knees by her side, and she
fervently clasped our heads to her bosom, kissed our lips and foreheads,
and cried, with ever-streaming eyes: "Yes, children, yes! It is brave,
and the right way; Courage and true love are not dead in the hearts of
the women of Nuremberg. Ah, and how many a time have I imagined that I
might myself rise and fly after my froward, dear, unduteous exile, my
own Gotz, be he where he may, over mountains and seas to the ends of the
earth!--I, a hapless, suffering skeleton! Yet what is denied to the old,
the young may do, and the Virgin and all the Saints shall guard you! And
Kubbeling, Young-Kubbeling, that bravest, truest Seyfried! Bring him up
to speak with me. So rough and so good!--My old man, to be sure, must
storm and rave, but then his feeble and sickly nobody of a little wife
can wind him round her finger. Leave him to me, and be sure you shall
win his blessing." After noon Uhlwurm and the waggon of birds set forth
to Frankfort, where Kubbeling's eldest son was tarrying to meet his
father with fresh falcons. Or ever the grim old grey-beard mounted his
horse, he whispered to Ann: "Truest of maidens, find some device to move
Seyfried to take me in your fellowship to the land of Egypt, and I will
work a charm which shall of a surety give your lover back to you, if
indeed he is not..." and he was about to cry "gone" as was his wont; yet
he refrained himself and spoke it not. Young Kubbeling tarried at the
Forest-lodge; and as for my uncle, it was soon plain enough that my aunt
had been in the right in the matter; nay, when we went home to the city,
meseemed as though he and his wife had from the first been of one mind.
Our purpose pleased him better as he learned to believe more surely that
our little women's wits would peradventure be able to find his wandering
son, and to tempt him to return to his father's forest home.

CHAPTER XII.

We carefully obeyed Kubbeling's counsel that we should keep our purpose
dark, and it remained hidden even from the guests at the lodge. On the
other hand they had been told all that Herdegen's letter had contained,
and that it was Ursula who was pursuing him with such malignant spite.
Yet albeit we bound over each one to hold his peace on the matter
in Nuremberg, no woman, nor perchance no man either, could keep such
strange doings privy from near kith and kin; and whereas we might
not tell what in truth it was which stood in the way of our brothers'
homec