n, she laughed gaily,
and declared that she liked him, and, if it should be he who obtained for
her what she now had in mind, she would be glad.

Then his loving heart overflowed, and with her hands clasped in his he
entreated her to give up these arrogant thoughts, be faithful to him, and
not make him wretched.

The words had poured so ardently, so passionately from the quiet, sedate
young man's lips that the girl was thoroughly frightened, and wrenched
her hands from his grasp. But when she saw how deeply her struggling hurt
him, she voluntarily held out her right hand, exclaiming:

"Only succeed while you are absent sufficiently to build a house like our
old one in the Kramgasse, and when the roof is on and your knightly
escutcheon above the door we will move in together, and life will be
nothing but music and happiness."

This was all that gave him the right to consider her as his betrothed
bride, for after a brief farewell and a few kisses of the hand flung to
him from the threshold, she had escaped to the little bow-windowed room
and thereby also evaded from the departing lover an impressive,
well-prepared speech concerning the duties of a betrothed couple.

Yet in Rome and Brussels Wolf had held fast to the conviction that a
beloved betrothed bride was awaiting him in Ratisbon.

So long as his foster-parents lived he had had news from them of the
Blombergs. After the death of the old couple, Barbara's father had
answered in a very awkward manner the questions which he had addressed to
him in a letter, and his daughter wrote a friendly message under the old
captain's signature. True, it was extremely brief, but few fiery love
letters ever made the recipient happier or were more tenderly pressed to
the lips.

The girl he loved still bore the name of Barbara Blomberg.

This outweighed a whole archive of long letters. The captain, who, for
the sake of fighting the infidels, had so sadly neglected his property
that his own house in the Kramgasse fell into the hands of his creditors,
had rented the second story in the cantor house. Barbara at that time was
very small, but now she had ceased to be a child, and, after she devoted
herself earnestly to acquiring the art of singing, the old warrior had
undertaken to keep the little chapel in order.

The task certainly seemed strangely ill-suited to the tall,
broad-shouldered man with the bushy eyebrows, long beard, and mustache
twisted stiffly up at the ends, who