opinion, and
exclaimed: "Just wait a while! My master will meet her at the Town Hall
tonight, and if the scrawny little squirrel I saw three years ago has
really grown up into such a beauty, if he does not get on her track and
capture her, my name isn't Biberli."

"But surely," replied Katterle doubtfully, "you told me that you had
not yet succeeded in persuading him to imitate you in steadfastness and
truth."

"But he is a knight," replied the servant, striking himself pompously
under the T on his shoulder, as if he, too, belonged to this favoured
class, "and so he is as free to pursue a woman as to hunt the game in
the forest. And my Heinz Schorlin! You saw him, and admitted that he was
worth looking at. And that was when he had scarcely recovered from his
dangerous wounds, while now----The French Knight de Preully, in Paris,
with whom my dead foster-brother, until he fell sick-----" Here he
hesitated; an enquiring look from his sweetheart showed that--perhaps
for excellent reasons--he had omitted to tell her about his sojourn in
Paris.

Now that he had grown older and abandoned the wild revelry of that
period in favour of truth and steadfastness, he quietly related
everything she desired to know.

He had acquired various branches of learning while sharing the studies
of his foster-brother, the eldest son of the old Knight Schorlin, who
was then living, and therefore, when scarcely twenty, was appointed
schoolmaster at Stansstadt. Perhaps he might have continued to
teach--for he promised to be successful--had not a vexatious discovery
disgusted him with his calling.

He was informed that the mercenaries in the Schnitzthurm guard were paid
five shillings a week more than he, spite of the knowledge he had gained
by so much toil.

In his indignation he went back to Schorlin Castle, which was always
open to him, and he arrived just at the right time.

His present master's older brother, whose health had always been
delicate, being unable to follow the profession of arms, was on the
eve of departing to attend the university at Paris, accompanied by the
chaplain and an equerry. When the Lady Wendula, his master's
mother, learned what an excellent reputation Biberli had gained as a
schoolmaster, she persuaded her husband to send him as esquire with
their sickly son.

In Paris there was at first no lack of pleasures of every description,
especially as they met among the king's mercenaries many a dissolute
Swiss kn