was a collection of miserable huts, on a sheltered slope towards the
south, where there was earth enough to grow some wretched rye and
buckwheat, subject to severe toll from the lord of the soil. Perched
on a hollow rock above the slope was a rude little church, over a
cave where a hermit had once lived and died in such odour of sanctity
that, his day happening to coincide with that of St. John the
Baptist, the Blessed Freidmund had acquired the credit of the lion's
share both of the saint's honours and of the old solstitial feast of
Midsummer. This wake was the one gaiety of the year, and attracted a
fair which was the sole occasion of coming honestly by anything from
the outer world; nor had his cell ever lacked a professional
anchorite.

The Freiherr of his day had been a devout man, who had gone a
pilgrimage with Kaiser Friedrich of the Red Beard, and had brought
home a bit of stone from the council chamber of Nicaea, which he had
presented to the little church that he had built over the cavern. He
had named his son Friedmund; and there were dim memories of his days
as of a golden age, before the Wildschlossen had carried off the best
of the property, and when all went well.

This was Christina's first sight of a church since her arrival,
except that in the chapel, which was a dismal neglected vault, where
a ruinous altar and mouldering crucifix testified to its sacred
purpose. The old baron had been excommunicated for twenty years,
ever since he had harried the wains of the Bishop of Augsburg on his
way to the Diet; and, though his household and family were not under
the same sentence, "Sunday didna come abune the pass." Christina's
entreaty obtained permission to enter the little building, but she
had knelt there only a few moments before her father came to hurry