you know, Miss Thoughtless," with the whispered entreaty: "Here me out
first, father! Maestro Appenzelder asked me to add my voice to the boy
choir a few times more, and yesterday evening the treasurer told me that
the Queen of Hungary had commissioned him to give me as many ducats as
the boys received pennies."

She spoke the truth; but the old man laughed heartily in his deep tones,
cast a quick glance at Wolf, who was looking up at his weapons,
and, lowering his voice, cried gaily, "That's what I call a feminine
Chrysostomus or golden mouth, and I should think----"

Here he hesitated, for a doubt arose in his chivalrous mind whether it
was seemly for a young girl who belonged to a knightly race to accept
payment for her singing. But the thought that it came from the hand of
royalty, and that even the great Duke of Alba, the renowned Granvelles,
and so many princes, counts, and barons received golden wages for their
services from the Emperor's hand, put an end to these scruples.

So, in a happier frame of mind than he had experienced for a long time,
he said in a low tone, that he might not be understood by their guest:
"Greater people than we rejoice in the gifts which emperors and kings
bestow, and--we can use them, can't we?"

Then he rubbed his hands, laughed as if he had outwitted the people of
whom he was thinking, and whispered to his daughter: "The baker will
wonder when he gets paid this time in glittering gold, and the butcher
and Master Reinhard! My boots still creak softly when I step, and you
know what that means. The soles of your little shoes probably only sing,
but they, too, are not silent."

The old man, released from a heavy burden of care, laughed merrily again
at this jest, and then, raising his voice, told his daughter and Wolf
that he would first get a cool drink and then go outside the gate
wherever his lame foot might carry him. Would not the young nobleman
accompany him?

But Wolf preferred to stay with Barbara, that he might plead his cause
in person. There was something so quiet and diffident in her manner. If
she would not listen to him to-day, she never would. In saying farewell,
the captain remarked that he would not meddle in the affair of the
Council. Wawerl alone must decide that.

"When I return home," he concluded, "you will have come to an agreement,
and, whatever the determination may be, I shall be satisfied. Perhaps
some bright idea may come to me, too, over the wine. I