her was the dearest person on earth--"if he is really
sure of her love!"

She herself had not yet opened her heart to love. To wander through
forest and field with the aged head of her family, assist her mother in
housekeeping, and nurse the sick poor in the village, had hitherto been
the joy and duty of her life. Gaily, often with a song upon her lips, she
had carelessly seen one day follow another until Schorlin Castle was
besieged and destroyed, and her dear uncle, the Knight Ramsweg, was slain
in the defence of the fortress confided to his care. Then she and her
mother were taken to the convent at Constance. Both remained there in
perfect freedom, as welcome guests of the nuns, until the mounted courier
brought a letter from the Knight Maier of Silenen, her cousin, who wrote
from Nuremberg that Heinz, like his sisters, intended to renounce the
world.

Lady Schorlin set out at once, and with an anxious heart rode to
Nuremberg with her daughter as fast as possible.

They had arrived a few hours before and gone to their cousin from
Silenen. From him the Lady Wendula learned what her maternal love desired
to know. Biberli's fate brought her, after a brief rest, to the hospital,
and how it comforted the faithful fellow's heart to see the noble lady
who had confided his master to his care, and in whose house the T and St
had been embroidered on his long coat and cap!

Lady Wendula had remembered these letters, and when she spoke of them he
replied that since he had partially verified what the T and St had
announced to people concerning his character, and to which the letters
had themselves incited him, he no longer needed them.

Then he lapsed into silence, and at last, as the result of his
meditations, told his mistress that there was something unusual about his
insignificant self, because he earnestly desired to practise the virtues
whose possession he claimed before the eyes of the people. He had usually
found the worst wine in the taverns with showy signs, and when the Lady
Wendula's daughter had embroidered those letters on the cloth for him,
what he furnished the guests was also of very doubtful quality. On his
sick bed he had been obliged to place no curb upon his proneness to
reflection, and in doing so had discovered that there was no virtue which
can be owned like a house or a steed, but that each must be constantly
gained anew, often amidst toil and suffering. One thing, however, was now
firmly established