air again, and albeit we cried after him, and
besought him to tell us more of the matter, he heard us not at all.

When we were at home again, lo, the Elector had done much to help us. I
found a letter waiting for me, sealed with the Emperor's signet, wherein
it was said that, by his Majesty's grace and mercy, my brother Herdegen
was purged of his outlawry, but was condemned in a fine of a thousand
Hungarian ducats as pain and penalty.

Thus the little bird and the raven had both been right. Howbeit, when I
presently betook me to the castle to speak my thanks to the Empress, I
was turned away; and indeed it had already been told to me that at Court
this morning that sorrowful Margery, with her many petitions, was looked
upon with other eyes than that other mirthful Margery, who had come with
flowers and songs whensoever she was bidden. None but Porro the jester
seemed to be of the same mind as ever; when he met me in the castle yard
he greeted me right kindly and, when I had told him of the tidings in
the Emperor's letter, he whispered as he bid me good day: "If I had a
fox for a brother, fair child, I would counsel him to lurk in his cover
till the hounds were safe at home again. In Hungary once I met a certain
fellow who had been kicked by a highway thief after he had emptied his
pockets. I tell you what. A man may well pawn his last doublet, if he
may thereby gain a larger. He need never redeem the first, and it is
given some folks to coin gold ducats out of humbler folks' sins. Ah! If
I had a fox for a brother!"

He sang the last words to himself as it were, and vanished, seeing
certain persons of the Court.

Now I took this well-meant warning as it was intended; and albeit Ann
and I were heartsick with longing to see Herdegen and to release him
from his hiding, we nevertheless took patience. The legal guardians of
our estate, having my uncle's consent, took my Cousin Maud's suretyship,
and expressed themselves willing to pay the fine out of the moneys left
by our parents, into the Imperial treasury. And that which followed
thereafter showed us how wise the Fool's admonition had been.

The knight, Sir Apitz von Rochow, who had served as Junker Henning's
second in the fight, tarried yet in Nuremberg, and this rude, arrogant
youth had devoted himself with such true loving-kindness to the care
of his young cousin, at first in the priest's house at Altenpero and
afterwards in the Deutsch-haus in the town, that he ha