in our household, among the horses;
even as a lad he had by turns helped Herdegen in his sports, and rendered
him good service, and had ever shown him a warmer love than that of a
hireling.

It fell out one day that my brother's best horse came to harm by this
youth's fault, and when Herdegen, for many days, would vouchsafe no word
to him the lad took it so bitterly to heart that he stole away from the
house, and whereas no one could find him, we feared for a long time that
he had done himself a mischief. Nevertheless he was alive and of good
heart. He had passed the months in a various life; first as a crier to a
wandering quack, and afterwards, inasmuch as he was a nimble and likely
lad, he had waited on the guests at one of the best frequented inns at
Wurzberg. It came then to pass that his eminence Cardinal Branda, Nuncio
from his Holiness the Pope, took up his quarters there, and he carried
the lad away with him as his body-servant to Italy, and treated him well
till the restless wight suddenly fell into a languor of home-sickness,
and ran away from this good master, as erewhile he had run away from our
house. Perchance some love-matter drove him to fly. Certain it is that in
his wandering among strangers he had come to be a mighty handy,
wide-awake fellow, with much that was good in him, inasmuch as with all
his subtlety he had kept his true Nuremberger's heart.

When he had journeyed safely home again he one day stole unmarked into
our courtyard, where his old mother lived in an out-building on the
charity of the Schoppers; he went up to her and stood before her, albeit
she knew him not, and laid the gold pieces he had saved one by one on the
work-table before her. The little old woman scarce knew where she was for
sheer amazement, nor wist she who he was till he broke out into his old
loud laugh at the sight of her dismay. Verily, as she afterwards said,
that laugh brought more gladness to her heart and had rung sweeter in her
ears than the gold pieces.

Then Susan had called us down to the courtyard, and when a smart young
stripling came forth to meet us, clad in half Italian and half German
guise, none knew who he might be till he looked Herdegen straight in the
face, and my brother cried out: "It is our Eppelein!" Then the tears
flowed fast down his cheeks, but Herdegen clasped him to him and kissed
him right heartily on both cheeks.

All this did I bring to mind as I saw this said Eppelein carefully and