Heinz himself only felt that something extraordinary had happened.  The world had gained a new aspect.  His life, which yesterday had appeared so immeasurably long, now seemed brief, pitifully brief.  Perhaps it would end ere the sun sank to rest in the Haller meadows.  He must deem every hour that he was permitted to breathe as a gift, like the earnest money he, placed in the trainer’s hand in a horse trade.  According to human judgment the lightning should have killed him as well as the horse.  If he still lived and breathed and saw the grey clouds drifting across the sky, this was granted only that he might secure his eternal salvation, to which hitherto he had given so little concern.  How grateful he ought to be that this respite had been allowed him—­that he had not been snatched away unwarned, like Prince Hartmann, in the midst of his sins!

Would not Eva feel the same when she learned what had befallen him?  Perhaps Biberli would come back soon—­he had been gone so long—­and could tell him about her.

Even before the thunderbolt had stirred the inmost depths of his being, when he was merely touched by his deep grief and the monk’s admonition, he had striven to guide the servant and his sweetheart into the right path, and the grey-haired monk aided him.  The monastic life, it is true, would not have suited Biberli, but he had shown himself ready to atone for the wrong done the poor girl who had kept her troth for three long years and, unasked, went back with her to her angry master.

Ere Heinz set forth on his ride to the fortress he had gone out declaring that he would prove the meaning of his truth and steadfastness, thereby incurring a peril which certainly gave him a right to wear the T and St on his long robe and cap forever.  He must expect to be held to a strict account by Ernst Ortlieb.  If the incensed father, who was a member of the Council, used the full severity of the law, he might fare even worse than ill.  But he had realised the pass to which he had brought his sweetheart, and the Minorite led his honest heart to the perception of the sin he would commit if he permitted her to atone for an act which she had done by his desire—­nay, at his command.

With the gold Heinz had given him, and after his assurance that he would retain him in his service even when a married man, he could, it is true, more easily endure being punished with her who, as his wife, would soon be destined to share evil with him as well as good.  He had also secured the aid of both his master and the Minorite, and had arranged an account of what had occurred, which placed his own crime and the maid’s in a milder light.  Finally—­and he hoped the best result from this—­Katterle would bring the Ortliebs good news, and he was the very man to make it useful to Jungfrau Els.

So he had committed his destiny to his beloved master, behind whom was the Emperor himself, to the Minorite, who, judging from his great age and dignified aspect, might be an influential man, St. Leodogar, and his own full purse and, with a heart throbbing anxiously, entered the street with the closely muffled Katterle, to take the unpleasant walk to the exasperated master and father.