sounded, the chaplain and the castellan came
slowly and gently into the room. "I bring a precious Christmas gift,"
said the priest. "After many sad years, hope of reconciliation and peace
of conscience are returning to a noble, disturbed mind. This concerns
thee, beloved pilgrim; and do thou, my Sintram, with a joyful trust in
God, take encouragement and example from it."

"More than twenty years ago," began the castellan, at a sign from the
chaplain--"more than twenty years ago I was a bold shepherd, driving
my flock up the mountains. A young knight followed me, whom they called
Weigand the Slender. He wanted to buy of me my favourite little lamb for
his fair bride, and offered me much red gold for it. I sturdily refused.
Over-bold youth boiled up in us both. A stroke of his sword hurled me
senseless down the precipice.

"Not killed?" asked the pilgrim in a scarce audible voice.

"I am no ghost," replied the castellan, somewhat morosely; and then,
after an earnest look from the priest, he continued, more humbly: "I
recovered slowly and in solitude, with the help of remedies which were
easily found by me, a shepherd, in our productive valleys. When I came
back into the world, no man knew me, with my scarred face, and my now
bald head. I heard a report going through the country, that on account
of this deed of his, Sir Weigand the Slender had been rejected by his
fair betrothed Verena, and how he had pined away, and she had wished
to retire into a convent, but her father had persuaded her to marry the
great knight Biorn. Then there came a fearful thirst for vengeance
into my heart, and I disowned my name, and my kindred, and my home, and
entered the service of the mighty Biorn, as a strange wild man, in order
that Weigand the Slender should always remain a murderer, and that I
might feed on his anguish. So have I fed upon it for all these long
years; I have fed frightfully upon his self-imposed banishment, upon
his cheerless return home, upon his madness. But to-day--" and hot tears
gushed from his eyes--"but to-day God has broken the hardness of my
heart; and, dear Sir Weigand, look upon yourself no more as a murderer,
and say that you will forgive me, and pray for him who has done you so
fearful an injury, and--"

Sobs choked his words. He fell at the feet of the pilgrim, who with
tears of joy pressed him to his heart, in token of forgiveness.

CHAPTER 21

The joy of this hour passed from its first over