The Greylock | Page 3

against his shield he fell to the ground.
The creature shrank suddenly together and in the guise of a black, agile
rat shot towards him.
Sir Wendelin felt that he was losing consciousness, he heard faintly a
voice from the grotto where the lady was imprisoned calling to him:
"The ring, remember the ring!"
He was just able to turn with his thumb the ring on his little finger.
Immediately he felt himself lighter and freer than he had ever felt
before, and his heart seemed to harden to a steel spring, while a gay and
reckless mood came over him. A wild desire to fly took possession of
him at the same time, and it seemed as if he were only fourteen years
old once more. Some strange force impelled him aloft into the air, to
which he yielded, spreading the two large wings, that he suddenly
found himself in possession of, as naturally as if he had used them all
his life. He soon felt the feathers on his back stroked by the clouds, and
yet he saw everything below him on the earth more distinctly than ever
before. Even the smallest things appeared perfectly clear to his
sharpened eyes, and yet he seemed to see them as if reflected in a
brilliant mirror. He could distinguish even the hairs on the rat and
suddenly another impulse came over him--the impulse to stoop down

and catch the long-tailed vermin in his beak and claws. Wendelin had
been changed into a falcon, and the rat struggled in vain to escape his
powerful attack.
The prisoner had followed the combat first with anxiety, then with joy.
While the falcon held the rat in his claws and struck him with his beak
again and again, she called the squire to her, and bade him free her
from her chains. This was no distasteful task for George, indeed it gave
him so much pleasure that he was in no hurry to finish.
When at last all her bonds were loosened, she stood very erect, and
lifted her arms, and each moment seemed to make her more lovely and
more beautiful. Then she grasped the circle of emeralds, about which
the enchanter had wound her golden hair, and waving it high in the air,
cried: "Falcon, return to the shape you were before. Misdral, hear thy
sentence!"
Wendelin assumed immediately his knightly guise, which seemed very
clumsy to him after having been a falcon. The rat lengthened itself and
expanded until it was once more the giant covered with pumicestone; it
walked no longer erect, however, but crawled along the ground at the
feet of the beautiful woman, whimpering and howling like a whipped
cur. She then said to it: "At last I possess the emerald circlet, in which
resides your power over me. I can destroy you, but my name is
Clementine and so I will grant you mercy. I will only banish you to
your rocks. There you shall remain until the last hour of the last day.
Papaluka, Papaluka,--Emerald, perform thy duty!"
The giant of pumice-stone immediately glowed like molten iron. Once
he raised his clenched fist towards Wendelin, and then plunged into the
lake where the hissing and foaming waters closed over him. The lady
and the knight were left alone together. When she asked him what
reward he desired, he could only answer that he wished to have her for
his wife, and to take her to his home in Germany; but she blushed and
answered sadly: "I may not leave this country, and it is not permitted to
me to become the wife of any mortal man. But I know how heroes
should be rewarded, and I offer you my lips to kiss."
He knelt down before her and she took his head between her slim hands
and pressed her mouth against his.
George, the squire, saw this, sighed deeply, and wondered: "Why was
my father only a miller? What favours are granted to a knight like that!

But I hope the kiss won't be the end of it all; for, unless she is a miserly
fairy, there ought to be much more substantial pay for his services in
store for him."
But Clementine bestowed even a richer reward than he had expected
upon her rescuer. When she discovered that a lock of the brown hair on
Wendelin's left temple had turned grey during the conflict with the evil
monster, she said to him: 'All this land shall belong to you henceforth,
and because you have grown grey in your courageous fight with evil,
you shall be known from this time forward as Duke Greylock. Every
prince, yea, even the Emperor himself, will recognize the title which I
confer upon you as my saviour, and when the race, of