‘Halt!’ cried the Monk, and signalled with a peculiar whistle, to which he seemed breathlessly awaiting an answer.  They were immediately surrounded by longrobed veiled figures.

‘Not too late?’ the Monk hoarsely asked of them.

‘Yet an hour!’ was the reply, in soft clear tones of a woman’s voice.

‘Great strength and valour more than human be mine,’ exclaimed the Monk, dismounting.

He passed apart from them; and they drew in a circle, while he prayed, kneeling.

Presently he returned, and led Farina to a bank, drawing from some hiding-place a book and a bell, which he gave into the hands of the youth.

‘For thy soul, no word!’ said the Monk, speaking down his throat as he took in breath.  ’Nay! not in answer to me!  Be faithful, and more than earthly fortune is thine; for I say unto thee, I shall not fail, having grace to sustain this combat.’

Thereupon he commenced the ascent of Drachenfels.

Farina followed.  He had no hint of the Monk’s mission, nor of the part himself was to play in it.  Such a load of silence gathered on his questioning spirit, that the outcry of the rageing elements alone prevented him from arresting the Monk and demanding the end of his service there.  That outcry was enough to freeze speech on the very lips of a mortal.  For scarce had they got footing on the winding path of the crags, when the whole vengeance of the storm was hurled against the mountain.  Huge boulders were loosened and came bowling from above:  trees torn by their roots from the fissures whizzed on the eddies of the wind:  torrents of rain foamed down the iron flanks of rock, and flew off in hoar feathers against the short pauses of darkness:  the mountain heaved, and quaked, and yawned a succession of hideous chasms.

‘There’s a devil in this,’ thought Farina.  He looked back and marked the river imaging lurid abysses of cloud above the mountain-summit—­yea! and on the summit a flaming shape was mirrored.

Two nervous hands stayed the cry on his mouth.

‘Have I not warned thee?’ said the husky voice of the Monk.  ’I may well watch, and think for thee as for a dog.  Be thou as faithful!’

He handed a flask to the youth, and bade him drink.  Farina drank and felt richly invigorated.  The Monk then took bell and book.

‘But half an hour,’ he muttered, ’for this combat that is to ring through centuries.’

Crossing himself, he strode wildly upward.  Farina saw him beckon back once, and the next instant he was lost round an incline of the highest peak.

The wind that had just screamed a thousand death-screams, was now awfully dumb, albeit Farina could feel it lifting hood and hair.  In the unnatural stillness his ear received tones of a hymn chanted below; now sinking, now swelling; as though the voices faltered between prayer and inspiration.  Farina caught on a projection of crag, and fixed his eyes on what was passing on the height.