r to
exchange a few words and, as if forgetting that he wore the head-gear,
left the apartment to order a messenger to take the cap at once to its
owner's wife, show it to her as a guarantee of trustworthiness, and ask
her to bring the bag which the foreign merchant had given him to the
castle. The woman did so and the cheat was unmasked.

Everyone present, like Els, was familiar with this story, which wrongly
cast so evil a light upon the uprightness of the citizens of Nuremberg.
Who could fail to be painfully affected by the thought that Rudolph,
during his present stay amongst them, must witness the injury of others
by a Nuremberg merchant? Who could have now opposed Herr Berthold, when
he asked, still more earnestly than before, that the community would
do its share to maintain confidence in the reliability of the Nuremberg
citizens, and especially of the Honourable Council and everyone of its
members?

But when he mentioned the large sum which he himself, and the other
which Ernst Ortlieb intended on certain conditions to devote to the
settlement of this affair, Peter Ammon also withdrew his opposition.
The First Losunger's proposal was unanimously accepted, and also the
condition made by his associate, Ernst Ortlieb. Casper Eysvogel, on whom
the resolution bore most heavily, submitted in silence, shrugging his
shoulders.

How high Els's heart throbbed, how she longed to rush down into the
Council chamber and clasp the hand of the noble old man at the
green table, when he said that in consequence of Ernst Ortlieb's
condition--which he also made--the charge of the newly established
Eysvogel business must be transferred from Herr Casper's hands to those
of his son, Herr Wolff, as soon as the imperial pardon permitted him to
leave his hiding-place. He, Berthold Vorchtel, would make no complaint
against him, for he knew that Wolff had been forced to cross swords with
his Ulrich. He had formed this resolution after a severe struggle with
himself; but as a Christian and a fair-minded man he had renounced the
human desire for revenge, and as God had wished to give him a token of
his approval, he had sent to his house a substitute for his dead son.
Fresh cries of approval interrupted this communication, whose meaning
Els did not understand.

Not a word of remonstrance was uttered when the imperial magistrate at
last proposed that Casper Eysvogel and the women of his family should
leave the city and atone for his great