was bidden to lend them his aid. Now, the change in the worthy man,
after eating for four years at our table, was such that many an one
would have said it was a miracle. At his first coming to us he himself
said he weened he was a doomed son of ill-luck, and he scarce dared
look man or woman in the face; and what a good figure he made now,
notwithstanding the divers pranks played on his simplicity by my
brothers and their fellows, nay, and some whiles by me.

Many an one before this has marked that the god Amor is the best
schoolmaster; and when our Magister had learnt to stoop less, nay almost
to hold himself straight, when as now, he wore his good new coat with
wide hanging sleeves, tight-fitting hose, a well-stiffened, snow-white
collar, and even a smart black feather in his beretta, when he not alone
smoothed his hair but anointed it, all this, in its beginnings, was by
reason of his great and true love for my Ann, while she was yet but a
child.

My cautious Cousin Maud had, it is true, done the blind god of Love good
service; for many a time she would, with her own hand, set some
matter straight which the Magister had put on all askew, and on divers
occasions would give him a piece of fine cloth, and with it the cost
of the tailor's work, in bright new coin wrapped in colored paper.
She brought him to order and to keep his hours, and when grave speech
availed not she could laugh at him with friendly mockery, such as hurts
no man, inasmuch as it is the outcome of a good heart. Thus it was,
that, by the time when Herdegen was to go to the high school at Erfurt,
Magister Peter was not strangely unlike other learned men of his
standing; and when it fell that he had to discourse of the great masters
of learning in Italy, or of the glorious Greek writers, I have seen his
eye light up like that of a youth.

Our guardian kept watch over my brothers' speed in learning. The old
knight Im Hoff was a somewhat stern man and shy of his kind, but scarce
another had such great wealth, or was so highly respected in our town.
He was our grand-uncle, as old Adam Heyden was Ann's, and two men less
alike it would be hard to find.

When we were bid to pay our devoir to my guardian it was seldom done but
with much complaining and churlishness; whereas it was ever a festival
to be suffered to go with Ann to the organist's house. He dwelt in a
fine lodging high up in the tower above the city, and he could look
down from his windows, a