How it came to pass that Margery should so suddenly have brought her memories to an end most of you know already; howbeit I will set it down for the younger ones.

Till she reached the age of sixty and seven years, she never rode in a litter, but ever made her journeyings on horseback.  For many years past she and her husband abode in the forest during the summer months only, and dwelt in their town-house the winter through.  Now on a day, when in her written tale she had got as far as the time when she and Gotz, her dear husband, were wed, she besought him to ride forth with her to the forest, inasmuch as that she yearned once more to see the spot in the winter season which had seen the happiest days of her life in that long-past December.  Thus they fared forth on horseback, although it was nigh on Christmas-tide, and when they waved their hands to me as they passed me by in sheer high spirits and mirthfulness, meseemed that in all Nuremberg, nay in Franconia or in the whole German Empire a man might scarce find an old white-haired pair of lovers to match these for light-heartedness and goodly mien.  Some few happy and glad days were at that time vouchsafed to them in the old well-known forest; but on the ride home Margery’s palfrey stumbled close without the city gates on the frozen ground.  Her arm-bone was badly broken and her right hand remained so stiff, notwithstanding Master Hartmann Knorr’s best skill, that she could no more use the pen save with great pain, albeit she often after this rode on horseback.  Thus the little book lay aside for a long space; and while she was yet diligently striving to write with her left hand death snatched from her Ann Schopper, the widow of our late dear brother Herdegen Schopper and her heart’s best friend, and this fell upon her soul as so cruel a grief that she never after could endure to take up the pen.

Then, when she lost her dearly-beloved husband, a few months after their golden wedding day, all was at an end for her; the brave old woman gave up all care for life, and died no more than three months after him.  And indeed often have I seen how that, when one of a pair, who have dwelt together so many years in true union of hearts, departs this life, this earth is too lonely for the other, so that one might deem that their hearts had grown to be as it were one flesh, and the one that is left hath bled to death inwardly from the Reaper’s stroke.

Then I read through this book of memories once more, and meseemed that Margery had written of herself as less worthy than of a truth she was in her life’s spring-tide.

Most of you can yet remember how that my lord the Mayor spoke of the bride with the golden chaplet crowning her thick silver hair, as the pride of our city, the best friend and even at times the wisest counsellor of our worshipful Council, the comforter and refuge of the poor; and you know full well that Master Johannes Lochner, the priest, spoke over her open grave, saying that, as in her youth she had been fairest, so in old age she was the noblest and most helpful of all the dames of the parish of Saint Sebald; and you yourselves have many a time been her almoners, or have gazed in silence to admire her portrait.