, where in
answer to his summons, Emma appeared.

Her heart misgave her as she saw the dark look on her father's face
and the troubled features of her beloved. She understood all at once,
and with a convulsive cry of pain threw herself at her father's feet.

"Mercy! mercy! my father, we love each other so dearly!" murmured she,
raising her large eyes imploringly. "Mercy!" murmured Eginhard too,
bending his knees.

The emperor remained silent. After a time he began to speak earnestly
and coldly at first, but his voice changed to a milder tone on hearing
the sobs of his favourite child.

"I shall not separate you who are bound to each other by love. A
priest shall unite you, and at dawn to-morrow you must both be gone
from the castle, never to return."

He left them, shutting the door behind him.

The beautiful maiden sank down on her knees, only half conscious in
her grief of what her father had said. But Eginhard's soft voice soon
whispered in her ear.

"Do not weep, Emma. By thrusting you from him, your father, my master,
has only bound us together for ever. Come," he continued in a
trembling voice, alarmed at her passionate tears, "we must go, but
love will be ever with us."

The next day two pilgrims left the castle of Ingelheim, and took the
road in the direction of Mayence.

IV.

Time wore on.

Charles the Great had made war on Saxony, had set the Roman crown upon
his own head, and had become famous throughout the whole world. But
all his fame had not prevented his hair from becoming grey, nor his
heart from being sad. A mournful picture had imprinted itself on his
mind, despite all his efforts to forget the past. In the evening when
the setting sun glittered on the marble pillars of the royal palace,
casting its golden rays into the chamber of the great emperor, it
would find him sitting motionless in his carved oak-chair, his grey
head buried in his hands, mournful dreams troubling his peace. He was
thinking of the days which were past, of the young man whose gentle
ways made him so different from the rough warriors of the court, how
he used to recite poetry and sing the songs of the old bards so
passionately, and the old legends which the emperor prized so much,
how he used to read to him from the old gray parchment which he,
Eginhard, had written so carefully, how his own favourite dark-eyed
daughter had so often been present, sitting at his feet listening
intently to the reader--all this came