sisted.

He had been a buffoon, and his dress still bore many tokens of his former
profession. His big head swayed upon his thin neck; his droll, though
emaciated features constantly changed their expression, and even when he
was not coughing, his mouth was continually in motion.

As soon as Ulrich breathed calmly and regularly, he searched his clothing
to find some clue to his residence, but everything he discovered in the
lad's pockets only led to more and more amusing and startling
conjectures, for nothing can contain a greater variety of objects than a
school-boy's pockets, if we except a school-girl's.

There was a scrap of paper with a Latin exercise bristling with errors, a
smooth stone, a shabby, notched knife, a bit of chalk for drawing, an
iron arrow-head, a broken hobnail, and a falconer's glove, which Count
Lips had given his comrade. The ring the doctor's wife had bestowed as a
farewell token, was also discovered around his neck.

All these things led Pellicanus--so the jester was named--to make many a
conjecture, and he left none untried.

As a mosaic picture is formed from stones, he by a hundred signs,
conjured up a vision of the lad's character, home, and the school from
which he had run away.

He called him the son of a noble of moderate property. In this he was of
course mistaken, but in other respects perceived, with wonderful
acuteness, how Ulrich had hitherto been circumstanced, nay even declared
that he was a motherless child, a fact proved by many things he lacked.
The boy had been sent to school too late--Pellicanus was a good Latin
scholar--and perhaps had been too early initiated into the mysteries of
riding, hunting, and woodcraft.

The artist, merely by the boy's appearance, gained a more accurate
knowledge of his real nature, than the jester gathered from his
investigations and inferences.

Ulrich pleased him, and when he saw the pen-and-ink sketch on the back of
the exercise, which Pellicanus showed him, he smiled and felt
strengthened in the resolve to interest himself still more in the
handsome boy, whom fate had thrown in his way. He now only needed to
discover who the lad's parents were, and what had driven him from the
school.

The surgeon of the little town had bled Ulrich, and soon after he fell
into a sound sleep, and breathed quietly. The artist and jester now dined
together, for the monks had finished their meal long before, and were
taking a noonday nap. Moor ordered