's side, and had she
not, after months of vain coquetting, at last fairly yielded up her
heart?

"Kala will make a good wife," said Lisbeth, proudly. "And she goes not
empty-handed to her husband's house."

"They are a well-matched pair," said Peter, meditatively. "Health and
beauty and dulness are no mean heritage in these troubled times."

And though the neighbors hesitated to call the young couple dull, they
one and all agreed that the marriage was a suitable one, and that they
had long foreseen it. "Why, they were little lovers in childhood, even!"
said Theresa, the wife of Johann Dyne, the toy-vender in the next
street; and Kala, who had perhaps forgotten the time when her
child-lover had knocked her into the gutter, smiled, and showed her
beautiful white teeth, and suffered the remark to pass uncontradicted.

But even the most stolid of women have always some lurking tenderness
for those who they know have loved them vainly, and Kala, though she had
without a demur accepted Sigmund for her husband, yet broke the news to
Gabriel with much gentleness, and was greatly comforted by the apparent
composure with which it was received. He grew perhaps a trifle paler and
quieter than before, if such a thing were possible, and shut himself up
more resolutely with his work; but that was all. No one would have
dreamed that life with its fair promises had suddenly grown worthless in
his hands, and that the rich gifts which still were left him seemed as
nothing compared with the valueless treasure he had lost. Even his art
had become hateful, freighted as it was with dead hopes; and often, when
all believed him to be toiling in his little den, he was wandering
aimlessly through the streets of Nuremberg, seeking comfort in those
haunts which had once been to him as dear friends and companions. For
hours he would linger in the church of St. Lorenz, and then slowly make
his way to the Thiergarten Gate, where, along the Seilersgasse to the
churchyard, rise at regular intervals the seven stone pillars on which
Adam Krafft has carved, in beautiful bas-reliefs, scenes from the
Passion of the Lord. Years before the simple piety of a Nuremberg
citizen had erected these monuments of holy art, and their founder,
Martin Ketzel, had even travelled into Palestine, that he might measure
the exact distances of that most sorrowful journey from the house of
Pontius Pilate to the hill of Calvary. Heedless of the severe weather,
Gabriel visite