hat is at stake."

"But peace was proclaimed yesterday," said Els, "and if robber knights
and bandits should venture----But, no! Surely the waggons have a strong
escort."

"The strongest," answered Wolff. "The first wain could not arrive before
to-morrow morning."

"You see!" cried the girl gaily. "Just wait patiently. When you are
once mine I'll teach you not to look on the dark side. O Wolff, why is
everything made so much harder for us than for others? Now this evening,
it would have been so pleasant to go to the ball with you."

"Yet, how often, dearest, I have urged you in vain----" he began, but
she hastily interrupted "Yes, it was certainly no fault of yours, but
one of us must remain with my mother, and Eva----"

"Yesterday she complained to me with tears in her eyes that she would be
forced to go to this dance, which she detested."

"That is the very reason she ought to go," explained Els. "She is
eighteen years old, and has never yet been induced to enter into any of
the pleasures other girls enjoy. When she isn't in the convent she is
always at home, or with Aunt Kunigunde or one of the nuns in the woods
and fields. If she wants to take the veil later, who can prevent it, but
the abbess herself advises that she should have at least a glimpse of
the world before leaving it. Few need it more, it seems to me, than our
Eva."

"Certainly," Wolff assented. "Such a lovely creature! I know no girl
more beautiful in all Nuremberg."

"Oh! you----," said his betrothed bride, shaking her finger at her
lover, but he answered promptly,

"You just told me that you preferred 'good' to 'better,' and so
doubtless 'fair' to 'fairer,' and you are beautiful, Els, in person and
in soul. As for Eva, I admire, in pictures of madonnas and angels, those
wonderful saintly eyes with their uplifted gaze and marvellously long
lashes, the slight droop of the little head, and all the other charms;
yet I gladly dispense with them in my heart's darling and future wife.
But you, Els--if our Lord would permit me to fashion out of divine clay
a life companion after my own heart, do you know how she would look?"

"Like me--exactly like Els Ortlieb, of course," replied the girl
laughing.

"A correct guess, with all due modesty," Wolff answered gaily. "But take
care that she does not surpass your wishes. For you know, if the little
saint should meet at the dance some handsome fellow whom she likes
better than the garb of a nun, and be