fort to Dame Margaret,
who had felt very uneasy ever since the idea had seized her, for she
could not otherwise account for her son's refusing so inestimable a
gift.

The last night Eric slept at home he had a dream, at least he was not
quite certain whether he was awake or dreaming. He opened his eyes and
saw a light in the room, and his mother and Father Nicholas, and his
sister Laneta, and his father's old henchman, Hans Bosch, who had often
carried him in his arms, when he was a child, and still looked on him in
the light of one, standing round his bed. His mother held a basin, and
Hans a book, and the priest a censer, which he was swinging to and fro,
and muttering words, in very doggerel Latin, while ever and anon, he
sprinkled him with water from the basin. What Laneta was about, he
could not exactly make out, but he thought that she had a box in her
hands, which she held open. Had he not been very sleepy and tired he
would have jumped up and ascertained whether what he saw was a vision or
a reality; but, shutting his eyes, he went off soundly to sleep again,
and sometime afterwards, when he awoke, the room was in darkness and he
was alone.

His mother, the next morning, regarded him with much more contented
looks than her countenance had worn for the last day or two.

It may as well be here mentioned that Eric discovered during his journey
the precious relic, which he had declined taking, fastened into the
collar of his cloak. He sighed and said to himself--

"Then, poor mother, let it be; should I take it out and should any
misfortune happen to me she will say it was for want of the relic; if it
remains and I receive damage I may the better prove to her the
worthlessness of the thing. No wonder the sheep go astray when they
have so ignorant a pastor as Father Nicholas."

CHAPTER TWO.

Eric, on the morning of his departure from home, had a private
leave-taking with his father. The Knight, though an old soldier, was a
peaceably-disposed man, yet in spite of all he could do he had foes and
troubles. A certain Baron Schenk, of Schweinsburg, unjustly claimed
rights over a portion of the Knight's property. It was clearly
impossible for the Knight to accede to the Count's demands, for had he
done so fresh ones would instantly have been made until the Count might
have claimed possession of Lindburg itself. The Count had often
threatened to come and insist on his claims at the point of the sword,
b