h ill-match.

This indeed brought to my mind other, no less miracles. Thus, after Ann's
home-coming, when I would go to see her at Pernhart's house, I often
found her sitting with the old dame, who would tell her many things, and
those right secret matters. Once, when I found Ann with the old woman
from whom she had formerly been so alien, they were sitting together in
the window-bay with their arms about each other, and looking in each
other's face with loving but tearful eyes. My entrance disturbed them;
Dame Magdalen had been telling her new favorite many matters concerning
her son's youthful days, and it was plain to see that she rejoiced in
these memories of the best days of her life, when her two fine lads had
ever been at the head of their school. Her eldest, indeed, had done so
well that the Lord Bishop of Bamberg, in his own person, had pressingly
desired her late departed husband to make him a priest. Then the father
had apprenticed Ulman to himself, and dedicated the elder, who else
should have inherited the dwelling-house and smithy, to the service of
the Church, whereupon he had ere long risen to great dignity.

None, to be sure, listened so well as Ann, open-eared to all these tales,
and it did old Dame Magdalen good to see the maid bestir herself
contentedly about the house-keeping; but her changed mind proceeded from
yet another cause. My aunt had done a noble deed of pure human kindness,
of real and true Christian charity, and the bright beam of that love
which could drag her feeble body out into the winter's cold and to her
foe's dwelling, cast its light on both these miracles at once. This it
was which had led the high-born dame to cast aside all the vanities and
foolishness in which she had grown up, to the end that she might protect
a young and oppressed creature whom she truly cared for from an ill fate.
Yea, and that sunbeam had cast its light far and wide in the
coppersmith's home, and illumined Ann likewise, so that she now saw the
old mother of the household in a new light.

When the very noblest and most worshipful deems it worthy to make a great
sacrifice out of pure love for a fellow-creature, that one is, as it
were, ennobled by it; it opens ways which before were closed; and such a
way was that to old Dame Magdalen's heart, who now, on a sudden,
bethought her that she found in Ann all she had lost in her well-beloved
grandchild Gertrude.

Never had Ann and I been closer friends than we