ime past the Franciscan monastery
towards the Town Hall and the fish market. Eber, the sword cutler, lived
there and, spite of the large sum he owed him, Seitz wished to talk with
him about the sharp weapons he needed for the joust. On his way he gave
his imagination free course. It showed him his impetuous onset, his
enemy's fall in the sand, the sword combat, and the end of the joust, the
swift death of his hated foe.

These pictures of the future occupied his thoughts so deeply that he
neither saw nor heard what was passing around him. Many a person for whom
he forgot to turn aside looked angrily after him. Suddenly he found his
farther progress arrested. The crier had just raised his voice to
announce some important tidings to the people who thronged around him
between the Town Hall and the Franciscan monastery. Perhaps he might have
succeeded in forcing a passage through the concourse, but when he heard
the name "Ernst Ortlieb," in the monotonous speech of the city crier, he
followed the remainder of his notice. It made known to the citizens of
Nuremberg that, since the thunderstorm of the preceding night, a maid had
been missing from the house of the Honourable Herr Ernst Ortlieb, of the
Council, a Swiss by birth, Katharina of Sarnen, called Katterle, a woman
of blameless reputation. Whoever should learn anything concerning the
girl was requested to bring the news to the Ortlieb residence.

What did this mean?

If the girl had vanished at midnight and not returned to her employers
since, she could scarcely have sought Heinz Schorlin as a messenger of
love from Els. But if she had not come to the Swiss from one of the Es,
what proof did he, Seitz, possess of the guilt of his brother-in-law's
bride? How should he succeed in making Wolff understand that his beloved
Els had wronged him if the maid was to play no part in proving it?
Yesterday evening he had not believed firmly in her guilt; that very
morning it had even seemed to him a shameful thing that he had cast
suspicion upon her in the presence of others. The encounter with the maid
at the Swiss knight's lodgings had first induced him to insist on his
accusation so defiantly. And now? If Heinz Schorlin, with the help of the
Ortliebs, succeeded in proving the innocence of those whom he had
accused, then--ah, he must not pursue that train of thought--then, at the
lady's accusation, he might be deprived of the right to enter the lists
in the tournament; then all