d gone beyond the
reach of his own mother-tongue. But here he had married, and from
Cologne had brought home his bride to the picturesque, red, gabled
house by the water's side in his own city. His wife's only sister had
also married, in her own town; and that sister was the virtuous but
rigid aunt Charlotte, to live with whom had been the fate in life of
Linda Tressel.

It need not be more than told in the fewest words that the town-clerk
and the town-clerk's wife both died when Linda was but an infant, and
that the husband of her aunt Charlotte died also. In Nuremberg there
is no possession so much coveted and so dearly loved as that of the
house in which the family lives. Herr Tressel had owned the house
with the three gables, and so had his father before him, and to the
father it had come from an uncle whose name had been different,--and
to him from some other relative. But it was an old family property,
and, like other houses in Nuremberg, was to be kept in the hands of
the family while the family might remain, unless some terrible ruin
should supervene.

When Linda was but six years old, her aunt, the widow, came to
Nuremberg to inhabit the house which the Tressels had left as an only
legacy to their daughter; but it was understood when she did so that
a right of living in the house for the remainder of her days was to
belong to Madame Staubach because of the surrender she thus made
of whatever of a home was then left to her in Cologne. There was
probably no deed executed to this effect; nor would it have been
thought that any deed was necessary. Should Linda Tressel, when
years had rolled on, be taken as a wife, and should the husband
live in the red house, there would still be room for Linda's aunt.
And by no husband in Nuremberg, who should be told that such an
arrangement had been anticipated, would such an arrangement be
opposed. Mothers-in-law, aunts, maiden sisters, and dependent female
relatives, in all degrees, are endured with greater patience and
treated with a gentler hand in patient Bavaria than in some lands
farther west where life is faster, and in which men's shoulders
are more easily galled by slight burdens. And as poor little Linda
Tressel had no other possession but the house, as all other income,
slight as it might be, was to be brought with her by aunt Charlotte,
aunt Charlotte had at least a right to the free use of the roof over
her head. It is necessary that so much should be told; but