Now, when a short time before his departing they were alone with me, Ann, bearing in mind this pact they had made, cried out:  “You promise me we shall build our nest in some place far from hence; and be it where it may, wherever we may be left to ourselves and have but each other, a happy life must await us.”

At this his eyes flashed, and he cried with a lad’s bold spirit: 

“With a doctor’s hood, at the Emperor’s court, I shall ere long be councillor, and at last, God willing, Chancellor of the Realm!”

After this they spoke yet many loving and touching words, and when he was already in the saddle and waved her a last farewell, tears flowed from his eyes—­

I saw them for certain.—­And at that moment I besought the Lord that He would rather chastise and try me with pain and grief, but bring these two together and let their marriage be crowned by the highest bliss ever vouchsafed to human hearts.

CHAPTER XIII.

Spring was past, and again the summer led me and Ann back into the green wood.  Aunt Jacoba’s sickness was no whit amended, and the banishment of her only and comely son gnawed at her heart; but the more she needed tending and cheering the more Ann could do for her and the dearer she became to the heart of the sick woman.

Kunz was ever in Venice.  Herdegen wrote right loving letters at first from Padua, but then they came less often, and the last Ann ever had to show me was a mere feint which pleased me ill indeed, inasmuch as, albeit it was full of big words, it was empty of tidings of his life or of his heart’s desire.  What all this must mean Ann, with her clear sense and true love, could not fail to see; nevertheless she ceased not from building on her lover’s truth; or, if she did not, she hid that from all the world, even from me.

We came from the forest earlier than we were wont, on Saint Maurice’s day, forasmuch as that Ann could not be longer spared and, now more than ever, I could not bear to leave her alone.

Uncle Christian rode to the town with us, and if he had before loved her well, in this last long time of our all being together he had taken her yet more into his heart.  And now, whereas he had given her the right to warn him against taking too much wine, he was fain to call her his little watchman, by reason that it is the watchman’s part to give warning of the enemy’s onset.

But while Ann was so truly beloved at the Forest lodge, on her return home she found no pleasant welcome.  In her absence the coppersmith Pernhart had wooed her mother in good earnest, and the eldest daughter not being on the spot, had sped so well that the widow had yielded.  Ann once made bold to beseech her mother with due reverence to give up her purpose, but she fell on her child’s neck, as though Ann were the mother, entreating her, with many tears, to let her have her will.  Ann of a certainty