; but the elder woman rushed at me, beside her wits
with rage, to snatch it from me; and whereas she was doubtless its mother
or grand-dame, I might have yielded up the child, but that Ritter Franz
came to me in haste to bid me, from my Aunt Jacoba, carry it to her.

Who better than she knew the whole art and secret of healing the wounds
of a hound's making? And so I told the old dame, to comfort her, albeit
she struggled furiously to get the babe from me. Nay and she might have
done so if the little thing had not clung round my neck with its right
arm that had no hurt, as lovingly as though it had been mine own and no
kin to the shrieking old woman.

But ere long a clear and strange light was cast on the matter; for when
we had loosened the child's little shirt, and my aunt had duly washed the
blood from the wounds, under the dark hue of its skin behold it was
tender white, and so it was plain that here was a stolen child, needing
to be rescued.

Then the house-stewardess, the widow of a forester whose husband had been
slain by poachers, and who labored bravely to bring up her five orphan
children, with my aunt's help--this woman, I say, now remembered that
when she had made her pilgrimage, but lately, to Vierzehnheiligen, the
Knight von Hirschhorn, treasurer to the Lord Bishop of Bamberg at
Schesslitz, not far from the place of pilgrimage, had lost a babe, stolen
away by vagabond knaves. Then Aunt Jacoba bethought herself that
restitution and benevolence might be made one; and, quoth she, this
matter might greatly profit the housekeeper and her little ones, inasmuch
as that the sorrowing father had promised a ransom of thirty Hungarian
ducats to him who should bring back his little daughter living; and
forthwith the whole tribe of the bear-leaders were to be bound. The old
beldame gave our men a hard job, for she tried to make off to the forest,
and called aloud: "Hind--Hind!" which was the young wench's name, with
outlandish words which doubtless were to warn her to flee; but the
serving men gained their end and made the wild hag fast.

Ann was pale and in pain with her head aching, but she helped my aunt to
tend the child; and I was glad, inasmuch as I conceived that I knew where
to find Herdegen and the young dancing wench, and I cared only to save
his poor betrayed sweetheart from shame and sorrow. I crept away,
unmarked, through the garden of herbs behind the lodge, to a moss but
which my banished cousin had b