Part 33

The wind blew in fierce gusts, howling like an imprisoned beast between the chinks of the wall. Then the night relapsed once more into silence, and in intermittent pauses large drops of rain could be heard, splashing from the height of the roof upon the ringing flagstones. To Stephania's listening ear it seemed like a dreadful pacing to and fro of spirits meditating on the past. She dragged herself to a seat in a recess of the wall, whence she could watch the sufferer and minister to his wants.

Another fit of delirium seized Otto. Restlessly he tossed on his pillows. Again a dream murmured his own impending fate into his ears.

Again he is in Aix-la-Chapelle. Again he beholds Charlemagne seated erect in his chair as in that memorable night when he visited the dead emperor in the crypts. He touches the imperial vestments; the crown glitters in the smoky flare of the torches. But through the heavy Arabian perfumes of the emperor's fantastic shroud penetrates the odour of the corpse.

The night wore on.

Recovering consciousness, Otto knew by the dying candle, by the strokes of the clocks from adjacent cloisters, that hours had passed into eternity, and that it was long past midnight. It was very still. The tread of the sentries was no longer heard. Through the window were seen pale blue flashes of lightning in a remote cloudbank, as on that memorable night in the temple of Neptune at Rome. The dull rumbling of distant thunder seemed to come from the bowels of the earth.

His head ached, his mouth was parched, thirst tormented him. He dimly remembered the pitcher of water. Who had removed it? Why had it been taken away? He tried to rise, to drag himself to the wall, but his strength was not equal to the task. He fell back in the cushions where for a time he lay motionless. Then a moan broke from his lips, which startled the figure seated by the bed. Opening his eyes Otto gazed into the pale face of Stephania. She started up with a low cry,--as from a trance. Waking and watching had benumbed her senses.

Now from her own suffering she lifted to Otto her face, wherein was reflected the great love she bore him.

He looked at her with all the love of his soul in his eyes.

"I am dying," he spoke calmly, "I know it."

An outcry of mortal anguish broke from her lips.

"No, no, no!" she moaned, entwining him with her arms. "Otto, my love--you will live,--live--live-- Can you fancy us parted," she sobbed, "one from the other for ever? Or can you go from me and leave me to the great loneliness of the world? To me all on earth, but you, seems a fleeting shadow; but in this hour, I think only of the greater pang of my own fate, and pray that in another world I may be judged more mercifully,--even by you."

For some moments they remained locked in close embrace.

"Kiss me!" he whispered hungrily. "Kiss me, Stephania!"

She drew back.

"My kisses are cold, Otto, cold as those of a dead love."

"Kiss me, Stephania," he moaned, "kiss me, even if your kisses were death itself."

She breathed hard, as he held to her with all his might.

"A dead hand is drawing me downward, hold me up, Otto!" she gasped. "Hold me up! Do not let me go! Do not let me go!"

And she kissed him, until he was almost delirious, drawing him close to her heart.

"Now you are mine--mine--mine!" she whispered, kissing him again and again, while his fingers were buried in the soft, silken wealth of her hair.

"The hour is brief,--life is short and uncertain--oh, let the hour be ours! Let us drain the glittering goblet to the dregs! Then we may cast it from us and say we have been happy! Death has no terror for us! I am thirsty, Stephania,--give me the pitcher."

She trembled in every limb.

"Do not let me go! Hold me, Otto,--do not let me go!" she almost shrieked, entwining him so tightly with her arms that he could scarcely breathe.

"I feel the fever returning--the water--Stephania--"

"Do not let me go!" she begged with mortal dread.

"I am burning up."

He struggled in her arms to rise, gasping:

"Water--Water!"

And he pointed to the niche, where he had espied the pitcher.

She almost dropped him, as raising himself he pushed her from him. Her head swam giddily and she felt a feebleness in all her limbs; shudders of icy cold ran through her, followed by waves of heat, that sickened and suffocated her. But she paid little heed to these sensations. Stephania felt death in her heart, she strove to sustain herself, but failing in the effort, fell moaning across his couch.

Otto had fallen back on his pillows with eyes closed. He was spared the sight of the terrible agony of the woman he loved. At last she clutched the pitcher and staggering feebly forward, step by step, she pushed back her hair from her brows and softly called his name.

He opened his eyes, but did not speak.

Trembling in every limb she bent over him and placing one hand under his head raised him to a sitting posture, glancing fear-struck round the chamber. She thought she had heard the tread of approaching steps.

Greedily Otto grasped the vessel, pressing his hot hands over the woman's which held it to his lips. Greedily he drank the poisoned beverage, while a heart-breaking moan came from Stephania's lips. He heard it not. He sank back into the cushions, while she knelt down by his side, weeping as if her heart would break.

The Senator of Rome was avenged.

Avenged? On whom? Whose tortures were the greater, if a spirit still possessed the power to suffer? Alas! It was not the death of her lord and husband she had avenged! She had sacrificed the love which filled her heart to the Infernals!

While these reflections were whirling through her maddened brain, the fatal poison was coursing serpent-like through Otto's veins, and creeping to his head. For a time he lay still; then he began to move uneasily in his pillows, his breathing became laboured, he beat the covers with his hands. Then he moaned, as in the last agony, and Stephania, to whom every sound of suffering from his lips was as a thousand deaths, knelt by his side, unable to avert her gaze from the youth, dying by the hand he loved and trusted.

Fixedly she stared at the inert form on the bed. Then only the full realization of her deed seemed to burst upon her brain. She clutched despairingly at the cover, beneath which lay his restless form, his face averted, the face she so loved, yet feared, to see.

"Otto!" she moaned, "Otto!"

Her voice broke. She suddenly withdrew her hands and looked at them in horror, those white, beautiful hands, that had mixed the fatal draught. Then with a bewildered, vacant smile she beamed on her victim.

Otto had lost consciousness. Nothing stirred in the chamber. Profound silence reigned unbroken, save for the slow chime of a distant bell, tolling the hour.

Was he dead? Had the light of the eyes, she loved so well, gone out for ever?

Her hand hovered fearfully above him, as if to drive away the grim spectre of death. At last, nerving herself with a supreme effort, she touched with trembling hand the cover that hid him from view. Lifting it tearfully, she turned it back softly,--softly, murmuring his name all the time.

Then she stooped down close, and closer yet. Her red lips touched the purple ones; she stroked the damp and clammy brow, and thrust her fingers into his soft hair. A moan came from his lips. Then, fastening her white robe more securely about her, and stepping heedfully on tip-toe, she passed out of the chamber. With uncertain step she glided along the corridor, a ghostly figure, with a white, spectral face and fevered eyes. At the foot of the spiral stairway she paused, gazing eagerly around.

Stepping to a low casement she peered into the night. Flickering lights and shadows played without; the late moon had disappeared, leaving but a silvery trail upon the sky, to faintly mark her recent passage among the stars. Everything was still. Only the plaintive cry of an owl echoed from afar. Her sandalled feet sounded on the stone-paved floor, like the soft pattering of falling leaves in autumn. Unsteadily she moved along the gray discoloured wall towards the secret panel, known but to herself. Soon her perplexed wandering gaze found what it sought, and Stephania disappeared, as if the stones had receded to receive her.

*CHAPTER IV*

*THE ANGEL OF THE AGONY*

The morning of the following day broke hazy and threatening. But as the hours wore on, the sky, which had been overcast, brightened slowly and in that instant's change the earth became covered with a radiance of sunshine and the heavens seemed filled with ineffable peace.

It was late in the day, when Otto woke from his lethargy. Hour after hour he had raved without recovering consciousness. His breathing grew weaker. He was thought to be in his last agony. Little by little the vigour of his youth had reasserted itself, little by little he had opened his eyes. His sight had become dimmed from the effects of the poison, and his reason seemed to sway and to totter; the fevered flow of blood, the wild beating of his temples, caused everything around him to scintillate in a crimson haze and flit before his vision with fitful dazzling gleams. But his eyes seemed fixed steadily in a remote recess of the room.

Those surrounding his couch had believed him nearing dissolution, and when he opened his eyes, Otto looked upon the faces of those who had guided his steps ever since he set his foot upon Italian soil, Eckhardt, Count Tammus, and Sylvester, the silver-haired pontiff who had come from Rome. Their faces told him the worst. He attempted to raise himself in his cushions, but his strength failed him, and he fell heavily back. Anew his ideas became confused and his gaze resumed its former fixedness.

His lips moved and Eckhardt, who bent over him, to listen, turned white with rage.

"Again her accursed name," he growled, turning to the monk by his side.

"Stephania--where is Stephania?" moaned the dying youth.

A voice almost a shriek rent the silence.

"I am here,--Otto,--I am here!"

A shadow passed before the eyes of the amazed visitors in the sick-chamber, a shadow which seemed to come out of the wall itself, and the wife of the Senator of Rome staggered towards Otto's couch, who made a feeble effort to stretch out his hands toward her. He could not raise them. They were like lead. She rushed to his side, ere Eckhardt could prevent, and with a sob fell down before the couch and grasped them tightly in her own.

The petrified amazement, which had pictured itself in the features of those assembled, at the unexpected apparition, gave vent to a flurry of whispers and conjectures during which Eckhardt, with face drawn and white and haggard, had rushed through the outer chamber to the door.

"Guards!" he thundered, "Guards!"

Two spearmen appeared in the doorway.

"Seize this woman and throw her over the ramparts!" the Margrave said with a voice whose calm formed a fearful contrast to the blazing fury in his eyes.

The men-at-arms approached with hesitation, but Sylvester barred their progress with uplifted arm.

"Vengeance is the Lord's!" he turned to Eckhardt, whose eyes, aflame with wrath, seemed the only living thing in his stony face.

A terrible laugh broke from the Margrave's lips.

"His mad pleadings saved her once! Now, all the angels in heaven and demons in hell combined shall not save her from her doom!" he replied to the Pontiff. "Seize her, my men! She has killed your king! Over the ramparts with her!"

They dared deny obedience no longer. Approaching the couch they laid hands on the kneeling woman. But the sight of violence for a moment so incensed the prostrate form in the cushions, that he started up, as he had done in the vigour of his health.

With eyes glowing with fever and wrath, Otto leaped from the bed, planting himself before the prostrate form of the woman.

"Back!" he cried. "The first who lays hand on her dies by my hand, a traitor! Down on your knees before the Empress of the Romans!"

Terror and amazement accomplished Stephanie's salvation.

Even Eckhardt was stunned. He knelt with the rest with averted face.

"Leave the room!" Otto turned to the men-at-arms, and with heads bowed down they strode from the sick chamber and resumed their watch outside. What did it all mean? The presence of the Senator's wife at their sovereign's bedside, Eckhardt's contradictory demeanour, Otto's strange words; mystified they shook their heads, glad the terrible task had been spared them.

Otto's exertion was followed by a complete collapse, and he fell back in a swoon. After a time he seemed to rally. Without assistance he sat up straight and rigid, and turned towards the woman, whose wan face and sunken eyes made her fatal beauty all the more terrible.

"Tell me--shall I live till night?" he whispered.

And as she hid her face from him with a sob, he continued:

"Do not deceive me! I am not afraid!"

His voice broke. Every one in the room knelt down weeping. Sylvester tried to answer, but in vain. Hiding his face in his hands, the pontiff sobbed aloud.

"Softly--softly--" Otto whispered to Stephania, then turning towards the sky he whispered:

"How beautiful!"

The morning clouds were growing rosy; the twilight had become warm and mellow. The first beam of the sun appeared over the rim of the horizon. The dying youth held his face with closed eyes towards the light. A faint shiver ran through his body and with a last effort he stretched out his arms, as if he would have rushed to meet the rising orb.

Suddenly he was seized by a convulsion; the veins swelled on neck and temples.

"Water--water!" he gasped choking.

Stephania knew the symptoms. Pale as death she staggered to her feet, filled a cup with clear spring water and held it to his lips.

Otto, grasping her hand with the cup, drank thirstily from the ice-cold draught.

Then his head fell back. A last murmur came from his half-open lips:

"Stephania,--Stephania--"

Then his life went out. With a moan of heart-rending anguish she closed his eyes. The face of the youth, kissed by the early rays of the December sun, took on a look as of one sleeping. His soul, freed from earthly love, had entered on its eternal repose.

Johannes Crescentius was avenged.

Eckhardt had watched the last moments of his king. In the awful presence of Death, he had restrained a new outburst of passion against the woman, who had so utterly made that dead youth her own. But he had sworn a terrible oath to himself, that she should pay the penalty, if that life went out,--it would be cancelling the last debt he owed on the accursed Roman soil.

And no sooner had the light faded from Otto's eyes, no sooner had they been closed under the soft touch of Stephania's hand, than Eckhardt rushed anew to the door and the terrible voice of the Margrave thundered through the stillness of the death-chamber:

"Guards! Throw this woman over the ramparts! She has killed your King!"

Again the guards rushed into the chamber. The terrible denunciation had stirred their zeal. Stephania, kneeling by Otto's couch, never stirred, but as the men-at-arms, over-awed by the spectacle that met their gaze, paused for a moment, the sound of falling crystal, breaking on the floor, startled the silver-haired pontiff.

He had seen enough.

Stepping between Stephania and her would-be slayers he waved them back.

Then he picked up a fragment of the empty flask.

"This phial," he spoke to Eckhardt, "is of the same shape and size as one discovered in a witch's grave, when they were digging the foundations for the monastery of St. Jerome!"

And he strode towards the woman and laid his hands on her head.

"She will soon answer before a higher tribunal," said the monk of Aurillac.

"Father," she whispered, holding the hands of the corpse in her own, while her head rested on her arms,--"I cannot see,--stoop down,--and let me whisper--"

"I am here, daughter, close--quite close to you."

He inclined his ear to her mouth and listened. But though her lips moved, no words would come.

After a moment or two of intense stillness, she whispered, raising her head.

"It is bright again! They are calling me! We will go together to that far, distant land of peace. I am with you, Otto--hold me up, I cannot breathe--"

Gently Sylvester lifted her head.

"Otto,--my own love--forgive--" she gasped. A convulsive shudder passed through her body and she fell lifeless over the dead body of her victim.

Stephania's proud spirit had flown.

Sylvester muttered the prayer for the departed, and staggered to his feet.

Eckhardt pointed to her lifeless clay. In his livid face burnt relentless, unforgiving wrath.

"Throw that woman over the ramparts!" he turned to his men. "She shall not have Christian burial!"

Anew Sylvester intervened.

"Back!" he commanded the guards. "Judge not,--that ye may not be judged. What has passed between those two--lies beyond the pale of human ken. He alone, who has called, has the right to judge them! She died absolved.--May God have mercy on her soul!"

As weeping those present turned to leave the death-chamber, Eckhardt bent over the still, dead face of Otto.

"I will hold the death-watch," he turned to Sylvester. "Have the bier prepared! To-morrow at dawn we start. We return to our Saxon-land,--we go back across the Alps. In the crypts of Aix-la-Chapelle the grandson of the great Otto shall rest; he shall sleep by the side of the great emperor, whom he visited ere he came hither; Charlemagne's phantom has claimed him at last. Rome shall not have a lock of his hair!"

"As you say--so shall it be!" replied Sylvester, his gaze turning from Otto to the lifeless clay of Stephania.

Softly he raised her dead body and laid it side by side with that of Theophano's son, joining their hands.

"Though they shall sleep apart in distant lands, their souls are one in the great beyond, that holds no mysteries for the departed."

From the chapel of the cloister at the foot of the hill, stealing through the solemn stillness of the December morning, came the chant of the monks:

"Quando corpus morietur, Fac ut animae donetur Paradisi gloria."

*CHAPTER V*

*RETURN*

The Eve of the Millennium stood upon the threshold of Time.

The veiled sun of midwinter was rising and his early rays filled the blue balconies of the East with curtains of gold. From the slopes of Paterno a strange procession was to be seen winding its way down into the plains below. It was the remnant of the German host, carrying the bier with the body of the third Otto towards its distant, final resting-place. Eckhardt and Haco jointly headed the mournful cortege, which after reaching the plain, entered the northern road. Behind them lay Civita Castellana, the walls of the ancient citadel towering high above the town, which lay in the centre of a net-work of deep ravines. To their right the Sabine hills extended in long, airy lines and the wooded heights of Pellachio and San Gennaro rose to the south-east. Before them Viterbo with her hundred towers lay dark and frowning inside her bristling walls; and to northward, surmounted by its mighty cathedral dome, on a conical hill, above the great lake of Bolsena, the gray town of Montefiascone rose out of the wintry haze.

Continually harassed by the Romans the small band hewed their way through their pursuers who abandoned their onslaughts only when the Germans reached the Nera and beheld the Campanile of St. Juvenale rising above Narni.

Slowly the imperial cortege passed through the ancient town and was soon lost in the purple mists, which enshrouded mountain and valley.

Rome lay behind them, the source of their tears and sorrows.

Onward, ever onward they rode towards the glittering crests of the Alps, the solemn twilight of the Hercynian forest, towards the distant banks of the Rhine and the crypts of Aix-la-Chapelle.

THE END.

* * * * * * * *

*SMILES, A ROSE OF THE CUMBERLANDS*

_*By Eliot Harlow Robinson*_

_Author of "Man Proposes"_

_Cloth decorative, 12mo, illustrated, $1.50_

Smiles is a girl that is sure to make friends. Her real name is Rose, but the rough folk of the Cumberlands preferred their own way of addressing her, for her smile was so bright and winning that no other name suited her so well.

Smiles was not a native of the Cumberlands, and her parentage is one of the interesting mysteries of the story. Young Dr. MacDonald saw more in her than the mere untamed, untaught child of the mountains and when, due to the death of her foster parents a guardian became necessary, he was selected. Smiles developed into a charming, serious-minded young woman, and the doctor's warm friend, Dr. Bently, falls in love with her.

We do not want to detract from the pleasure of reading this story by telling you how this situation was met, either by Smiles or Dr. MacDonald--but there is a surprise or two for the reader.

_Press opinions on "Man Proposes":_

"Readers will find not only an unusually interesting story, but one of the most complicated romances ever dreamed of. Among other things the story gives a splendid and realistic picture of high social life in Newport, where many of the incidents of the plot are staged in the major part of the book."--_The Bookman_.

"It is well written; the characters are real people and the whole book has 'go.'"--_Louisville Post_.

*TWEEDIE, THE STORY OF A TRUE HEART*

_*By Isla May Mullins*_

_Author of "The Blossom Shop Stories," etc._

_Cloth decorative, 12mo, illustrated, $1.65_

In this story Mrs. Mullins has given us another delightful story of the South.

The Carlton family--lovable old Professor Carlton, and his rather wilful daughter Ruth--twenty-three years old and with decided ideas as to her future--decide to move to the country in order to have more time to devote to writing.

Many changes come to them while in the country, the greatest of which is Tweedie--a simple, unpretentious little body who is an optimist through and through--but does not know it. In a subtle, amusing way Tweedie makes her influence felt. At first some people would consider her a pest, but would finally agree with the Carlton family that she was "Unselfishness Incarnate." It is the type of story that will entertain and amuse both old and young.

The press has commented on Mrs. Mullins' previous books as follows:

"Frankly and wholly romance is this book, and lovable--as is a fairy tale properly told. And the book's author has a style that's all her own, that strikes one as praiseworthily original throughout."--_Chicago Inter-Ocean_.

"A rare and gracious picture of the unfolding of life for the young girl, told with a delicate sympathy and understanding that must touch alike the hearts of young and old."--_Louisville (Ky.) Times_.

*ONLY HENRIETTA*

_*By Lela Horn Richards*_

_Author of "Blue Bonnet--Debutante," etc._

_Cloth decorative, 12mo, illustrated, $1.50_

Henrietta was the victim of circumstances. It was not her fault that her father, cut off from his expected inheritance because of his marriage, was unexpectedly thrown upon his own resources, nor that he proved to be a weakling who left his wife and daughter to shift for themselves, nor that her mother took refuge in Colorado far away from their New England friends and acquaintances. Youth, however, will overcome much, and when Richard Bently appears in the mountains, life takes on a new interest for Henrietta.

When her mother dies Henrietta goes to live with Mrs. Lovell, who knew her father years ago in the little Vermont town. Mrs. Lovell determines to do what she can to secure for Henrietta the place in society and the inheritance that is rightfully hers. The means employed and the success attained--but that's the story.