other's
sake, left her at the ball as if she wore a fern cap and had become
invisible. I saw the whole from the musician's gallery. True, the
somnambulist is marvellously beautiful."

But the knight interrupted him by exclaiming so vehemently: "Silence!"
that he paused.

Both walked on without speaking for some distance ere Heinz began again:

"Even though I live to grow old and grey, never shall I behold aught
more beautiful than the vision of that white-robed girlish figure on the
stairs."

True and steadfast Biberli sighed faintly. Love for Eva Ortlieb held
his master as if in a vise; but a Schorlin seemed to him far too good a
match for a Nuremberg maiden who had grown up among sacks of pepper and
chests of goods and, moreover, was a somnambulist. He looked higher for
his Heinz, and had already found the right match for him. So, turning to
him again, he said earnestly:

"Drive the bewitching vision from your mind, Sir Heinz. You don't
know--but I could tell you some tales about women who walk in their
sleep by moonlight."

"Well?" asked Heinz eagerly.

"As a maiden," Biberli continued impressively, with the pious intention
of guarding his master from injury, "the somnambulist merely runs the
risk of falling from the roof, or whatever accident may happen to a
sleepwalker; but if she enters the estate of holy matrimony, the evil
power which has dominion over her sooner or later transforms her at
midnight into a troll, which seizes her husband's throat in his sleep
and strangles him."

"Nursery tales!" cried Heinz angrily, but Biberli answered calmly:

"It can make no difference to you what occurs in the case of such
possessed women, for henceforward the Ortlieb house will be closed
against you. And--begging your pardon--it is fortunate. For, my lord,
the horse mounted by the first Schorlin--the chaplain showed it to you
in the picture--came from the ark in which Noah saved it with the other
animals from the deluge, and the first Lady Schorlin whom the family
chronicles mention was a countess. Your ancestresses came from citadels
and castles; no Schorlin ever yet brought his bride from a tradesman's
house. You, the proudest of them all, will scarcely think of making such
an error, though it is true--"

"Ernst Ortlieb, spite of his trade, is a man of knightly lineage, to
whom the king of arms opens the lists at every tournament!" exclaimed
Heinz indignantly.

"In the combat with blunt weapons," replied Bi