And he was about to lift the sick man in doors.  Howbeit, I went up to the Brunswicker, who in his rough wise had ever liked me well, and whereas meseemed he had seen my brothers, I besought him right lovingly to give me tidings of them; but he only pointed to the helpless man and said that such tidings as he had to give I should hear only too soon; and this I deemed was so forbidding and so dismal that I made up my mind to the worst; nay, and my fears waxed all the greater as he laid his big hand on my sleeve, as it might be to comfort me, inasmuch as that he had never yet done this save when he heard tell of my Hans’ untimely end.

And then, since he would have none of my help in attending on the sick man, I ran up to my aunt to tell her with due care of the tidings I had heard; but my uncle had gone before me, and in the doorway I could see that he had just kissed his beloved wife’s brow.  I could read in both their faces that they were bereft of another hope, yet would my aunt go below and herself speak with Young Kubbeling.  My uncle would fain have hindered her, but she paid no heed to his admonitions, and while her tiring-woman arrayed her with great care to appear at table, she thanked the saints for that Ann was far away on this luckless day.

Thus the hours sped between our homecoming from the chase and the evening meal, and we presently met all our guests in the refectory.  Aunt Jacoba, as was her wont, sat on her couch on which she was carried, at the upper end of the table near the chimneyplace, next to which a smaller table was spread, where Kubbeling and Uhlwurm took their seats as though they had never sat elsewhere in their lives; and in truth old Jordan had taken his meals in that same place, and whenever they came to the Lodge the serving people knew right well what was due to them and their fellows.  And whereas they did not sit at the upper table, it was only by reason that old Jordan, sixty years ago, had deemed it a burthensome honor, and more than his due; and Young Kubbeling would in all things do as his father had done before him.  My seat was where I might see them, and an empty chair stood between me and my aunt; this was left for Master Ulsenius, the leech.  This good man loved not to ride after dark, by reason of highway robbers and plunderers, and some of us were somewhat ill at ease at his coming so late.  Notwithstanding this, the talk was not other than cheerful; new guests had come to us from the town at noon, and they had much to tell.  Tidings had come that the Sultan of Egypt had fallen upon the Island of Cyprus, and that the Mussulmans had beaten King Janus, who ruled over it, and had carried him beyond seas in triumph to Old Cairo, a prisoner and loaded with chains.  Hereupon we were instructed by that learned man, Master Eberhard Windecke, who was well-read in the history of all the world—­he had come to Nuremberg as a commissioner of finance from his Majesty, and Uncle Tucher had brought him forth to the Forest—­