y, the exclamation: "It
is he!" fell from her lips.

"Who?" asked red-haired Gitta, and was quickly answered in a low tone

"I mean Lienhard, Herr Groland."

"The young one," stuttered Cyriax.

Then, raising the shawl, he continued inquisitively:

"Do you know him? For good or for evil?"

The girl, whose face, spite of its sunken cheeks and the dark rings under
the deep-set blue eyes, still bore distinct traces of former beauty,
started and answered sharply, though not very loudly, for speech was
difficult:

"Good is what you call evil, and evil is what you call good. My
acquaintance with Lienhard, Herr Groland, is my own affair, and, you may
be sure, will remain mine." She glanced contemptuously away from the
others out of doors, but Cyriax, spite of his mutilated tongue, retorted
quickly and harshly:

"I always said so. She'll die a saint yet." Then grasping Kuni's arm
roughly, he dragged her down to him, and whispered jeeringly:

"Ratz has a full purse and sticks to his offer for the cart. If you put
on airs long, he'll get it and the donkey, too, and you'll be left here.
What was it about Groland? You can try how you'll manage on your stump
without us, if we're too bad for you."

"We are not under eternal obligations to you on the child's account,"
added red-haired Gitta in a gentler tone. "Don't vex my husband, or he'll
keep his word about the cart, and who else will be bothered with a
useless creature like you?"

The girl lowered her eyes and looked at her crippled limb.

How would she get on without the cart, which received her when the pain
grew too sharp and the road was too hard and long?

So she turned to the others again, saying soothingly:

"It all happened in the time before I fell." Then she looked out of doors
once more, but she did not find what she sought. The Nuremberg travellers
had ridden through the broad gateway into the large square courtyard,
surrounded by stables on three sides. When Cyriax and his wife again
called to her, desiring to know what had passed between her and Groland,
she clasped her hands around her knees, fixed her eyes on the gaystuffs
wound around the stump where her foot had been amputated, and in a low,
reluctant tone, continued:

"You want to learn what I have to do with Herr Groland? It was about six
years ago, in front of St. Sebald's church, in Nuremberg. A wedding was
to take place. The bridegroom was one of the Council--Lienhard Groland.
The marriage