After helping to place the Wittenberg theologian in custody, he had followed Barbara at some distance during her nocturnal walk.  While she waited in front of Dr. Hiltner’s house and talked with the members of the syndic’s family after their return, he had remained concealed in the shadow of a neighbouring dwelling, and did not move until the doctor had gone away with the singer.  He cautiously glided behind them as far as the garden, witnessed the syndic’s cordial farewell to his companion, and dogged the former to the Prebrunn jail.  Here he had again been obliged to wait patiently a long while before the doctor came out into the open air with the prisoner.  The rope had been removed from Erasmus’s hands, and Cassian had remained at his heels until he stopped in the village of Kager, on the Nuremberg road.  The young man had taken a lunch in the tavern there; the money for it was given him by the syndic.  Cassian had seen the gold pieces which had been placed in Erasmus’s hand, to pay his travelling expenses, glitter in the rosy light of dawn.

In reply to the almoner’s question whether he remembered any portion of the conversation between the syndic and the singer, Cassian admitted that he had been obliged to keep too far away from them to hear it, but Dr. Hiltner’s manner to the girl had been very friendly, especially when he took leave of her.

The anything but grateful manner with which the almoner received this story was a great disappointment to the overzealous servant; nay, he secretly permitted himself to doubt his master’s wisdom and energy when the latter remarked that the arrest of a man who had merely entered a stranger’s garden was entirely unjustifiable, and that he was aware of the singer’s acquaintanceship with the Hiltners.

With these words he motioned Cassian to the door.

When the prelate was again alone he gazed thoughtfully into vacancy.  He understood human beings sufficiently well to know that Barbara had not deceived him in her confession.  In spite of the nocturnal walk with the head of the Ratisbon heretics, she was faithful to the Catholic Church.

Erasmus’s visit at night alone gave him cause for reflection, and suggested the doubt whether he might not have interceded too warmly for this peculiar creature and her excitable artist nature.

CHAPTER III.

Silence pervaded the little castle in Prebrunn; nay, there were days when a thick layer of straw in the road showed that within the house lay some one seriously ill, who must be guarded from every sound.

In Ratisbon and the Golden Cross, on the contrary, the noise and bustle constantly increased.  On the twenty-eighth of May, King Ferdinand arrived with his family to visit his brother Charles.  The Reichstag would be opened on the fifth of June, and attracted to the Danube many princes and nobles, but neither the Elector John of Saxony nor the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, the heads of the Smalcald league.  King Ferdinand’s two daughters were to be married the first of July, and many a distinguished guest came to Ratisbon in June.  Besides, several soldiers began to appear.