yard wherein all these folks' chests and bales were bestowed.
He rushed forth, beside himself; and whereas he shouted out to the
courtyard and got no reply, he thrust right and left at haphazard with
his naked sword among the chests whence he had heard the voices, and
a pitiful cry warned him that he had struck home. Then there came the
wailing of a woman; and when the squires and yeomen came forth with
torches and lanterns, he could see that he had slain Ludwig Tetzel,
Ursula's uncle, a young unwedded man. He had stolen into the courtyard
to hold a tryst with the fair daughter of the master-weigher in the Im
Hoffs' house of trade, and the loving pair, in their fear of the master,
had not answered his call, but had crept behind the baggage. Thus, by
ill guidance, had my grand-uncle become a murderer, and the judges broke
their staff over him; albeit, since he freely confessed the deed of
death, and had done it with no evil intent, they were content to make
him pay a fine in money. But some said that they likewise commanded the
hangman to nail up a gallows-cord behind his house door; others, rather,
that he had taken upon himself the penance of ever wearing such a cord
about his neck day and night.

As touching the Tetzels themselves, they made no claim for blood; and
for this he was so thankful to them, all his life through, that he gave
them his word that he would name Ursula in his testament; whereas he
ever hated the Im Hoffs to the end, after that they, on whom he had
brought so much vexation by his wilful and haughty temper, took counsel
after the judgment as to whether it behooved them not to strip him of
their good old name and thrust him forth from their kinship. Four only,
as against three, spoke in his favor, and this his haughty spirit could
so ill endure that never an Im Hoff dared cross his threshold, though
one and another often strove to win back his favor.

He had little comfort from his wife in his grief, for when he was found
guilty of manslaughter she quitted him to return to the Emperor's court
at Prague, and there she died after a wild hunt which she had followed
in King Wenzel's train, while she was not yet past her youth.

CHAPTER V.

Three years were past since Herdegen had first gone to the High School,
and we had never seen him but for a few weeks at the end of the first
year, when he was on his way from Erfurt to Padua. In the letters he
wrote from thence there was ever a greeting for