h I have sworn!"

And his cheeks were red, and I had never seen him look so great and tall.

Then, when he saw me, he held out both hands to me in his frank, loving
way, and I took them with all my heart. At this he looked into my eyes
which were full of tears, and he drew me hastily to him and kissed me on
my brow for the first time in all his life, with strange passion; and
without another word he ran out of the house-door into the street. My
cousin gazed after him, shaking her head sadly and wiping her eyes; but
when I asked her what was wrong with my cousin she would give me no
tidings of the matter.

The next day we should have gone out to the forest, but we remained at
home; Aunt Jacoba would see no one. Her son had turned his back on his
parents' dwelling, and had gone out as a stranger among strangers. And
this was the first sore grief sent by Heaven on my young heart.

CHAPTER IV.

Many of the fairest memories of my childhood are linked with the house
where Ann's parents dwelt. It was indeed but a simple home and not to be
named with ours--the Schopperhof--for greatness or for riches; but it was
a snug nest, and in divers ways so unlike ever another that it was full
of pleasures for a child.

Master Spiesz, Ann's father, had been bidden from Venice, where he had
been in the service of the Mendel's merchant house, to become head clerk
in Nuremberg, first in the Chamber of Taxes, and then in the Chancery, a
respectable post of much trust. His father was, as Ursula Tetzel had said
in the school, a luteplayer; but he had long been held the head and chief
of teachers of the noble art of music, and was so greatly respected by
the clergy and laity that he was made master and leader of the church
choir, and even in the houses of the city nobles his teaching of the lute
and of singing was deemed the best. He was a right well-disposed and
cheerful old man, of a rare good heart and temper, and of wondrous good
devices. When the worshipful town council bid his son Veit Spiesz come
back to Nuremberg, the old man must need fit up a proper house for him,
since he himself was content with a small chamber, and the scribe was by
this time married to the fair Giovanna, the daughter of one of the
Sensali or brokers of the German Fondaco, and must have a home and hearth
of his own.

[Sensali--Agents who conducted all matters of business between the
German and Venetian merchants. Not even the smallest affair was