The morning after the departure of Richard of Woodville dawned clear and bright upon the city of Ghent; and the hour of seven found a small party assembled in a neat wooden house, not many yards within the Brabant gate, at the cheerful meal of breakfast. With dagger in hand and hearty good will, Nicholas Brune was hewing away at a huge capon, which, with a pickled boar's head, formed the staple of the meal, helping his good buxom dame and Ella Brune to what he considered choice pieces, and praising the fare with more exuberance than modesty, considering that he was the lord of the feast. Madame Brune, as we should call her in the present day, but known in Ghent by a more homely appellation, which may be translated "Wife Brune," was a native of the good city; and, by his marriage with her, Nicholas had not only obtained a considerable sum of money, but also various advantages, which placed him nearly, if not altogether, on a footing with the born citizens;--so that, for his fair better half, he had great respect and devotion, as in duty bound. For Ella his reverence had been greatly increased, by finding that she was endowed with a quality very engaging in his opinion--namely, wealth; for the sum which she possessed, though but a trifle in our eyes, was in those days no inconsiderable fortune, as I have already taken the liberty of hinting. I must not, however, do the worthy goldsmith injustice, and suffer the reader to believe that, had Ella appeared poor and friendless, as he had last seen her, Nicholas Brune would have shown her aught but kindness; for he was a good-hearted and right-minded man; but it is not attributing too much to the influence of the precious metals in which he worked, to admit that, certainly, he always took them into account in computing the degree of respect which he was bound to pay to others. He would not have done any dishonest or evil act to obtain a whole Peruvian mine, if such a thing had been within the sphere of his imagination; but still, the possession of such a mine would have greatly enhanced, in the eyes of Nicholas Brune, the qualities of any one who might chance to be its proprietor. The only thing, indeed, which puzzled him in the present instance was, how his old uncle could assume the garb of a wandering, and not generally respected race, when he had by him a sum which set him above all chance of want. At first he fancied that the old man's love of music--which was to him, who did not know one note from another, a separate marvel--might have been the motive: the ruling passion strong in death. But then he thought that good old Murdock might have made sweet melody just as well in his own house, as in wandering from court to court, and fair to fair; but immediately after, remembering the old man's peculiar religious notions, with which he was well acquainted, he concluded that zeal, in which he could fully sympathize, must have been the cause of conduct that seemed so strange.