nst the misery
which she felt that she would encounter. But many weeks were to pass
before she recovered; a severe relapse again endangered her life.

During the first days of illness she had talked to Lienhard in her
fevered visions, called him by name, and warned him against the spiteful
elf who would ruin him. Frequently, too, oaths and horrible, coarse
imprecations, such as are heard only from the mouths of the vagrants
among whom she had grown to womanhood, fell from her burning lips. When
she improved, the leech asked in the jesting tone which elderly men are
fond of using to young women whose heart secrets they think they have
detected, what wrong her lover had done her. The Sister, nay, even the
abbess, wished to learn what she meant by the wicked witch whom she had
mentioned with such terrible curses during the ravings of the fever, but
she made no reply. In fact, she said very little, and her nurses thought
her a reserved creature with an obdurate nature; for she obstinately
rejected the consolations of religion.

Only to her confessor, a kind old priest, who knew how to discover the
best qualities in every one, did she open her heart so far as to reveal
that she loved the husband of another and had once wished evil, ay, the
very worst evil, to a neighbour. But since the sin had been committed
only in thought, the kindly guardian of her conscience was quickly
disposed to grant her absolution if, as a penance, she would repeat a
goodly number of paternosters and undertake a pilgrimage. If she had had
sound feet, she ought to have journeyed to Santiago di Compostella;
but, since her condition precluded this, a visit to Altotting in Bavaria
would suffice. But Kuni by no means desired any mitigation of
the penance. She silently resolved to undertake the pilgrimage to
Compostella, at the World's End,--[Cape Finisterre]--in distant Spain,
though she did not know how it would be possible to accomplish this with
her mutilated foot. Not even to her kind confessor did she reveal this
design. The girl who had relied upon herself from childhood, needed no
explanation, no confidante.

Therefore, during the long days and nights which she was obliged to
spend in bed, she pondered still more constantly upon her own past. That
she had been drawn and was still attracted to Lienhard with resistless
power, was true; yet whom, save herself, had this wounded or injured?
On the other hand, it had assuredly been a heavy sin that sh