Perhaps she might even do him a favour by summoning him.  But dared she, a poor vagabond, disturb so distinguished a gentleman at his wine?

Yet there was danger in delay.  So she resolved to ask the assistance of the landlady of The Pike, coughed with her handkerchief pressed over her lips, in order not to disturb the sleepers, and turned to leave the room.

But Gitta had just been to see the sick mother, and told Cyriax that Kuni, silly, softhearted thing, had wasted her gold coins on the dying woman.

The blasphemer flew into a great rage, muttered a few words to pock-marked Ratz, and then staggered toward their lame travelling companion to bar her passage across the threshold, and ask, in angry, guttural tones, how much of the Groland gold she had flung into the dying woman’s grave.

“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.”