yoke, they came to blows, even on the stairs leading to Gertrude’s chamber, and there was a fierce battle, which might have had a bloody end but that old dame Magdalen herself came between them to part them.  And then Master Ulman had sworn to Gotz that he would keep his daughter locked up as a captive unless the youth pledged himself to cease from seeing Gertrude till he had won his parents’ consent.  Thereupon Gotz went forth into a strange land; but he did not forget his well-beloved, and from time to time a letter would reach her assuring her of his faithfulness.

At the end of three years after his departing he at last wrote to the coppersmith that he had found a post which would allow of his marrying and setting up house and he straightly besought Master Ulman no longer to keep apart two who could never be sundered.  Nor did Pernhart delay to answer him, hard as he found it to use the pen, inasmuch as there was no more to say than that Gertrude was sleeping under the sod with her lover’s ring on her finger and the last violets he had ever given her under her head, as she had desired.

Thus ended the tale of poor Gertrude; but before I had half told it my wrath had cooled.  For my aunt sat in silence, listening to me with devout attention.  Nor were my eyes dry, nor even those of that strong-willed dame, and when, at the end, I said:  “Well, Aunt?” she woke, as it were, from a dream, and cried out:  “And yet those craftsmen folk robbed me of my son, my only child!”

And she sobbed aloud and hid her face in her hands, while I knelt by her side, and threw my arms about her, and kissed her thin fingers which covered her eyes, and said softly, as if by inspiration:  “But the craftsman loved his child; yea, and she was a sweet and lovely maid, the fairest in all the town, and her father’s pride.  And what was it that snatched her so early away but that she pined for your son?  Gotz may soon be recalled to his mother’s arms; but the coppersmith may never see his child—­fair Gertrude, the folks called her—­never see her more.  And he might have been rejoiced in her presence to this day if. . . .”

She broke in with words and gestures of warning, and when I nevertheless would not cease from entreating her no longer to harden her heart, but to bid her son come home to her, who was her most precious treasure, she commanded me to quit her chamber.  Such a command I must obey, whether I would or no; nay, while I stood a moment at the door she signed to me to go; but, as I turned away, she cried after me:  “Go and leave me, Margery.  But you are a good child, I will tell you that!”