Wildschloss cousin, was evidently the highest gratification
Ermentrude could conceive; and, for the rest, that her father and
brother should make successful captures at the Debateable Ford was
the more abiding, because more practicable hope. She had no further
ideas, except perhaps to elude her mother's severity, and to desire
her brother's success in chamois-hunting. The only mental culture
she had ever received was that old Ursel had taught her the Credo,
Pater Noster, and Ave, as correctly as might be expected from a long
course of traditionary repetitions of an incomprehensible language.
And she knew besides a few German rhymes and jingles, half Christian,
half heathen, with a legend or two which, if the names were
Christian, ran grossly wild from all Christian meaning or morality.
As to the amenities, nay, almost the proprieties, of life, they were
less known in that baronial castle than in any artisan's house at
Ulm. So little had the sick girl figured them to herself, that she
did not even desire any greater means of ease than she possessed.
She moaned and fretted indeed, with aching limbs and blank weariness,
but without the slightest formed desire for anything to remove her
discomfort, except the few ameliorations she knew, such as sitting on
her brother's knee, with her head on his shoulder, or tasting the
mountain berries that he gathered for her. Any other desire she
exerted herself to frame was for finery to be gained from the spoils
of travellers.

And this was Christina's charge, whom she must look upon as the least
alien spirit in this dreadful castle of banishment! The young and
old lords seemed to her savage bandits, who frightened her only less
than did the proud sinister expression of the old lady, for she had
not even the merit of showing any tenderness towards the sickly girl,
of whom she was ashamed, and evidently regarded the town-bred