agination could reproduce anything so
faithfully.

Listening intently, she said to herself that, during the many thousand
times when she had talked with him in fancy, it had also seemed as if
she heard him speak. And the same experience had befallen her eyes; for
whenever memory reverted to those distant days, she had beheld him just
as he now looked standing on the threshold, where he was detained by
the landlady of The Pike. Only his face had become still more manly, his
bearing more dignified. The pleasant, winning expression of the bearded
lips remained unchanged, and more than once she had seen his eyes
sparkle with a far warmer light than now, while he was thanking the
portly woman for her cordial welcome.

While Kuni's gaze still rested upon him as if spellbound, Cyriax nudged
her, stammering hurriedly:

"They will have to pass us. Move forward, women, in front of me. Spread
out your skirt, you Redhead! It might be my death if yonder Nuremberg
fine gentleman should see me here and recollect one thing and another."

As he spoke he dragged Kuni roughly from the window, flung the sack
which he had brought in from the cart down before him, and made them
sit on it, while he stretched himself on the floor face downward, and
pretended to be asleep behind the women.

This suited Kuni. If Lienhard Groland passed her now he could not help
seeing her, and she had no greater desire than to meet his glance
once more before her life ended. Yet she dreaded this meeting with an
intensity plainly revealed by the passionate throbbing of her heart
and the panting of her weakened lungs. There was a rushing noise in
her ears, and her eyes grew dim. Yet she was obliged to keep them wide
open--what might not the next moment bring?

For the first time since her entrance she gazed around the large, long
apartment, which would have deserved the name of hall had it not been
too low.

The heated room, filled with buzzing flies, was crowded with travellers.
The wife and daughter of a feather-curler, who were on their way with
the husband and father to the Reichstag, where many an aristocratic
gentleman would need plumes for his own head and his wife's, had just
dropped the comb with which they were arranging each other's hair. The
shoemaker and his dame from Nuremberg paused in the sensible lecture
they were alternately addressing to their apprentices. The Frankfort
messenger put down the needle with which he was mending the badgersk