"Uncertain is the memory of the old: I have seen many people since my lord has wandered homeless. The sparks flew into mine eyes when my house in my native land was burned, so that I do not recognize the beautiful face before me."

"Thou hast reason to be angry, old man, with my family. The father of thy King and mine once formed an alliance, but my brother Gundomar forgot his old oath; he fought as an ally of your enemies on the Oder, and I, while still a child, was sent to be wife to the King of Thuringia. Dost thou know me now, Berthar?"

"The twig grows to be a proud tree; other birds sing now in its foliage than did in former times."

"Yet the tree bears every year the same blossoms; and the old battle-hero finds a friend in the Queen. Art thou contented with thy dwelling in the castle? and have the King's boys offered thee a courteous greeting?"

"At court the servants greet like their master; thy favor, oh Queen, is surety for the good-will of thy people."

The countenance of the Queen became clouded. "That is the speech of a proud guest," she continued, with a constrained smile; "I think thy life was more merry in the forest huts."

"We are wanderers, lady. A flexible mind helps him who wanders homeless among the people; a house and wife are denied him, and he takes what the day offers him --- booty, drink, and women; he has no choice, and no griefs; and without anxiety he thinks in the evening of the work of the following day."

The old man saw the Queen again smiled. She approached nearer to him, and said, "There in the tower is the Queen's chamber; if thou shouldst ever look up at that window, from thy spear, a light will perhaps burn there which will warn thee beforehand of the wolf-hunt." She nodded to him, and turned to her followers; but the old man looked at her with astonishment; then seizing his hammer, recommenced pounding.

On the following night no arrow and no barking of the King's wolves disturbed the sleep of the foreign guests. Every day the King became more friendly to them, and extolled before his men their court manners and their art of managing their horses in the martial exercises. Hermin, the King's little son, came often to the dwelling of his cousin Ingo, practised before him with his toy weapons, stroked the gray beard of the Hero Berthar, and begged for a merry tale. One hunting morning Ingo became still more agreeable to his host than he had been before. The King, in his excitement, had ridden far before the others, and had fallen from his horse on a steep mountain slope; from thence he slid down on to the ice, and lay for a moment defenseless before the horns of a wild ox. Then Ingo, at the risk of his own life, sprang over the body of the King, and killed the raging beast. The King rose, and said, all limping from his fall, "Now that we are alone, and none of my men near, I perceive thy good disposition; for if thou hadst not sprung like a hound, the furious beast would have hurled himself on me, to the damage of my ribs, and no one could have reproached thee. What I know, no one else need know."

That day the King sat joyfully on his royal seat at the repast, next his wife Gisela, and Ingo on the other side. "Today I rejoice in the good fortune of the chase; I rejoice in my power and the gold treasures that you all see before your eyes; and I drink to the health of the Hero Ingo, because he was a good comrade in fight with the mountain ox. Rejoice, all of you, today with me, when you see the gold and silver cups which are placed before your eyes, to my honor and yours. Thou, Ingo, hast visited many courts of powerful rulers: tell me, Hero, whether thou hast seen better vessels from any of their treasure-houses."

"Gladly do I praise thy wealth, oh King; for when the treasure-house is filled, we think the ruler governs in security, feared by hostile neighbors and bad men among the people. There are two virtues which I have always heard extolled in a powerful sovereign: understanding to collect treasure at the right time, and to distribute it at the right time to his faithful servants, that they may follow him in danger."

These words were quite in accordance with the opinion of the heroes who sat at the King's table, and they nodded, and murmured approbation.

"The Allemanns also were a wealthy people till Cæsar devastated their land," continued Ingo; "but I think they will regain much, for they are active after booty, and understand how to deal with traders. Therefore they live more like Romans than other country people; the peasants also dwell in stone houses; the women embroider colored pictures on their dresses; and round them hang sweet grapes in vine arbors."

"Dost thou know the Roman women also?" asked the Queen; "the King's men relate many wonderful things of their beauty, although they have brown skins and black hair."

"They are nimble in speech, and in the movements of their limbs, and the greeting of their eyes is pleasing; only I heard that they could not boast of the propriety of their conduct," replied Ingo.

"Hast thou been in Roman land?" asked the King, inquisitively.

"It is two years," said Ingo, "since I rode as companion of the young King Athanarich peacefully into the walls of the great imperial city of Treves. I saw high arches and stone walls, as if erected by giants. The people laughed in crowded throngs in the streets; but the warriors who stood there at the gates, with Roman tokens on their shields, have our eyes, and speak our language, although they wrongly boast of being Romans."

"The strangers give us their wisdom, they sell us gold and wine, but we lend them power of limb; I approve of the exchange," replied Hadubald, to whom it was not pleasant to hear the Roman service despised.

"But I, oh King," began Berthar, "have little respect for that wisdom of the Romans. I also was formerly in the great stone castle which the Romans have built; first, when my lord Ingo sent me southward over the Danube to Augsburg, where now the Suabians have established their home. I rode in with difficulty over the broken city walls; there I saw much folly which is annoying even to a wandering man. The Roman houses stood as thickly packed as a flock of sheep in a thunderstorm. I saw none where there was room for a court, nay, even for a dunghill. I asked my host, and he said, 'They squat, if needs be, shamelessly, like little dogs in the street.' I lay in such a stone hole; the walls and the floors were smooth, and shone with many bright colors. The trusty Suabians had arranged a straw roof as a covering. I assure you it was uncomfortably between the stone walls during the night; and I was glad in the morning when the swallows sang in the straw. It had rained in the night, and in a puddle on the floor I saw by the morning light two ducks, not real, but as if painted on the stone of the floor. I went up to it, stuck my axe into the stone floor, and found a ludicrous work put together of many little stones; every stone was cemented to the floor, and the surface was polished as fine as a stone ax. From such colored stones were the birds made which we know as ducks; and it was a work over which many men must have been occupied many days, only to polish the hard stone. That appeared to me quite foolish, and my Suabian thought so also."

"Perhaps the duck is a holy bird to them, which is not domestic there; there are some kinds of birds to be found all over the earth, and other not," said Balda, a sensible man, one of the followers of the Queen.

"So I thought also, but my host knew that they prepare things like these for their pleasure, in order to tread upon them."

The men laughed. "Do not our children also make little bears out of clay, and ovens out of sand, and play for days together with trifles? The Romans have become like children," exclaimed Balda.

"Thou speakest right. They have polished little stones into birds, while in their forest the warriors of Suabia dwell in their blockhouses; also when they eat they lie down like women who are lying-in."

"What thou bringest forward concerning the ducks," exclaimed Wolfgang, in an angry tone, "is quite unimportant and foolish; for it is peculiar to the Romans that they can imitate everything in colored stone --- not only birds, but also lions and fighting warriors. They understand how to form every god and every hero, so that he stands up as if living; this they do as an honor to themselves, and as a memorial to him."

"They rub upon the stones; and the heroes who fight their battles are of our own blood. If it is their fashion to love journeyman's work, it is ours to rule over journeymen. I do not praise the hero who engages himself in the service of a journeyman," replied the old man.

"Dost thou call journeymen those who are lords over almost the whole earth? Their race is older, and their traditions more glorious than ours," exclaimed Wolfgang again.

"If they have prated to thee of that," retorted Berthar, "they have lied: whether the glory is genuine, and the tradition true, may be known to every one by this --- if it increases the courage in battle of those men who boast. Therefore I compare the fame of the Romans to a waterspout, that first rushes over the land, and then dries up into a puddle; but the fame of our heroes is like a mountain spring, which rushes over the stones, and carries its floods into the valley."

"Yet the wise men of the Romans are confident," interposed Ingo, "that they have become more powerful than they were before; for they boast that in the times of their fathers a new god came into their empire, who has given them victory."

"I have long observed," said the King, "that they have a great mystery in their Christ. Their faith also is not entirely frivolous, for they are in truth now more victorious than in former times. One hears much about it, and no one speaks very accurately."

"They have very few gods," declared Berthar, mysteriously, "or perhaps only one with three names. One is called the Father, the other the Son, and the third is called --- "

"The third is called the Devil," exclaimed Wolfgang. "I know that; I myself was at one time among the Christians, and I assure thee, oh King, their magic is more powerful than any other. I learned their secret sign, and a blessing --- they call it Noster Pater --- that has healing power against every bodily injury;" and he made respectfully a cross over his wine-cup.

"Yet, according to my judgment," replied Berthar, obstinately, "the day will come even to the Romans, in spite of their walled cities, and in spite of their new gods, and in spite of their skill in stone ducks, when they will learn that elsewhere there live stronger men, who build their wooden roofs in the free air."

"But to us the skill of the Romans is useful also," said the King, decisively; "it is an honor for a king to make use of what others have cleverly invented. Yet I am pleased with thy words, Hero Berthar, for he is a sensible man who thinks higher of his own people than of foreigners."

When the repast was ended, and the King sat alone at his glass with Ingo, he began loquaciously, "I see, Hero, that the Weird Sisters have attached to thee much suffering at thy birth, but also many good gifts; for they have ordained that the hearts of men shall open in friendship to thee. I also, when I hear thee speak, and when I observe how thou bearest thyself among my men, would like to be well-disposed toward thee. Only one thing troubles my spirit, that thou hast dwelt among my peasants in the forest huts, whose minds have always been hostile to me; and I fear that thy abode there has been to my injury."

"My King need have no reason for anxiety," answered Ingo, earnestly; "I am not likely again to rest by the hearth of Prince Answald."

"Did oath and comradeship come to so rapid an end?" asked the King, with satisfaction. "Can I believe thee, when thou announcest to me so strange a thing? Tell me, please, what separated thee from him?"

"Unwillingly does a host tolerate foreign lodgers on his property," said Ingo, evasively.

"The mutual confidence of masters compels the men also to keep the peace," answered the King. "Thou dost not tell me all, and therefore I can not trust thee."