e three daughters of the owner, old Harsdorffer of the
Council. He had been a man of steel and iron, and opposed Lienhard
Groland's father at every point, not excepting even their official
business. When he discovered that the young man was carrying on a love
affair with his daughter, he had summoned him before a court of justice
for a breach of the law which forbade minors to betroth themselves
without parental consent. The magistrates sentenced Lienhard to five
years' exile from the city but, through the Emperor's mediation, he was
spared the punishment. Old Harsdorffer afterward succeeded in keeping
the suitor away from his daughter a long time, but finally relinquished
his opposition.

"The devil came soon enough and broke his stiff neck," added Cyriax, on
whom the vagabond's story had had the same effect as a red rag upon a
bull. Spite of the old slanderer's mutilated tongue, invectives flowed
fast enough from his lips when he thought of young Frau Groland's
father. If the Groland outside resembled his father-in-law, he would
like to drink him a pledge that should burn like the plague and ruin.

He snatched a flask from his pocket as he spoke, and after a long pull
and a still longer "A-ah!" he stammered:

"I've been obliged to bid farewell to my tongue, yet it feels as if
it were sticking in my throat like the dry sole of a shoe. That's what
comes from talking in this dog-day heat."

He looked into the empty bottle and was about to send Kuni out to fill
it again. In turning to do so he saw her pale face, wan with suffering,
but which now glowed with a happy light that lent it a strange beauty.
How large her blue eyes were! When he had picked her up in Spain she was
already a cripple and in sore distress. But Groland probably knew what
he was about when he released her. She must have been a pretty creature
enough at that time, and he knew that before her fall she was considered
one of the most skilful rope-dancers.

An elderly woman with a boy, whose blindness helped her to arouse
compassion, was crouching by Raban's side, and had just been greeted
by Kuni as an old acquaintance. They had journeyed from land to land
in Loni's famous troupe, and as Raban handed Cyriax his own bottle, he
turned from the dreaming girl, whose services he no longer needed, and
whispered to the blind boy's mother--who among the people of her own
calling still went by the name of Dancing Gundel--the question whether
yonder ailing cri