Imposing secrecy on his followers, so that the Countess might still
retain her unshaken belief that not even an outlaw would harm a little
child, the Count returned to his castle to make preparations for a
complete and final campaign of extinction against the scourge of the
Hundsrueck, but the Outlaw had withdrawn his men far from the scene of
his latest successful exploit and the Count never came up with him.

Years passed on and the silver came quickly to Count Herbert's hair, he
attributing the change to the hardships endured in the East, but all
knowing well the cause sprang from his belief in his son's death. The
rapid procession of years made little impression on the beauty of the
Countess, who, although grieving for the absence of her boy, never
regarded him as lost but always looked for his return. "If he were
dead," she often said to her husband, "I should know it in my heart; I
should know the day, the hour and the moment."

This belief the Count strove to encourage, although none knew better
than he how baseless it was. Beatrix, with a mother's fondness, kept
little Wilhelm's room as it had been when he left it, his toys in their
places, and his bed prepared for him, allowing no one else to share the
task she had allotted to herself. She seemed to keep no count of the
years, nor to realise that if her son returned he would return as a
young man and not as a child. To the mind of Beatrix he seemed always
her boy of four.

When seventeen years had elapsed after the abduction of the heir of
Schonburg, there came a rumour that the Outlaw of Hundsrueck was again
at his depredations in the neighbourhood of Coblentz. He was at this
time a man of forty-two, and if he imagined that the long interval had
led to any forgetting on the part of the Count von Schonburg, a most