th 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, as God Almighty looks down on the earth from the bright
heavens, over Nuremberg, and the fortress on the hill, the wide ring of
forest which guards it on the north and east and south, the meadows and
villages stretching between the woods, and the walls and turrets of our
good city, and the windings of the river Pegnitz. He loved to boast that
he was the first to bid the sun welcome and the last to bid it
good-night; and perchance it was to the light, of which he had so goodly
a share, that his spirit owed its ever gay good-cheer. He was ever ready
with a jest and some little gift for us children; and, albeit these were
of little money's worth, they brought us much joy. And indeed there was
never another man in Nuremberg who had given away so many tokens and made
so many glad hearts and faces thereby as Adam Heyden. True, indeed, after
a short but blessed wedded life he had been left a widower and childless,
and had no care to save for his heirs; and yet Gottfried Spiesz, Ann's
grandfather, was in the right when he said that he had more children than
ever another in