nd so soon as she had departed, beaming, with her
roses, Herdegen hastily came to me and, without deeming Ann worthy to be
looked at even, bid me good even. I held his hand and called to her to
come to me, to help me hinder him from departing, inasmuch as one of the
pueri was about to play the lute for the rest to dance. She came forward
as an honest maid should, looked up at him with her great eyes, and
besought him full sweetly to tarry with us.

He pointed with his hand to Trardorf and answered roughly: "I care not
to go halves!" And he turned to go to the gate.

Ann took him by the hand, and without a word of his ways with Ursula,
not in chiding but as in deep grief, she said: "If you depart, you do me
a hurt. I have no pleasure but when you are by, and what do I care for
Heinrich?"

This was all he needed; his eye again met hers with bright looks, and
from that hour of our childhood she knew no will but his.

From that hour likewise Ann held off from all other lads, and when he
was by it seemed as though she had no eyes nor ears save for him and me
alone. To Kunz she paid little heed; yet he never failed to wait on her
and watch to do her service, as though she were the daughter of some
great lord, and he no more than her page.

Ann freely owned to me that she held Herdegen to be the noblest youth
on earth, nor could I marvel, when I was myself of the same mind. What
should I know, when I was still but fourteen and fifteen years old, of
love and its dangers? I had felt such love for Gotz as Ann for my elder
brother, and as I had then been glad that my dear Cousin had won the
love of so fair a maid as Gertrude, I likewise believed that Ann would
some day be glad if Herdegen should plight his troth to a fair damsel
of high degree. Hence I did all that in me lay to bring them together
whenever it might be, and in truth this befell often enough without my
aid; for not music alone was a bond between them, nor yet that Herdegen
and I taught her to ride on a horse, on the sandy way behind our
horse-stalls--the Greek lessons for which Magister Peter had come into
the household were a plea on which they passed many an hour together.

I was slow to learn that tongue; but Ann's head was not less apt than my
brother's, and he was eager and diligent to keep her good speed at the
like mark with his own, as she was so quick to apprehend. Thus both were
at last forward enough to put Greek into German, and then Magister Peter