it; but if anything went wrong and her
assistance was desirable or necessary in serious cases, she remained
there until late at night, or even until the following morning.

At such times even the most distinguished visitors were sent home with
the message that Frau Christine could not leave the sick.

The Burgrave and his wife were the only persons permitted to follow
her into the hospital, and they had probably gained the privilege
of speaking to her there because they were among its most liberal
supporters, and three of their sons wore the cross of the Knights
Hospitaller, and often spent weeks there, as the rule of the order
prescribed, in nursing the sufferers.

Women also had the right to enter the hospital to be cured of the wounds
inflicted by the scourge or the iron of the executioner.

Each sufferer was to be nursed there only three days, but Frau Christine
took care that no one to whom such treatment might be harmful should be
put out. The Honourable Council was obliged, willing or unwilling, to
defray the necessary expense. The magistrate had many a battle to fight
for these encroachments, but he always found a goodly majority on the
side of the hospital and his wife. If the number of those who required
longer nursing increased too rapidly they did not spare their own fine
residence.

The hospital and the hope of being allowed to help within its walls had
brought Eva to Schweinau. The experiences of the past few days had swept
through the peace of her young soul like a tempest, overthrowing firmly
built structures and fanning glimmering sparks to flames. Since her
quiet self-examination in the room of the city clerk, she had known what
she lacked and what duty required her to become. The bond which united
her to her saint and the Saviour still remained, but she knew what was
commanded by him from whom St. Clare's mission also came, what Francis
of Assisi had enjoined upon his followers whose experiences had been
like hers.

They were to strive to restore peace to their perturbed souls by
faithful toil for their brothers and sisters; and what toil better
suited a feeble girl like herself than the alleviation of her unhappy
neighbour's suffering? The harder the duties imposed upon her in the
service of love, the better. She would set to work in the hope of making
herself the true, resolute woman which her mother, with the eyes of the
soul, had seen her fragile child become; but she could imagine nothing