s plump
hand in protest.

Perhaps she might even do him a favour by summoning him. But dared she,
a poor vagabond, disturb so distinguished a gentleman at his wine?

Yet there was danger in delay. So she resolved to ask the assistance of
the landlady of The Pike, coughed with her handkerchief pressed over
her lips, in order not to disturb the sleepers, and turned to leave the
room.

But Gitta had just been to see the sick mother, and told Cyriax that
Kuni, silly, softhearted thing, had wasted her gold coins on the dying
woman.

The blasphemer flew into a great rage, muttered a few words to
pock-marked Ratz, and then staggered toward their lame travelling
companion to bar her passage across the threshold, and ask, in angry,
guttural tones, how much of the Groland gold she had flung into the
dying woman's grave.

"Is it any business of yours?" was the reply, uttered with difficulty
amid her coughing.

"Mine, mine--is it any business of mine?" gasped the tongueless man.
Then he raised his heavy fist threateningly and stammered jeeringly:
"Not--not a red heller more nor less than my cart--in the name of all
the fiends--than my cart is of yours. Four heller pounds, Ratz, and the
donkey and cart are yours."

"Done!" cried the vagrant, who already had his money ready; but the
tongueless blasphemer chuckled with malicious pleasure:

"Now you have it, fool! Whoever doesn't share with me--you know
that--doesn't ride with me."

Then he staggered back to Gitta.

The girl watched him silently for a while. At last she passed her hand
quickly across her brow, as if to dispel some unpleasant thought, and
shook her burning head, half sadly, half disapprovingly.

She had done a good deed--and this, this--But she had not performed it
for the sake of reward, she had only desired to aid the sufferer.

Straightening herself proudly, she limped toward the kitchen.

Here, frequently interrupted by fits of coughing, she told the landlady
of The Pike in touching words that the sick mother, whom she had so
kindly strengthened with nice broth, desired the sacrament, as her life
would soon be over. The Lord Abbot of St. AEgidius in Nuremberg was
still sitting over his wine.

She went no further. The landlady, who, while Kuni was talking, had
wiped her pretty flushed face with her apron, pulled the rolled up white
linen sleeves farther down over her plump arms, and gazed with mingled
surprise and approval into the girl's emaciated