he, I say, instructed us that the forefather of this King Janus of Cyprus had seized upon the crown of Jerusalem at the time of the crusades, during the lifetime of the mighty Sultan Saladin, by poison and perjury, and had then bartered it with the English monarch Richard Coeur de lion, in exchange for the Kingdom of Cyprus.  That ancestor of King Janus was by name Guy de Lusignan, and the sins of the fathers, so Master Windecke set forth with flowers of eloquence, were ever visited on the children, unto the third and fourth generation.

I, like most of the assembled company, had hearkened with due respect to this discourse; yet had I not failed to note with what restless eyes my aunt watched the two men when, after hardly staying their hunger and thirst, they forthwith quitted the hall to tend the sick man; she truly —­as I would likewise—­would rather have heard some present tidings than this record of sins of the Lusignans dead and gone.  Presently the two men came back to their seats, and when Master Windecke, who, in speaking, had forgotten to eat, fell to with double good will, Uncle Conrad gravely bid Kubbeling to out with what he had to say; and yet the man, who was lifting the leg of a black-cock to his mouth, would reply no more than a rough, “All in good time, my lord.”

Thus we had to wait; nor was it till the Brunswicker had cracked his last nut with his strong teeth, and the evening cup had been brought round, that he broke silence and told us in short, halting sentences how he had sailed from Venice to Alexandria in the land of Egypt, and all that had befallen his falcons.  Then he stopped, as one who has ended his tale, and Uhlwurm said in a deep voice, and with a sweep of his hand as though to clear the crumbs from the table “Gone!”—­And that “Gone” was well-nigh the only word that ever I heard from the lips of that strange old man.  As he went on with his tale Kubbeling made free with the wine, and albeit it had no more effect on him than clear water, still meseemed he talked on for his own easement; only when he told how and where he had vainly sought the banished Gotz he looked grievously at my aunt’s face.  And Kunz, who had crossed the sea in the same ship with him, had helped him in that search.

When I then asked him whether Kunz had not likewise come home with him to Venice, and Kubbeling had answered me no, Uhlwurm said once more, or ever his master had done speaking, “Gone!” in his deep, mournful voice, and again swept away crumbs, as it might be, in the air.  Hereupon so great a fear fell upon me that meseemed a sharp steel bodkin was being thrust into my heart; but Kubbeling had seen me turn pale, and he turned upon Uhlwurm in high wrath, and to the end that I might take courage he cried:  “No, no, I say no.  What does the old fool know about it!  It is only by reason that the galley tarried for Junker Schopper and weighed anchor half a day later, that he forbodes ill.  The delay