d, and when my just
anguish pours itself forth in words, you meanly appeal to your father's
rank, and close my mouth by despicable threats."

"Maimed!" cried Friend in alarm, and Agatha flew with loud lamentations
to her father, who, drawing his left arm from his doublet, showed the
stump, bound up in bloody cloths.

"Eternal mercy! your hand!" shrieked Agatha.

"It lies before the house of the widow Fox, in the market," said
Onophrius gloomily; "Netz hewed it from the arm just before you killed
him."

"It grieves me; but on my honour I will make all good again."

"That is more than you can do: though you were to empty out all your
gold-bags into this room, yet would no hand grow again upon this stump;
though you were to dress my child in brocade, and adorn her with pearls
and diamonds, still she would be your strumpet, over whom I must tear
the grey locks from this aged head. Gracious Heavens! how little must
you gentlemen think of us poor people, that you fancy all is to be
satisfied with gold,--all, life and limb, honour and conscience! Well;
God is just, and will one day weigh you in even scales, and find you
too light for his heaven."

"Only let two eyes be closed first," protested Francis, "and if I do
not then take home your Agatha as my wife, and make you a man of
consequence in the city, you may call me villain in the public
market-place."

"My good Francis," exclaimed Agatha, affectionately, and gave him her
hand, even before the eyes of her stern parent.

"If we both live," said Onophrius, with peculiar emphasis, "if we both
live, I will remind you of your promise; but I fear that we shall not
get so far; I fear that this day's tumult will have worse consequences
than you imagine. That Bieler has been killed is a sad misfortune. The
nobles will be mad, and I already begin to shudder at the idea of the
jail and the scaffold."

"Is Bieler, then, really dead?" asked Francis anxiously, after a long
silence.

"I saw him carried as a corpse to the Guildhall," replied Onophrius.
"The thing, too, happened naturally enough. As my left hand flew off, I
cut at his head with my right, and you soon after made an end of him."

"Upon all this we'll be silent to every one," said Francis, who had
again collected himself. "For the rest, the whole business is of no
great consequence. I was acting in self-defence; and you were only
doing your duty. If any ill have grown out of it, Rasselwitz, who began
the strife