t, and the lovers might yet for a long space signal to
each other by the waving of hat and of kerchief.

CHAPTER VII.

Herdegen's departing marks my life's way with another mile-stone. All
fears about him were over, and a great peace fell upon me.

I had learnt by experience that it was within my power to be mistress of
any heart's griefs, and I could tell myself that dull sufferance of woe
would have ill-pleased him whose judgment I most cared for. To remember
him was what I best loved, and I earnestly desired to guide my steps as
would have been his wish and will. In some degree I was able to do so,
and Ann was my great helper.

My eyes and ears were opened again to what should befall in the world in
which my lover had lived; all the more so as matters now came about in
the land and on its borders which deeply concerned my own dear home and
threatened it with great peril.

After the Diet was broken up, the Elector Frederick of Brandenburg was
forced to take patience till the princes, lords, and mounted men-at-arms
sent forth by the townships, five or six from each, could muster at his
bidding to pursue the Hussites in Bohemia. One year was thus idly spent;
albeit the Bohemian rebels meanwhile could every day use their weapons,
and instead of waiting to be attacked marched forward to attack. Certain
troops of the heretics had already crossed the borders, and our good
town had to strengthen its walls and dig its moat deeper to make ready
for storm and siege. Or ever the Diet had met, many hands had already
been at work on these buildings; and in these days every man soul in
Nuremberg, from the boys even to the grey-haired men, wielded the spade
or the trowel. Every serving-man in every household, whether artisan or
patrician--and ours with the rest--was bound to toil at digging, and our
fine young masters found themselves compelled to work in sun or rain, or
to order the others; and it hurt them no more than it did the Magister,
whose feebleness and clumsiness did the works less benefit than the
labor did to his frail body.

Wheresoever three men might be seen in talk, for sure it was of
state-matters, and mostly of the Hussites. At first it would be of the
King's message of peace; of the resistance made by the Elector Palatine,
Ludwig, in the matter of receiving the ecclesiastical Elector of Mainz
as Vicar-general of the Empire; of the same reverend Elector's loss of
dignity at Boppard, and of the delay and