that he should wed the widow, for Herdegen's sake; and when
I met him for the first time as betrothed to Ann's mother, and the
grandlooking man shook my hand with hearty kindness, and then thanked
me with warmth and simplicity for whatsoever I had done for her who
henceforth would be his dearest and most precious treasure, I returned
the warm grasp of his hand with all honesty, and it was from the bottom
of my heart that I answered him, saying that I gladly hailed him as a
new friend, albeit I could not hope for the same from my brother.

He heard this with a strange smile, half mournful, but, meseemed, half
proud; then he held forth his horny, hard-worked hand, and said that to
be sure it was an ill-matched pair when such a hand as that should clasp
a soft and white one such as might come out of a velvet sleeve; that
whereas, in order to win the woman he loved, he had taken her tribe of
children into the bargain, and fully purposed to have much joy of them
and be a true father to them, my lord brother, if his love were no less
true, must make the best of his father-in-law, whose honor, though he
was but of simple birth, was as clean as ever another man's in the eyes
of God.

And as we talked I found there was more and nobler matter in his brain
and heart than I had ever weened I might find in a craftsman. We met
often and learned to know each other well, and one day it fell that I
asked him whether he had in truth forgiven the Junker through whom he
had lost the one he loved best.

He forthwith replied that I was not to lay the blame on one whom he
would ever remember as a brave and true-hearted youth, inasmuch as it
was not my cousin, but he himself who had put an end to the love-making
between Gotz and Gertrude. It was after the breach between Gotz and his
parents that it had been most hard to turn a deaf ear to the prayers of
the devoted lover and of his own child. But, through all, he had borne
in mind the doctrine by which his father had ever ruled his going,
namely, not to bring on our neighbor such grief as would make our own
heart sore. Therefore he examined himself as to what he would feel
towards one who should make his child to wed against his will with a
suitor he liked not; and whereas his own dignity as a man and his care
for his daughter's welfare forbade that he should give her in marriage
to a youth whose kinsfolks would receive her with scorn and ill-feeling,
rather than with love and kindness, he h