was not needed.  And who can tell what young masters will be at?  They get a fancy in their green young heads, and it must be carried out whether or no.  He swore to me with a high and solemn oath that he would not rest till he had found some trace of his brother, and if he kept the galleon waiting for that reason, what wonder?  Is it aught to marvel at?  And you, Mistress Margery, have of a surety known here in the Forest whither a false scent may lead.—­Junker Kunz!  Whither he may have gone to seek his brother, who can tell?  Not I, and much less Uhlwurm.  And young folks flutter hither and thither like an untrained falcon; and if Master Kunz, who is so much graver and wiser than others of his green youth, finds no one to open his eyes, then he may—­I do not say for certain, but peradventure, for why should I frighten you all?—­he may, I say, hunt high and low to all eternity.  The late Junker Herdegen. . . .”

And again I felt that sharp pang through my heart, and I cried in the anguish of my soul:  “The late Junker—­late Junker, did you say?  How came you to use such a word?  By all you hold sacred, Kubbeling, torture me no more.  Confess all you know concerning my elder brother!”

This I cried out with a quaking voice, but all too soon was I speechless again, for once more that dreadful “Gone!” fell upon my ear from Uhlwurm’s lips.

I hid my face in my hands, and sitting thus in darkness, I heard the bird-dealer, in real grief now, repeat Uhlwurm’s word of ill-omen:  “Gone.”  Yet he presently added in a tone of comfort:  “But only perchance—­not for certain, Mistress Margery.”

Albeit he was now willing to tell more, he was stopped in the very act.  Neither he nor I had seen that some one had silently entered the hall with my Uncle Christian and Master Ulsenius, had come close to us, and had heard Uhlwurm’s and Kubbeling’s last words.  This was Ann; and, as she answered to the Brunswicker “I would you were in the right with that ‘perchance’.  How gladly would I believe it!” I took my hands down from my face, and behold she stood before me in all her beauty, but in deep mourning black, and was now, as I was, an unwedded widow.

I ran to meet her, and now, as she clung to me first and then to my aunt, she was so moving a spectacle that even Uhlwurm wiped his wet cheeks with his finger-cloth.  All were now silent, but Young Kubbeling ceased not from wiping the sweat of anguish from his brow, till at last he cried:  “‘Perchance’ was what I said, and ‘perchance’ it still shall be; aye, by the help of the Saints, and I will prove it. . . .”

At this Ann uplifted her bead, which she had hidden in my aunt’s bosom, and Cousin Maud let drop her arms in which she held me clasped.  The learned Master Windecke made haste to depart, as he could ill-endure such touching matters, while Uncle Conrad enquired of Ann what she had heard of Herdegen’s end.