e. To Kunz she paid little heed; yet he never failed to wait on her
and watch to do her service, as though she were the daughter of some
great lord, and he no more than her page.

Ann freely owned to me that she held Herdegen to be the noblest youth on
earth, nor could I marvel, when I was myself of the same mind. What
should I know, when I was still but fourteen and fifteen years old, of
love and its dangers? I had felt such love for Gotz as Ann for my elder
brother, and as I had then been glad that my dear Cousin had won the love
of so fair a maid as Gertrude, I likewise believed that Ann would some
day be glad if Herdegen should plight his troth to a fair damsel of high
degree. Hence I did all that in me lay to bring them together whenever it
might be, and in truth this befell often enough without my aid; for not
music alone was a bond between them, nor yet that Herdegen and I taught
her to ride on a horse, on the sandy way behind our horse-stalls--the
Greek lessons for which Magister Peter had come into the household were a
plea on which they passed many an hour together.

I was slow to learn that tongue; but Ann's head was not less apt than my
brother's, and he was eager and diligent to keep her good speed at the
like mark with his own, as she was so quick to apprehend. Thus both were
at last forward enough to put Greek into German, and then Magister Peter
was bidden to lend them his aid. Now, the change in the worthy man, after
eating for four years at our table, was such that many an one would have
said it was a miracle. At his first coming to us he himself said he
weened he was a doomed son of ill-luck, and he scarce dared look man or
woman in the face; and what a good figure he made now, notwithstanding
the divers pranks played on his simplicity by my brothers and their
fellows, nay, and some whiles by me.

Many an one before this has marked that the god Amor is the best
schoolmaster; and when our Magister had learnt to stoop less, nay almost
to hold himself straight, when as now, he wore his good new coat with
wide hanging sleeves, tight-fitting hose, a well-stiffened, snow-white
collar, and even a smart black feather in his beretta, when he not alone
smoothed his hair but anointed it, all this, in its beginnings, was by
reason of his great and true love for my Ann, while she was yet but a
child.

My cautious Cousin Maud had, it is true, done the blind god of Love good
service; for many a time she would, wi