ead her face, and it was in a dejected tone that
she answered me that then indeed all must be at an end, and her fondest
hopes nipped, by reason that she owed more to Mistress Waldstromer than
ever she could repay, and whatsoever she might undertake against her will
would of a certainty come to no good end. And we heard my aunt's laugh
again; but then I took heart, and raised the latch, and Ann led the way
into the chamber.

Howbeit, if we had cherished the smallest hope without, within it failed
us wholly. As we went in my uncle was standing close by my aunt; his back
was towards us, and he saw us not; but his mien alone showed us that he
was wroth and provoked: his voice quaked as he cried aloud with a shrug
of his shoulders and his hand uplifted: "Such a purpose is sheer madness
and most unseemly!"

Then, when for the third time I coughed to make our presence known to
him, he turned his red face towards us, and cried out in great fury:
"Here you are to answer for yourselves; and come what may, this at least
shall be said: 'If mischief comes of it, I wash my hands in innocence!'"

Whereupon he went in all haste to the door and had lifted his hand to
slam it to, when he minded him of his beloved wife's sick health and
gently shut it and softly dropped the latch.

We stood in front of Aunt Jacoba, and could scarce believe our eyes and
ears when she opened wide her arms and, with beaming eyes, cried in a
voice of glad content: "Come, come to my heart, children! Oh, you good,
dear, brave maids! Why, why am I so old, so fettered, so sick a creature?
Why may I not go with you?"

At her first words we had fallen on our knees by her side, and she
fervently clasped our heads to her bosom, kissed our lips and foreheads,
and cried, with ever-streaming eyes: "Yes, children, yes! It is brave,
and the right way; Courage and true love are not dead in the hearts of
the women of Nuremberg. Ah, and how many a time have I imagined that I
might myself rise and fly after my froward, dear, unduteous exile, my own
Gotz, be he where he may, over mountains and seas to the ends of the
earth!--I, a hapless, suffering skeleton! Yet what is denied to the old,
the young may do, and the Virgin and all the Saints shall guard you! And
Kubbeling, Young-Kubbeling, that bravest, truest Seyfried! Bring him up
to speak with me. So rough and so good!--My old man, to be sure, must
storm and rave, but then his feeble and sickly nobody of a little wife
c