elt was no more than
the compassion due to a young man who was alone in the world, without
parents or brethren or near kin.

One morning I went to seek Herdegen in the armory and there found him
stripped of his jerkin, with sleeves turned up; and with him was the
Bohemian, striving with an iron file to remove from my brother's arm a
gold bracelet which was not merely fastened but soldered round his arm.
So soon as he saw that I had at once descried the band, though he
attempted to hide it with his sleeve, he sought to put off my
questioning, at first with a jest and then with wrathful impatience flung
on his jerkin and turned his back on me. Forthwith I examined Ritter
Franz, and he was led to confess to me that a fair Italian Marchesa had
prevailed on Herdegen to have this armlet riveted on to his arm in token
of his ever true service.

On learning this I was moved to great dread both for my brother's sake
and for Ann's; and when I presently upbraided him for his breach of faith
he threw his arms round me with his wonted outrageous humor and
boisterous spirit, and said: What more would I have, since that I had
seen with my own eyes that he was trying to be quit of that bond? To get
at the Marchesa he would need to cross a score of rivers and streams; and
even in our virtuous town of Nuremberg it was the rule that a man might
be on with a new love when he had left the third bridge behind him.

I liked not this fashion of speech, and when he saw that I was
ill-pleased and grieved, instead of falling in with his merry mood, he
took up a more earnest vein and said: "Never mind, Margery. Only one tall
tree of love grows in my breast, and the name of it is Ann; the little
flowers that may have come up round it when I was far away have but a
short and starved life, and in no case can they do the great tree a
mischief."

Then with all my heart I besought him that, as he had now bound up the
life and happiness of the sweetest and most loving maid on earth with his
own, he would ever keep his faith and be to her a true man. Seeing,
however, that he was but little moved by this counsel, the hot blood of
the Schoppers mounted to my head and thereupon I railed at his sayings
and doings as sinful and cruel, and he likewise flared out and bid me
beware how I spoke ill of my own father; for that like as he, Herdegen,
had carried the image of Ann in his heart, so had father carried that of
our dear mother beyond the Alps, and never