Saint Michael

"No; he called him only 'the captain.' Oh, he has a great respect for him. Well, so far as I can see, there's no being very familiar with Herr Michael now. He is friendly enough, but there is a kind of way about him that makes you keep your distance. He calls me Herr Forester; I suppose I must call him Herr Captain."

"You certainly must conform yourself to altered circumstances," said the priest, gravely. "And one thing more, Wolfram. It is not necessary that you should tell the innkeeper and your other acquaintances that Captain Rodenberg is your former foster-son. He had very little intercourse with the villagers in old times, and is so much altered that no one recognized him when he returned here an officer. I know that Count Steinrück enjoined silence upon you with regard to your foster-son, and you were silent. You would oblige Michael and myself if you would pursue the same course now."

"I never was a tattler, as your reverence knows," rejoined Wolfram. "I shouldn't gain much by my former prophecies about Michael; the people would be sure to tease me with them, and I must go home the day after to-morrow; I don't want anybody here to get wind of the matter until after I have gone."

Michael's return put a stop to the conversation. Immediately afterwards the forester took his leave and returned to the little village inn, which stood at a considerable distance from the parsonage. Meanwhile the night had set in, and St. Michael soon lay buried in slumber.

The signs in the heavens, which had been so evident to a practised eye, had not prophesied falsely. Towards midnight the storm burst with a savage fury rarely equalled even in these mountains. The little Alpine hamlet was sufficiently familiar with the storms of autumn and of spring, and its inhabitants were wont to sleep calmly and quietly while the wind raged above the low stone-laden roofs and rattled at the doors and windows. But to-night the uproar was so terrible that it roused them from their repose. They crossed themselves and lay awake listening; it seemed as if Saint Michael were to be swept off the face of the earth.

There was a gleam of light in the parsonage. The priest had risen, and was standing at the window, entirely dressed, when he heard Michael's step upon the stairs.

"I saw a light in your room, and so came down," the captain said as he entered. "The storm has roused you from your bed. I thought it would do so."

"And you have not been in bed at all," rejoined Valentin. "At least I have heard your step continually above my head. You must have paced your room for hours."

"I could not sleep, and I forgot that I should disturb you."

"Not at all; my sleep was broken with anxiety about the Countess Hertha and her mountain drive. Thank God, the storm did not come until near midnight! She must have reached the castle by eleven."

"Are you perfectly sure of that?" asked Michael, eagerly.

"Yes; the drive down could not, even with extreme caution, take more than three hours, and for that length of time the sky was tolerably clear; moreover, the moon is at the full. What I feared was that the storm would overtake the Countess on the way. Once in the valley she was out of danger."

"If she arrived there. But how can we be sure of it?" murmured Michael. He could not but admit that the priest was right; in all probability Hertha had long since been safe in the castle; but the restless anxiety which had robbed him of sleep would not leave him; it possessed him with a vague dread, a foreboding of evil.

He, too, had gone to the window, and both men stood looking out silently into the storm and night, illuminated by a gray light from the moon, which behind its veil of clouds shone brightly enough to reveal objects at some distance. Suddenly the dim figure of a man appeared, seeming to come directly from the village, and making his way with sturdy steps in the teeth of the wind towards the parsonage. Michael's keen eye first detected him; he pointed him out to the priest, who shook his head, surprised. "In such weather! Some one must be desperately ill and requiring the sacrament, but I know of no one in the village who is ailing. The man is certainly coming here. I must go and let him in."

He went to open the door himself, and immediately afterwards Wolfram's voice was heard. "It is I, your reverence. I come like a ghost in the night, but it can't be helped. If you had been asleep I should have had to knock you up."

"What is the matter? What brings you here?" Valentin asked, anxiously, as he conducted his visitor into the room.

"No good, your reverence. First let me get my breath. That cursed wind,–it nearly knocked me down! I come about the young Countess–"

"Countess Steinrück? Where is she?" Michael hastily interrupted him.

"Heaven only knows! She has not returned to the parsonage?"

"Good God, no!" exclaimed Valentin. "The Countess set out for the castle."

"Yes, but she had to turn back. That confounded horse shied at a mountain brook! I should like to wring the brute's neck! And the coachman, instead of holding on to the reins, was tossed off the box, and there he lies with a hole an inch deep in his head. The servant got him back with difficulty to the inn, and the young Countess was lost on the way back. Not a soul knows where she is,–and in such a night, when all the fiends are abroad!"

He paused to take breath. Michael had grown very pale. Confused and vague as was the man's tale, he saw that his forebodings were justified.

"Was the Countess uninjured. Where did the accident happen? At what time? Answer! answer!"

He assailed the forester so peremptorily with his questions that Valentin, in spite of his anxiety, gazed at him in amazement. Wolfram did his best to tell his story more connectedly, and was partly successful, but his tidings were not more consoling. "At first all went well. The road was perfectly clear in the moonlight, and they drove on tolerably fast. Then the brute, the horse, suddenly shied at a brook that tumbled swollen down the mountain, rushed into the stones by the wayside, fell, and pulled over the carriage with him."

"And the Countess was not injured?" The question was as eager as the foregoing ones.

"No, she was on her feet in an instant, but the coachman lay bleeding on the ground, and the wagon had lost a wheel. Of course the men lost their heads,–that kind of folk never have any sense outside the walls of their castle. The young Countess seems to have been the only one to have her wits about her, and she brought the others to order. She could not go on with the broken wagon; there was nothing for it but to return. The coachman, who could not walk, was put into the wagon among the cushions, and one of the servants with the shying horse stayed with him, while the Countess and the other servant mounted the other horses and set out to go back to Saint Michael, promising to send help. Nothing has been seen or heard of her since."

"At what time did this happen?" Michael interrupted him.

"At about nine o'clock."

"Then she ought to have been here by ten, and it is now one hour past midnight!"

He uttered the words in a tone of such anguish that the priest again cast at him a look half inquiry, half dismay. But Michael had eyes and ears only for the forester and his tidings, and he urged him impatiently, "Go on! go on!"

"There's not much more to say," Wolfram declared. "The two men waited for help for two hours, and when it did not come, and the weather grew more threatening, they had the sense to set out by themselves. The coachman had somewhat recovered, and was put upon the horse, which the other man led by the bridle, and so at last they reached the inn, but could go no farther, for the storm was too furious; they were perfectly sure that the Countess was at the parsonage. But she never got back to the village; she would have had to pass the inn, and no one had seen her. The servant is crying like an old woman about his young mistress, but he could not be prevailed upon to go to the parsonage through the storm. So I came,–and there your reverence has the whole story. What is to be done?"

"There has been an accident!" exclaimed the priest, his anxiety increasing with every moment. "I feared it when this wretched mountain journey was undertaken. They have fallen down some roadside precipice."

"They are more likely to have lost their way," said Michael, his voice faltering in spite of his effort to steady it. "Did the two servants who returned find no trace of the others?"

"No, not the least."

"Then there can have been no plunge down a precipice; two persons, and two horses, could not disappear from a tolerably safe road without a trace left behind. They have lost their way."

"But that is impossible,–there is no other road," said the priest.

"Yes, one, your reverence, near Almenbach, where the path winds upward to the mountain chapel. The roads are very similar, moonlight is illusive, and if the Countess did not soon find out her mistake, she must have got among the clefts of the Eagle ridge!"

"God protect us!" exclaimed the priest. "That would be almost as bad as a plunge down a precipice!"

Michael bit his lip; he knew that this was no exaggeration; from his boyhood he had been familiar with the clefts and abysses of the Eagle ridge.

"It is the only imaginable possibility," he rejoined. "At all events, there is not a moment to be wasted; hours have been lost already. We must set out immediately."

"Now? In such a night?" asked Wolfram, staring at the captain as if he thought him insane, while Valentin exclaimed,–

"What are you thinking of, Michael? You do not mean–?"

"To go in search of the Countess. Of course. Do you suppose I could stay quietly here while she is exposed to all the horrors of this night?"

"You ought to wait, and not attempt impossibilities. You know our mountains, and that nothing is to be done while the storm is raging thus. As soon as it subsides, as soon as the morning dawns, we will do all that men can do. To go out now would be worse than folly,–it would be madness!"

"Madness or not, it must be attempted!" Michael burst forth. "Do you imagine that I set the least value on my life weighed against hers? If I had to follow her to the summit of the Eagle ridge, where death seemed certain, I would either deliver her from peril or perish with her!"

Valentin clasped his hands in dismay. This burst of despair and anguish betrayed to him the well-guarded secret of which he had, indeed, within the last few minutes had some suspicion, and he exclaimed under his breath, "Can this be? Good God!"

Michael paid him no heed; he had turned to Wolfram, and said, hastily, "I need companions; we must search in different directions; will you go with me?"

"I? Now, when all the fiends of hell are loose in the mountains? The Wild Huntsman was never so furious in all the years I spent at the forest lodge."

"Infernal superstition!" muttered Rodenberg, stamping his foot. "Then go for the innkeeper; he is a good mountaineer and a brave man."

"That may be, but he'll not stir out in weather like this. He took his oath of that when some one spoke of it awhile ago, and he said a ton of gold would not tempt him, for he had a wife and children to take care of."