inty, who first taught me truly to play; for whereas my dolls, and
men-at-arms and shop games, albeit they were small, were in all points
like the true great ones, she had but a staff of wood wrapped round with
a kerchief which she rocked in her arms for a babe; and when she played a
shop game with the little ones, she marked stones and leaves to be their
wares and their money, and so found far greater pastime than we when we
played with figs and almonds and cloves out of little wooden chests and
linen-cloth sacks, and weighed them with brass weights on little scales
with a tongue and string. It was she who brought imagination to bear on
my pastimes, and many a time has she borne my fancy far enough from the
Pegnitz, over seas and rivers to groves of palm and golden fairy lands.

Our fellowship with my brethren was grateful to her as it was to me; but
meseems it was a different thing in those early years from what it was in
later days. While I write a certain summer day from that long past time
comes back to my mind strangely clear. We had played long enough in our
chamber, and we found it too hot in the loft under the roof, where we had
climbed on to the beams, which were great, so we went down into the
garden. Herdegen had quitted us in haste after noon, and we found none
but Kunz, who was shaping arrows for his cross-bow. But he ere long threw
away his knife and came to be with us, and as he was well-disposed to Ann
as being my friend, he did his best to make himself pleasing, or at least
noteworthy in her sight. He stood on his head and then climbed to the top
of the tallest fruit-tree and flung down pears, but they smote her head
so that she cried out; then he turned a wheel on his hands and feet, and
a little more and his shoe would hit her in the face; and when he marked
that he was but troubling us, he went away sorrowful, but only to hide
behind a bush, and as we went past, to rush out on a sudden and put us in
fear by wild shouting.

My eldest brother well-nigh affrighted us more when he presently joined
us, for his hair was all unkempt and his looks wild. He was now of an age
when men-children deem maids to be weak and unfit for true sport, but
nevertheless strive their utmost to be marked and chosen by them. Hence
Ursula's good graces, which she had shown right openly, had for a long
while greatly pleased him, but by this time he was weary of her and began
to conceive that good little Ann, with her nightingal