Ruth breathed more freely when once again in the street and among human beings, and soon, clinging to the hand of her father, who had come to meet her, she entered the house with him and Ulrich.

CHAPTER II.

While the boy flung the damp bundles of brushwood on the floor beside the hearth in the doctor’s kitchen, a servant from the monastery was leading three horses under the rude shed in front of the smith Adam’s work-shop The stately grey-haired monk, who had ridden the strong cream-colored steed, was already standing beside the embers of the fire, pressing his hands upon the warm chimney.

The forge stood open, but spite of knocking and shouting, neither the master of the place, nor any other living soul appeared.  Adam had gone out, but could not be far away, for the door leading from the shop into the sitting-room, was also unlocked.

The time was growing long to Father Benedict, so for occupation he tried to lift the heavy hammer.  It was a difficult task, though he was no weakling, yet it was not hard for Adam’s arm to swing and guide the burden.  If only the man had understood how to govern his life as well as he managed his ponderous tool!

He did not belong to Richtberg.  What would his father have said, had he lived to see his son dwell here?

The monk had known the old smith well, and he also knew many things about the son and his destiny, yet no more than rumor entrusts to one person concerning another’s life.  Even this was enough to explain why Adam had become so reserved, misanthropic and silent a man, though even in his youth lie certainly had not been what is termed a gay fellow.

The forge where he grew up, was still standing in the market-place of the little city below; it had belonged to his grandfather and great-grandfather.  There had never been any lack of custom, to the annoyance of the wise magistrates, whose discussions were disturbed by the hammering that rang across the ill-paved square to the windows of the council-chamber; but, on the other hand, the idle hours of the watchmen under the arches of the ground-floor of the town-hall were sweetened by the bustle before the smithy.

How Adam had come from the market-place to the Richtberg, is a story speedily told.

He was the only child of his dead parents, and early learned his father’s trade.  When his mother died, the old man gave his son and partner his blessing, and some florins to pay his expenses, and sent him away.  He went directly to Nuremberg, which the old man praised as the high-school of the smith’s art, and there remained twelve years.  When, at the end of that time, news came to Adam that his father was dead, and he had inherited the forge on the market-place, he wondered to find that he was thirty years old, and had gone no farther than Nuremberg.  True, everything that the rest of the world could do in the art of forging might be learned there.