ther the Abbess Kunigunde had any
share in her change of purpose!

The torture to which stronger men rarely succumbed seemed to threaten
the life of the more delicate ex-schoolmaster. At first the leech Otto,
who, to please Els and Fran Christine, and touched by the brave spirit
of this humble man, had daily visited Biberli, believed that he could
not save him. On the straw pallet, and with the incompetent nursing
at the hospital, he would have died very speedily, and what would have
befallen his poor mangled toes and fingers in the hands of the barbers
who managed affairs there?

At the Beguines the kindly, skilful old physician had bandaged his hands
and feet as carefully as if he had been the most aristocratic gentleman,
and no prince could have been more tenderly and patiently watched by
trained nurses; for, wonderful to relate, Eva, who had so willingly
left her sick mother to her sister's care, and had often been vexed with
herself because she could not even remotely equal Els beside the couch
of the beloved invalid, rendered the mangled squire every service with
a touch so light and firm that the old physician often watched her with
glad astonishment.

Caution, the quality she most lacked, seemed to have suddenly waked from
a long slumber with doubly clear, far-seeing eyes. If it was necessary
to turn the sick man, she paid special heed to every aching spot in his
tortured body, and invented contrivances which she arranged with patient
care to save him pain.

Her own bed had been placed in the widow's chamber next to Biberli's,
and from the night that her Aunt Christine had permitted her to remain
in the Beguine house, she, who formerly had loved sleep and slumbered
soundly, had been beside the sick woman at the least sign. On the third
day she rendered her, with her own hands, every service for which she
had formerly needed a Beguine's aid. She had possessed the gift of
uttering words of cheer and comfort even to her invalid mother better
than any one else, and often gave new courage to the suffering man when
almost driven to despair by the anguish of pain assailing him in ten
places at once. How kindly she taught him what comfort the sufferer
finds who not only moves his lips and turns his rosary in prayer, as he
had hitherto done, but commends himself and his pain to Him who endured
still worse agonies on the cross! What a smile of content rested on the
lips of the man who, in the ravings of fever, had so