Early on the following morning came the baron and his train, with the noble knight chosen as a husband for Etelina.

Rheinhard looked in vain for his daughter among the crowd of retainers who waited to welcome him.  “Where is my little maid?” he asked.

The chaplain answered evasively.  The damsel was ill abed, he replied.  When the noble lord had refreshed himself he should see her.

Directly the repast was over he hastened to his daughter’s apartment, only to find her flown!  Dismayed and angry, he rushed to the chaplain and demanded an explanation.  The good old man, after a vain attempt to soothe his irate patron, revealed all—­all, that is, save the place where the fugitives were concealed, and that he firmly refused to divulge.  The priest was committed to the lowest dungeon, a vile den to which access could only be got by means of a trap-door and a rope.

With his own hands the baron swung to the massive trap, swearing a deep oath.

“If I forgive my daughter, or any of her accomplices, may I die suddenly where I now stand, and may my soul perish for ever!”

The disappointed bridegroom soon returned to his own land, and the baron, whose increasing moroseness made him cordially hated by his attendants, was left to the bitterness of his thoughts.

Meanwhile Rudolph and his bride had escaped unseen from the castle rock and now dwelt in the forests skirting the Seven Mountains.  While the summer lasted all went well with them; they, and the little son who was born to them, were content with the sustenance the forest afforded.  But in the winter all was changed.  Starvation stared them in the face.  More and more pitiful became their condition, till at length Rudolph resolved to seek the baron, and give his life, if need be, to save his wife and child.

That very day Rheinhard was out hunting in the forest.  Imagine his surprise when a gaunt figure, clad in a bearskin, stepped from the undergrowth and bade him follow, if he wished to see his daughter alive.  The startled old man obeyed the summons, and arrived at length before a spacious cavern, which his guide motioned him to enter.  Within, on a pile of damp leaves, lay Etelina and her child, both half-dead with starvation.  Rheinhard’s anger speedily melted at the pathetic sight, and he freely forgave his daughter and Rudolph, his hitherto unrecognized guide, and bade them return with him to Okkenfels.

Etelina’s first request was for a pardon for the old chaplain, and Rheinhard himself went to raise the heavy trap-door.  While peering into the gloom, however, he stumbled and fell headlong into the dungeon below.  “A judgment!” he shrieked as he fell, then all was silence.

The bruised remains of the proud baron were interred in the parish church of Linz, and henceforth Etelina and her husband lived happily at Okkenfels.  But both they and the old chaplain offered many a pious prayer for the soul of the unhappy Baron Rheinhard.