they besought us yet to delay our departing and to suffer them to be free to do what they would.  And we were fain to yield, albeit the blood of the Schoppers boiled at the thought that I must tarry here idle, and others go round as it were with the beggars’ staff, in our name, and for the sake of a son of our house who had done no good to any man.  Howbeit, I knew full well that pride and defiance were now out of place; and while I was walking homewards with Ann and Cousin Maud, on a sudden my cousin asked me:  If Lorenz Stromer were in Herdegen’s plight would I not gladly give of my estate; and when I said yes, quoth she:  “Then all is well.”  And inasmuch as she was of the same mind she could, without a qualm, suffer the gentlemen to ask from door to door in Herdegen’s name and in her own.  It was our part only to show that we, as his nearest and dearest, were foremost in giving.  And on that same day Ann brought all she possessed in gold and jewels, even to her christening coins which she had kept in her money-box, and among them likewise a costly cross of diamonds which my lord Cardinal had given her a few months ago.

That evening, again, as dusk was falling, Ann once more knocked at our door, and the reason of her coming was in truth a sad one:  her grand-uncle, old Adam Heyden the organist, our friend of the tower, felt that his last hour was nigh, and bid us go to see him.  Thus it came to pass that in two following days we had to stand by a death-bed.  On each lay an old man departing to the other world, and meseemed their end had fallen so close together to yield warning and meditation to our young souls.  Now, as I toiled up the steep turret-stair, after flying, yesterday, up the matted steps of the wealthy house of the Im Hoffs, meseemed that the two men’s lives had been like to these staircases, and, young as I was, I nevertheless could say to myself that the humbler man’s steep stair, which of late he could not mount without much panting, led up to a higher and brighter home than the wide steps of the rich merchant’s palace.

Howbeit, when I had presently closed that good old man’s eyes, I would not suffer myself to think thus of the twain, by reason that I could not endure to mar my remembrance of that other, to whom, after all, we owed much thanks.

The old organist had received the Holy Sacrament at mid-day from the hand of his old friend Nikolas Laister, the Vicar of Saint Sebald’s.  He would have no one to see him save ourselves and Hans Richter the churchwarden, a man after his own heart, and the Pernharts; and at first he marked not our coming, inasmuch as he was just then giving a toy to the deaf-mute boy, which he had carved with his own hand, and Dame Giovanna had much pains to carry away the child, who had cast himself on the old man with passionate love.  Everything that moved the little one’s soul he was forced, as it were, to express with unreasoning violence; and now, when the child was so boisterous as to disturb the peace of the others, his mother took him by the hand to lead him away into another chamber; but the dying man signed to him with a look which none may describe, and that moment the little fellow set his teeth hard and stood in silence by the door.  Whereupon the old man nodded to him as though the child had done him some kindness.