an grew weary. He came more rarely to Locquignol, and
very soon he did not come at all. Renelde felt as if her heart would
break, but she held firm.

One day she met the Count. She clasped her hands as if in prayer, and
cried:

'My lord, have mercy!'

Burchard the Wolf turned away his head and passed on.

She might have humbled his pride had she gone to her spinning-wheel
again, but she did nothing of the sort.

Not long after she learnt that Guilbert had left the country. He did not
even come to say good-bye to her, but, all the same, she knew the day
and hour of his departure, and hid herself on the road to see him once
more.

When she came in she put her silent wheel into a corner, and cried for
three days and three nights.

VII

So another year went by. Then the Count fell ill, and the Countess
supposed that Renelde, weary of waiting, had begun her spinning anew;
but when she came to the cottage to see, she found the wheel silent.

However, the Count grew worse and worse till he was given up by the
doctors. The passing bell was rung, and he lay expecting Death to come
for him. But Death was not so near as the doctors thought, and still he
lingered.

He seemed in a desperate condition, but he got neither better nor worse.
He could neither live nor die; he suffered horribly, and called loudly
on Death to put an end to his pains.

In this extremity he remembered what he had told the little spinner long
ago. If Death was so slow in coming, it was because he was not ready to
follow him, having no shroud for his burial.

He sent to fetch Renelde, placed her by his bedside, and ordered her at
once to go on spinning his shroud.

Hardly had the spinner begun to work when the Count began to feel his
pains grow less.

Then at last his heart melted; he was sorry for all the evil he had done
out of pride, and implored Renelde to forgive him. So Renelde forgave
him, and went on spinning night and day.

When the thread of the nettles was spun she wove it with her shuttle,
and then cut the shroud and began to sew it.

And as before, when she sewed the Count felt his pains grow less, and
the life sinking within him, and when the needle made the last stitch he
gave his last sigh.

VIII

At the same hour Guilbert returned to the country, and, as he had never
ceased to love Renelde, he married her eight days later.

He had lost two years of happiness, but comforted himself with thinking
that his wife