sunlight, for no knight in those days dared to ride the roads
except in full armor. In front of him the solitary knight
carried a bundle wrapped in the folds of his coarse gray cloak.

It was a sorely sick man that rode up the heights of St.
Michaelsburg. His head hung upon his breast through the
faintness of weariness and pain; for it was the Baron Conrad.

He had left his bed of sickness that morning, had saddled his
horse in the gray dawn with his own hands, and had ridden away
into the misty twilight of the forest without the knowledge of
anyone excepting the porter, who, winking and blinking in the
bewilderment of his broken slumber, had opened the gates to the
sick man, hardly knowing what he was doing, until he beheld his
master far away, clattering down the steep bridle-path.

Eight leagues had he ridden that day with neither a stop nor a
stay; but now at last the end of his journey had come, and he
drew rein under the shade of the great wooden gateway of St.
Michaelsburg.

He reached up to the knotted rope and gave it a pull, and from
within sounded the answering ring of the porter's bell. By and
by a little wicket opened in the great wooden portals, and the
gentle, wrinkled face of old Brother Benedict, the porter,
peeped out at the strange iron-clad visitor and the great black
war-horse, streaked and wet with the sweat of the journey,
flecked and dappled with flakes of foam. A few words passed
between them, and then the little window was closed again; and
within, the shuffling pat of the sandalled feet sounded fainter