hut your eyes
and sleep as long as you can. I'll be as quiet as a mouse while I am
dressing."

As she spoke she turned away from her sister and no longer resisted the
sleep which soon closed her weary eyes.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Shipwrecked on the cliffs of 'better' and 'best'

IN THE FIRE OF THE FORGE

A ROMANCE OF OLD NUREMBERG

By Georg Ebers

Volume 2.

CHAPTER V.

As her father had ordered the servants not to disturb the young girls,
Els did not wake till the sun was high in the heavens. Eva's place at her
side was empty. She had already left the room. For the first time it had
been impossible to sleep even a few short moments, and when she heard
from the neighbouring cloister the ringing of the little bell that
summoned the nuns to prayers, she could stay in bed no longer.

Usually she liked to dress slowly, thinking meanwhile of many things
which stirred her soul. Sometimes while the maid or Els braided her hair
she could read a book of devotion which the abbess had given her. But
this morning she had carried the clothes she needed into the next room on
tiptoe, that she might not wake her sister, and urged Katterle, who
helped her dress, to hurry.

She longed to see her aunt at the convent. While kneeling at the
prie-dieu, she had reached the certainty that her patron saint had led
Heinz Schorlin to her. He was her knight and she his lady, so he must
render her obedience, and she would use it to estrange him from the
vanity of the world and make him a champion of the holy cause of the
Church of Christ, the victorious conqueror of her foes. Sky-blue, the
Holy Virgin's colour, should be hers, and thus his also, and every
victory gained by the knight with the sky-blue on his helmet, under St.
Clare's protection, would then be hers.

Heinz Schorlin was already one of the boldest and strongest knights; her
love must render him also one of the most godly. Yes, her love! If St.
Francis had not disdained to make a wolf his brother, why might she not
feel herself the loving sister of a youth who would obey her as a noble
falcon did his mistress, and whom she would teach to pursue the right
quarry? The abbess would not forbid such love, and the impulse that drew
her so strongly to the convent was the longing to know how her aunt would
receive her confession.

The night before when, after her conversation with Els, she began to
pray, she had feared that she had fallen into t