arcely less clouded than the sky. He did not allude to Barbara by a
single word, yet she was the cause of his depression.

After his conversation with the sovereign he had retired to his private
room, to devote himself to the philological studies which he pursued
during the greater portion of the day with equal zeal and success. But he
had scarcely begun to be absorbed in the new copy of the best manuscript
of Apuleius, which had readied him from Florence, and make notes in the
first Roman printed work of this author, when Cassian interrupted him.

He had missed the servant in the morning. Now the fellow, always so
punctual when he had not gazed too deeply into the wine-cup, stood before
him in a singular plight, for he was completely drenched, and a
disagreeable odour of liquor exhaled from him. The flaxen hair, which
bristled around his head and hung over his broad, ugly face, gave him so
unkempt and imbecile an appearance that it was repulsive to the almoner,
and he harshly asked where he had been loitering.

But Cassian, confident that his master's indignation would soon change to
approval and praise, rapidly began to relate what had occurred outside
the little castle at Prebrunn when the festival under the lindens was
over.

After helping to place the Wittenberg theologian in custody, he had
followed Barbara at some distance during her nocturnal walk. While she
waited in front of Dr. Hiltner's house and talked with the members of the
syndic's family after their return, he had remained concealed in the
shadow of a neighbouring dwelling, and did not move until the doctor had
gone away with the singer. He cautiously glided behind them as far as the
garden, witnessed the syndic's cordial farewell to his companion, and
dogged the former to the Prebrunn jail. Here he had again been obliged to
wait patiently a long while before the doctor came out into the open air
with the prisoner. The rope had been removed from Erasmus's hands, and
Cassian had remained at his heels until he stopped in the village of
Kager, on the Nuremberg road. The young man had taken a lunch in the
tavern there; the money for it was given him by the syndic. Cassian had
seen the gold pieces which had been placed in Erasmus's hand, to pay his
travelling expenses, glitter in the rosy light of dawn.

In reply to the almoner's question whether he remembered any portion of
the conversation between the syndic and the singer, Cassian admitted that
he had