Soon after the latter, leading the child by the hand, entered the room.  Biberli felt as if the sun were rising again.  How gay her greeting sounded!  The expression of her blue eyes seemed to announce something pleasant.  Whoever possessed this maiden would be sure to have no lack of light in his home, no matter how dark the night might be.

He must have been mistaken concerning the anxiety which had seemed to oppress her on his account.  Instead of bad news, she was surely bringing good tidings.  Nay, she had the best of all; for Katterle, Eva told him, would soon arrive.  But his future wife had been ill too.  Her cheeks had not yet regained their roundness or their bright colour.

Sharp-sighted Biberli noticed this, and exclaimed:  “Then she is here already!  For, my mistress, how else could you know how her cheeks look?”

Soon afterwards the maid was really standing beside her lover’s couch.

Eva allowed them to enjoy the happiness of meeting undisturbed, and went to her other two patients.  When she returned to the couple, Katterle had already related what she had experienced in Schwabach.  It was little more than Eva had already heard from her uncle and others.

That Seitz Siebenburg, whom he bitterly hated, had fallen in a sword combat by his master’s own hand, afforded Biberli the keenest delight.  No portion of the narrative vexed him except the nonarrival of the messengers, and the probability that some time must yet elapse ere Heinz could sheathe his sword.

Eva’s cheeks flushed with joy and pride as she heard how nobly her lover had justified the confidence of his imperial patron.  But it seemed to be impossible to follow Biberli’s flood of eloquence to the end.  She was in haste, and he had been right concerning the cares which oppressed her.

She had stood beside his couch the day before with a heavy heart, and it required the exercise of all her strength to conceal the anxiety with which her mind was filled, for if she did not intercede for him that very day; if his pardon could not be announced early the following morning during the session of the court in the Town Hall, then the half-recovered man must be surrendered to the judges again, and Otto believed that the torture would be fatal to his enfeebled frame.

The tailor and his adherents, as Eva knew from Herr Pfinzing, were making every effort to obtain his condemnation and prove to the city that they had not censured the proceedings of the Ortlieb household as mere reckless slanderers.  Eva and her sister would be again mentioned in the investigation, and were even threatened with an examination.

At first this had startled her, but she believed her uncle’s assurance that this examination would fully prove her innocence before the eyes of the whole world.  For her own sake Eva surely would not have suffered herself to be so tortured by anxiety night and day, or undertaken and resolved to dare so much.  The thought that the faithful follower whom her patient nursing had saved from death and to whom she had become warmly attached must now lose his life, and Heinz Schorlin be robbed of the possibility of doing anything for him, had cast every other fear in the shade, and had kept her constantly in motion the evening before and this morning.