for in truth her good counsel stretched forth over the whole
range of forest, and over all her husband's rough henchmen. She knew the
name of every child in the furthest warders' huts, and never did she
suffer one of the forest folks to die unholpen. She was, indeed, forced
to see with other eyes and give with other hands than her own, and
notwithstanding this she ever gave help where it was most needed, since
she chose her messengers well and lent an ear to all who sought her.

She soon found work for us, making us do many a Samaritan-task; and many
a time have we marvelled to mark the skill with which she wove her web,
and the wisdom coupled with her open-handed bounty.

No one else could have found a place in the great books which she filled
with her records; but to her they were so clear that the craft of the
most cunning was put to shame when she looked into them. Never a soul,
whether master or man, said her nay in the lightest thing, to my
knowledge, and this was a plea for the one fault which had hitherto set
me against her.

Everything here was new to Ann; and what could be more delightful, what
could give me greater joy than to be able to show all that was noteworthy
and pleasant, and to me well-known, to a well-beloved friend, and to tell
her the use and end of each thing. In this two men were ever ready to
help me: Uncle Conrad and the young Baron von Kalenbach, a Swabian who
had come to be my uncle's disciple and to learn forestry.

This same young Baron was a slender stripling, well-grown and not
ill-favored; but it seemed as though his lips were locked, and if a man
was fain to hear the sound of his voice and get from him a "yea" or "nay"
there was no way but by asking him a plain question. His eye, on the
other hand, was full of speech, and by the time I had been no more than
three weeks at the Lodge it told me, as often as it might, that he was
deeply in love with me; nay, he told the reverend chaplain in so many
words that his first desire was that he might take me home as his wife to
Swabia, where he had rich estates.

Never would I have said him yea, albeit I liked him well; nor did I hide
it from him; nay indeed, now and again I may have lent him courage,
though truly with no evil intent, since I was not ill pleased with the
tale his eyes told me. And I was but a young thing then, and wist not as
yet that a maid who gives hope to a suitor though she has no mind to hear
him, is guilty of a sin gr