been obliged to keep too far away from them to hear it, but Dr.
Hiltner's manner to the girl had been very friendly, especially when he
took leave of her.

The anything but grateful manner with which the almoner received this
story was a great disappointment to the overzealous servant; nay, he
secretly permitted himself to doubt his master's wisdom and energy when
the latter remarked that the arrest of a man who had merely entered a
stranger's garden was entirely unjustifiable, and that he was aware of
the singer's acquaintanceship with the Hiltners.

With these words he motioned Cassian to the door.

When the prelate was again alone he gazed thoughtfully into vacancy. He
understood human beings sufficiently well to know that Barbara had not
deceived him in her confession. In spite of the nocturnal walk with the
head of the Ratisbon heretics, she was faithful to the Catholic Church.

Erasmus's visit at night alone gave him cause for reflection, and
suggested the doubt whether he might not have interceded too warmly for
this peculiar creature and her excitable artist nature.

CHAPTER III.

Silence pervaded the little castle in Prebrunn; nay, there were days when
a thick layer of straw in the road showed that within the house lay some
one seriously ill, who must be guarded from every sound.

In Ratisbon and the Golden Cross, on the contrary, the noise and bustle
constantly increased. On the twenty-eighth of May, King Ferdinand arrived
with his family to visit his brother Charles. The Reichstag would be
opened on the fifth of June, and attracted to the Danube many princes and
nobles, but neither the Elector John of Saxony nor the Landgrave Philip
of Hesse, the heads of the Smalcald league. King Ferdinand's two
daughters were to be married the first of July, and many a distinguished
guest came to Ratisbon in June. Besides, several soldiers began to
appear.

The Emperor Charles's hours were filled to the brim with work and social
obligations. The twinges of the gout had not wholly disappeared, but
remained bearable.

The quiet good-breeding of the two young archduchesses pleased the
Emperor, and their young brother Maximilian's active mind and gay,
chivalrous nature delighted him, though many a trait made him, as well as
the confessor, doubt whether he did not incline more toward the
evangelical doctrine than beseemed a son of his illustrious race. But
Charles himself, in his youth, had not been a stranger t