her deliverer, at whose noble and martial aspect she kept taking little fleeting but soul-satisfying looks. She longed with all her maidenliness, and she was as sweet and chaste as the brook that gurgled by them, to throw her arms about him and tell him that she could love him to eternity. The affection of a thousand affectionate German girls, rippling over with endearing phrases of their love-making mother tongue, welled up to her lips, but did not pass them. Only by an effort of will did she convert them to little outbursts of thankfulness that gushed out at intervals, and after short spaces of silence, renewed themselves in other words. Even Nigel could scarcely fail to be aware of the state of her feelings, for the tenderness of her tones filled out what might be lacking in her actual declarations. Her beautiful golden hair had been gathered by her deft fingers into a coil, and surmounted rather than covered by a dainty coif; and with her clear blue eyes and pink cheeks, her supple figure, rather tall than otherwise, she was a feast for the eyes that some of the heroes of the Nibelungen Lied might well have coveted.

One question bubbled to the surface of her mingled reverie and talk.

"Noble captain, have you ever seen the Lady Ottilie since we parted at Erfurt?"

Nigel was too busy with the puzzling thoughts that the question called up to apprehend any subtlety in the question. So he said--

"Once I fancied so! But it was not near enough to speak, and it was night."

"Do you long very much to see her again?" came the next question.

"I? Little one! I scarcely know! She is a mystery to me!"

"Perhaps that is why you would like to see her!" she conjectured. "Now when you have brought me to a safe place _I_ shall never cease to wish to see _you_ again."

Nigel smiled as he answered--

"You must have a long patience, Fräulein Elspeth, for I may never come this way again."

Elspeth was on the verge of tears.

"But what is this?" asked Nigel. "It seems to me that the rocks close in and that there is no passage, though I suppose the brook runs out by some crevice. Do we have to climb the rocks?"

"We are coming to the Dragon's Gorge. After that we shall have the wide forest again."

"We must wait till the men come up with us!" said Nigel.

"I could wait all day!" sighed the maiden, gazing at him with large eyes and then dropping her eyelids.

In a minute or two they heard the sound of hurrying feet, in another Sergeant Blick and his men came panting up as fast as they could run.

"The Bohemians!" said Blick. "Count von Teschen!" Presently the jingle and clatter of men and horses echoed along the rocky walls.

"No horses can get through the Dragon's Gorge," said Elspeth. "Come!" She led them to the rocks, and there a narrow passage disclosed itself, the width of a broad man, no more. It was as if the rocks had once been one and been split asunder by some mighty rent. The brook flowed to the opening, and the rocks' sides were covered with mosses and ferns up and up, through which there was an eternal trickle of water, and high above all were the tree-tops.

"The question is, are they pursuing us, or are they merely making for the Wartburg?" Nigel asked Sergeant Blick. Elspeth answered--

"They would never have come this way to _ride_ to the Wartburg."

"Then they must never come through!" said Nigel. "Fräulein Elspeth, lead these men through to the other end! Blick, stay here with me."

Then Nigel peered out from the mouth of the rocky passage. He espied Count von Teschen and his troop of Bohemians riding along. Then, as they in their turn made out the impossibility of going further, there was a general hubbub of voices.

Count von Teschen was inclined to turn back and seek another way, but evidently some of his ruffians were for a pursuit on foot, thinking the rock passage but a temporary obstacle. Five or six of them dismounted and throwing the reins on their horses' necks rushed forward splashing into the brook, and then one entered the Dragon's Gorge. He had no sooner peered round the first bend than he fell forward, for Blick's musket butt was heavy and the arm that swung it strong. He fell face downwards into the stream.

Another of his fellows followed eagerly, and again the butt descended and he fell on top of the other. The water continued to trickle through the ferns and mosses. And the brook flowing on carried the flowing blood onwards to Nigel's feet as he splashed forward towards the other end of the gorge.

It was a strange fortress to hold, this rift in the rocks, and yet a fortress of a kind. One man at each end could hold it. It was tortuous and it was lofty. Overhead were streaks of blue sky, alternating with patches of greenery and overhanging rocks. It would take more men than Count von Teschen had to spy down from above with the view of letting a big loose stone fall upon the heads of the defenders, for a yard to right or left for them brought invisibility. Nigel pressed on to the other end, which opened out into a wider passage a few feet in length, and then discovered a still wider glen, with sloping sides thick with trees. Two things were possible: the one to hasten forward and trust to their heels for putting the forest depths between them and the pursuers, which meant risking their lives once the Count and his followers had made a circuit of the obstacle and possibly overtaken them, spreading out as they would be sure to do. The other was to lie in the fortress, stoutly guarding both ends, and trust to the foe giving up a hopeless task, and proceeding. The latter had this to recommend it, that darkness would fall at sunset, and the hours of this eventful day were hastening to their end. And with darkness and Elspeth they might surely expect to evade the others and make their way to the Wartburg.

Against this plan Nigel's mind suggested that Count von Teschen was quite possibly himself journeying to that same castle, carrying letters to the Landgrave, and if he reached there first, what hope could there be of a reception for Elspeth, or safety for himself, especially now that blood had been shed.

It became an immediate necessity to see what the enemy was doing. He sent one man back to support Blick, one man he posted at the farther end of the gorge, outside, as a look-out, and the other two with Elspeth stood in a little hollow just outside on a dry spot, with instructions to retire to the rocks if danger threatened. Nigel then climbed the steep ascent at the further end and made his way along the lip of the rift till he could look down upon the Count and his followers; they were all there as far as Nigel could see, irresolute. Finally they seemed to make up their minds, and one by one began to lead their horses in single file up a steep bank into the woodland. Yet not all, for six remained to guard the inlet. Very cautiously Nigel leaned over and called to Blick, whose cheery voice was heard in reply--

"Two dead. No wounded, colonel!"