gift and the viaticum--in short, her whole property, which
would have been large enough to support her a long time--in order to do
what she could for the salvation of the child for whom her soul was more
concerned than for her own welfare.

The astonished father's eyes filled with tears of grateful emotion, and
when Lienhard went with the gray-haired leech to the dying girl Doctor
Peutinger begged permission to accompany them. The physician, however,
requested him to remain away from the sufferer, who would be disturbed
by the sight of a strange face. Then Peutinger charged his young friend
to give Kuni his kind greetings and thank her for the love with which
she had remembered his dear child.

The young Councillor silently followed the physician to the sick bed, at
whose head leaned a Gray Sister, who was one of the guests of The Blue
Pike and had volunteered to nurse the patient.

The nun shook her head sorrowfully as the two men crossed the threshold.
She knew how the dying look, and that the hand of death already touched
this sufferer. Yet her kind, colourless face, framed by the white sides
of her cap, quickly regained its usual quiet, placid expression.

The regular features, now slightly flushed with the fever, of the
patient in her charge, on the contrary, were constantly varying in
expression. She had noticed the entrance of the visitors, and when she
opened her sparkling blue eyes and saw the person to whom her poor heart
clung with insatiable yearning they were filled with a sunny radiance,
and a smile hovered round her lips.

She had known that he would come, that he would not let her die without
granting her one more glance.

Now she would fain have nodded to him and expressed in very, very
appropriate words the delight, the embarrassment, the gratitude
which filled her soul, but her panting chest could give no breath for
utterance. Nay, extreme exhaustion even prevented the movement of her
lips. But her heart and brain were by no means inactive. A wealth of
internal and external experiences, long since forgotten, rose before
her mind. First she fancied that she saw Lienhard, as at their first
meeting, approaching the garlanded door of St. Sebald's with his
beautiful bride, arrayed in her wedding robes. Then she was transported
to the court room and felt his hand stroke her hair. The hours at Frau
Schurstab's when she had awaited his visits with an anxious heart came
back to her memory. Then she agai