med that she would
be set free, she hurried after her preserver, who had left the Council
chamber with the other magistrates, to thank him. He permitted her to
detain him, and when she found herself alone in his presence, at first,
with streaming eyes, she was unable to utter a word. He laid his hand
kindly on her shoulder to soothe her, and then listened to her assurance
that, though she was a strolling rope-dancer, she had never taken other
people's property.

Now she closed her eyes to have a clearer vision of the picture evoked
by memory, which rose so vividly before her. Again she saw herself seize
his hand to kiss it humbly, yet with fervent devotion; again she met the
patronizing but friendly smile with which he withdrew it, and a thrill
of happiness ran through every nerve, for she imagined she once more
felt his slender white hand soothingly stroke her black hair and burning
cheeks, as if she were a sick child who needed help. Later years had
never granted her aught more blissful than that moment.

As had often happened before, the memory of it overmastered her with
such power that she could not escape it, but recalled his every look and
movement. Meanwhile, she imagined that she heard his voice, whose deep,
pure tones had pleased her ear, alive to harmony, more than any to which
she had ever listened, counselling her to give up her vagrant life, and
again received his assurance that he pitied her, and it would grieve him
if she, who seemed worthy of a better fate, should be ruined, body and
soul, so young. Thus absorbed, she neither saw nor listened to anything
that was occurring near her or in the large room of the tavern, but
stood gazing into vacancy as if rapt away from earth.

True, Cyriax and the others had lowered their voices, for they were
talking about her and the aristocratic couple on whose wedding day Kuni
had stolen the rosary.

Raban, a tall, lank vagabond with red-rimmed eyes, whose ugly face
bristled with a half-grown black beard, had a few more particulars to
give concerning the bride and bridegroom. He wandered about the world
and, whenever he stretched out his hand to beg, gave the pretext that he
was collecting the price of blood required for a man whom he had killed
in self-defence, that his own head might not fall under the axe of the
executioner. His dead father had heated the furnaces in the smelting
works at Eschenbach, near Nuremberg, and the bride was Katharina, the
eldest of th