again he had spoken to her of the matter, telling
her, in few but hearty words, that she would be ever welcome to his house
and there fill the place of his lost Gertrude; but that if she was fain
to wed an honest man, he would make it his business to provide her
outfit.

These things, and much more, inclined me in his favor, little as I
desired that he should wed the widow, for Herdegen's sake; and when I met
him for the first time as betrothed to Ann's mother, and the grandlooking
man shook my hand with hearty kindness, and then thanked me with warmth
and simplicity for whatsoever I had done for her who henceforth would be
his dearest and most precious treasure, I returned the warm grasp of his
hand with all honesty, and it was from the bottom of my heart that I
answered him, saying that I gladly hailed him as a new friend, albeit I
could not hope for the same from my brother.

He heard this with a strange smile, half mournful, but, meseemed, half
proud; then he held forth his horny, hard-worked hand, and said that to
be sure it was an ill-matched pair when such a hand as that should clasp
a soft and white one such as might come out of a velvet sleeve; that
whereas, in order to win the woman he loved, he had taken her tribe of
children into the bargain, and fully purposed to have much joy of them
and be a true father to them, my lord brother, if his love were no less
true, must make the best of his father-in-law, whose honor, though he was
but of simple birth, was as clean as ever another man's in the eyes of
God.

And as we talked I found there was more and nobler matter in his brain
and heart than I had ever weened I might find in a craftsman. We met
often and learned to know each other well, and one day it fell that I
asked him whether he had in truth forgiven the Junker through whom he had
lost the one he loved best.

He forthwith replied that I was not to lay the blame on one whom he would
ever remember as a brave and true-hearted youth, inasmuch as it was not
my cousin, but he himself who had put an end to the love-making between
Gotz and Gertrude. It was after the breach between Gotz and his parents
that it had been most hard to turn a deaf ear to the prayers of the
devoted lover and of his own child. But, through all, he had borne in
mind the doctrine by which his father had ever ruled his going, namely,
not to bring on our neighbor such grief as would make our own heart sore.
Therefore he examined himself