“Is it any business of yours?” was the reply, uttered with difficulty amid her coughing.

“Mine, mine—­is it any business of mine?” gasped the tongueless man.  Then he raised his heavy fist threateningly and stammered jeeringly:  “Not—­not a red heller more nor less than my cart—­in the name of all the fiends—­than my cart is of yours.  Four heller pounds, Ratz, and the donkey and cart are yours.”

“Done!” cried the vagrant, who already had his money ready; but the tongueless blasphemer chuckled with malicious pleasure: 

“Now you have it, fool!  Whoever doesn’t share with me—­you know that—­ doesn’t ride with me.”

Then he staggered back to Gitta.

The girl watched him silently for a while.  At last she passed her hand quickly across her brow, as if to dispel some unpleasant thought, and shook her burning head, half sadly, half disapprovingly.

She had done a good deed—­and this, this—­But she had not performed it for the sake of reward, she had only desired to aid the sufferer.

Straightening herself proudly, she limped toward the kitchen.

Here, frequently interrupted by fits of coughing, she told the landlady of The Pike in touching words that the sick mother, whom she had so kindly strengthened with nice broth, desired the sacrament, as her life would soon be over.  The Lord Abbot of St. AEgidius in Nuremberg was still sitting over his wine.

She went no further.  The landlady, who, while Kuni was talking, had wiped her pretty flushed face with her apron, pulled the rolled up white linen sleeves farther down over her plump arms, and gazed with mingled surprise and approval into the girl’s emaciated face, interrupted her with the promise to do what she could for the poor woman.

“If it were any one else,” she continued, significantly, “I would not venture to try it.  But the Abbot of St. AEgidius, in his charity, scarcely asks, when help is needed, whence did you come, who are you, or what do you possess?  I know him.  Wait here a little while.  If he condescends to do it, you can take him to the poor creature at once.”

While speaking she smoothed, with two swift motions of her hands, the brown hair which had become a little disordered while bustling to and fro to attend to the business, dipped her hands into the water pail, dried them quickly on her apron, untied it, and tossed it to the maid.  Then she cleared her throat vigorously and left the kitchen.

In reply to the anxious question of her husband, whom she met on the threshold of the room, as to what she was seeking there, she answered firmly, “What is right and pious”; then modestly whispered her request to the abbot.

Her wish was fulfilled without delay, nay, it might really have been supposed that the interruption was very opportune to the distinguished prelate; for, with the brief exclamation, “Imperative official duty!” he rose from the table, and went first with the landlady to Kuni and afterward with the latter to the cart beside the laden potter’s wain, whose white tilt gleamed in the darkness.