ffliction had touched her tender heart.

Both sisters were now aware of Cordula's kind intentions, and the
warm pleasure she displayed when Els told her what the Council had
determined, showed plainly enough that the motherless young countess,
who had neither brother nor sister, clung to the daughters of her host
like a third sister. Old Herr Vorchtel's treatment of the man who had
inflicted so deep a sorrow upon him touched her inmost soul. It was
grand, noble; the Saviour himself would have rejoiced over it. "If it
would only please the good old man," she exclaimed, "I would rather
offer him my lips to kiss than the handsomest young knight."

Though two of Count von Montfort's mounted huntsmen and several
constables accompanied the unusually large and handsome sedan-chair, a
curious crowd had followed it; but the opinion probably prevailed that
the countess's companions were some of her waiting-women. When they
alighted in front of the watch-tower, however, an elderly laundry-maid
who had worked for the Ortliebs recognised the sisters and pointed them
out to the others, protesting that it was hard for a woman of her chaste
spirit to have served in a house where such things could have happened.
Then a tailor's apprentice, who considered the whole of the guild
insulted in the wounded Meister Seubolt, put his fingers to his wide
mouth and emitted a long, shrill whistle; but the next instant a blow
from a powerful fist silenced him. It was young Ortel, who had come to
the watch-tower to seek Herr Ernst and tell him that he and his sister
Metz, spite of their mother and guardian, meant to stay in his service.
His heart's blood would not have been too dear to guard Eva, whom he
instantly recognised, from every insult; but he had no occasion to use
his youthful strength a second time, for the soldiers who guarded the
tower and the city mercenaries drove back the crowd and kept the square
in front of the tower open.

The countess would not be detained long, for the sun had already sunk
behind the towers and western wall of the fortress, and the reflection
of the sunset was tinging the eastern sky with a roseate hue. The warden
really ought to have refused them admittance, for the time during which
he was permitted to take visitors to the imprisoned "Honourable" had
already passed. But for the daughters of Herr Ernst Ortlieb, to whom
he was greatly indebted, he closed his eyes to this fact, and only
entreated them to make th