And as we talked I found there was more and nobler matter in his brain and heart than I had ever weened I might find in a craftsman.  We met often and learned to know each other well, and one day it fell that I asked him whether he had in truth forgiven the Junker through whom he had lost the one he loved best.

He forthwith replied that I was not to lay the blame on one whom he would ever remember as a brave and true-hearted youth, inasmuch as it was not my cousin, but he himself who had put an end to the love-making between Gotz and Gertrude.  It was after the breach between Gotz and his parents that it had been most hard to turn a deaf ear to the prayers of the devoted lover and of his own child.  But, through all, he had borne in mind the doctrine by which his father had ever ruled his going, namely, not to bring on our neighbor such grief as would make our own heart sore.  Therefore he examined himself as to what he would feel towards one who should make his child to wed against his will with a suitor he liked not; and whereas his own dignity as a man and his care for his daughter’s welfare forbade that he should give her in marriage to a youth whose kinsfolks would receive her with scorn and ill-feeling, rather than with love and kindness, he had at last set his heart hard against young Waldstromer, whom he had loved as his own son, and forced him to go far away from his sweetheart.  I, in my heart, was strangely wroth with my cousin in that he had not staked his all to win so fair a maid; nay, and I made so bold as to confess that in Gertrude’s place I should have gone after my lover whithersoever he would, even against my father’s will.

And again that proud smile came upon Ulman Pernhart’s bearded lips, and his eye flashed fire as he said:  “My life moves in a narrow round, but all that dwell therein bend to my will as the copper bends under my hammer.  If you think that the Junker gave in without a struggle you are greatly mistaken; after I had forbidden him the house, he had tempted Gertrude to turn against me and was ready to carry her off; nay, and would you believe it, my own mother sided with the young ones.  The priest even was in readiness to marry them privily, and they would have won the day in spite of me.  But the eyes of jealousy are ever the sharpest; my head apprentice, who was madly in love with the maid, betrayed the plot, and then, Mistress Margery, were things said and done —­things concerning which I had best hold my peace.  And if you crave to know them, you may ask my mother.  You will see some day, if you do not scorn to enter my house and if you gain her friendship—­and I doubt not that you will, albeit it is not granted to every one—­she will be glad enough to complain of my dealings in this matter—­mine, her own son’s, although on other points she is wont to praise my virtues over-loudly.”

This discourse raised my cousin once more to his old place in my opinion, and I knew now that the honest glance of his blue eyes, which doubtless had won fair Gertrude’s heart, was trustworthy and true.