my aunt's window, and bid him come up
forthwith to her mistress. But the Brunswicker only replied roughly and
shortly: "First those that need my help." And he spoke thus of a wounded
man, whom he had picked up, nigh unto death, by the road-side. While,
with Uhlwurm's help, he carefully lifted the youth from under the
tilt, my uncle, who had long been hoping for his advent, gave him a
questioning look. The other understood, and shook his head sadly to
answer him No. And then he busied himself with the stricken man, as he
growled out to my uncle: "I crossed the pond to Alexandria, but of your
man--you know who--not a claw nor a feather. As to the Schopper brothers
on the other hand.... But first let us try to get between this poor
fellow and the grave. Hold on, Uhlwurm!" And he was about to lift the
sick man in doors. Howbeit, I went up to the Brunswicker, who in his
rough wise had ever liked me well, and whereas meseemed he had seen my
brothers, I besought him right lovingly to give me tidings of them; but
he only pointed to the helpless man and said that such tidings as he had
to give I should hear only too soon; and this I deemed was so forbidding
and so dismal that I made up my mind to the worst; nay, and my fears
waxed all the greater as he laid his big hand on my sleeve, as it might
be to comfort me, inasmuch as that he had never yet done this save when
he heard tell of my Hans' untimely end.

And then, since he would have none of my help in attending on the sick
man, I ran up to my aunt to tell her with due care of the tidings I had
heard; but my uncle had gone before me, and in the doorway I could see
that he had just kissed his beloved wife's brow. I could read in both
their faces that they were bereft of another hope, yet would my aunt go
below and herself speak with Young Kubbeling. My uncle would fain have
hindered her, but she paid no heed to his admonitions, and while her
tiring-woman arrayed her with great care to appear at table, she thanked
the saints for that Ann was far away on this luckless day.

Thus the hours sped between our homecoming from the chase and the
evening meal, and we presently met all our guests in the refectory. Aunt
Jacoba, as was her wont, sat on her couch on which she was carried,
at the upper end of the table near the chimneyplace, next to which a
smaller table was spread, where Kubbeling and Uhlwurm took their seats
as though they had never sat elsewhere in their lives; and in tru