Eva lowered her eyes in embarrassment, and exclaimed in a modest, beseeching tone:  “But, uncle, do not you, too, feel that it would be cruel and unjust to make this honest fellow a cripple in return for his faithful services?”

“I do feel it,” answered Herr Berthold, his face assuming an expression of regret; “and for that very reason I ventured to take a girl over whom I have no authority out of her service.”

“Katterle?” asked Eva anxiously.

Her uncle nodded assent, adding:  “First hear what interested me so quickly in the strange fellow.  At the first charge, which merely accused him of having carried a message of love from his master to Jungfrau Ortlieb, I interceded for him, and yesterday the other magistrates, to whom I had explained the case, joined me.  So he escaped with a sentence of exile from the city for five years.  I hoped it would not be necessary to present the second accusation, for it was signed by no name, but merely bore three crosses, and for a long time most of the magistrates, following my example, have considered such things as treacherous attacks made by cowards who shun the light of day; but it was impossible to suppress it entirely, because the law commands me to withhold no complaint made to the court.  So it was read aloud, and Hans Teufel’s motion to let it drop without any action met with no approval, warmly as I supported it.

“We must not blame the gentlemen.  They all wish to act for your benefit, and desire nothing except a clear understanding of this vexatious business.  But in that indictment Biberli was charged with having forced his way into an Honourable’s house at night to obtain admittance for his master.  In collusion with a maid-servant he was also said to have maintained the love correspondence between Herr Ernst Ortlieb’s two daughters, a Swiss knight, and Boemund Altrosen.”

“Infamous!” cried Eva.  “What, in the name of all the saints, have we to do with Altrosen?”

“You certainly have very little,” replied Frau Christine, “but the Ortlieb mansion has all the more.  To-night he will again be seen before its door, and if still later he appears with his lute under Countess Cordula’s windows and is heard singing to her, it wouldn’t surprise me.”

“And people,” exclaimed Eva with increasing indignation, “will add another link to the chain of slander.  If a Vorkler and her companions repeat the calumny, who can wonder?  But that the magistrates should believe such shameful things about the brothers of their own fellow-member——­”

“It was precisely because they do not believe it and wish to keep you away from the court,” her uncle interrupted, “that they insisted upon the examination.  They desired to show the people by their verdict and the severity of the procedures how thoroughly in earnest they were.  But whilst I was compelled to absent myself an hour because the Emperor wished to inspect the new towers on the city wall, and I had to attend him in the character of showman, they sentenced the poor fellow, since his loose tongue had brought the whole rout and rabble against him, to torture so severe that I shuddered when told of it.”