dings from the
neighbourhood of the Siebenburgs! what hours of trouble were caused by
the prior of the Dominicans and his envoys, who strove to convince her
that her intention of renouncing her conventual life was treason to God,
and that the boldness with which she had released herself from the former
guides of her spiritual life and sought her own way would lead her to
heresy and perdition! How painful, too, was the feeling that she was
being examined to discover whether the Abbess Kunigunde had any share in
her change of purpose!

The torture to which stronger men rarely succumbed seemed to threaten the
life of the more delicate ex-schoolmaster. At first the leech Otto, who,
to please Els and Fran Christine, and touched by the brave spirit of this
humble man, had daily visited Biberli, believed that he could not save
him. On the straw pallet, and with the incompetent nursing at the
hospital, he would have died very speedily, and what would have befallen
his poor mangled toes and fingers in the hands of the barbers who managed
affairs there?

At the Beguines the kindly, skilful old physician had bandaged his hands
and feet as carefully as if he had been the most aristocratic gentleman,
and no prince could have been more tenderly and patiently watched by
trained nurses; for, wonderful to relate, Eva, who had so willingly left
her sick mother to her sister's care, and had often been vexed with
herself because she could not even remotely equal Els beside the couch of
the beloved invalid, rendered the mangled squire every service with a
touch so light and firm that the old physician often watched her with
glad astonishment.

Caution, the quality she most lacked, seemed to have suddenly waked from
a long slumber with doubly clear, far-seeing eyes. If it was necessary to
turn the sick man, she paid special heed to every aching spot in his
tortured body, and invented contrivances which she arranged with patient
care to save him pain.

Her own bed had been placed in the widow's chamber next to Biberli's, and
from the night that her Aunt Christine had permitted her to remain in the
Beguine house, she, who formerly had loved sleep and slumbered soundly,
had been beside the sick woman at the least sign. On the third day she
rendered her, with her own hands, every service for which she had
formerly needed a Beguine's aid. She had possessed the gift of uttering
words of cheer and comfort even to her invalid mother better than