the preacher‘s frantic harangues, they raised such an infernal outcry that a noble councillor trod our rights under foot for the sake of peace, forbade all games of chance, and sent his officers to seize the loose women at the Elephant, and put them across the frontier. This occurred just at the time I lay ill in the Rosenthal.” Berthold was carried home to his stepmother, who would not receive him, and Arnulph made him a bed in the hounds’ kennel, for which piece of humanity his violent mistress beat him, and procured his dismissal. And throughout the book we hear no more of the rough but well-meaning journeyman hangman. Berthold’s father came to visit his son and dress his wounds, but the henpecked headsman dared not take him into his house. The poor boy lay suffering and hungry, tormenting himself on account of Elizabeth, whom the authorities had removed from the Rosenthal, and given in charge to people of better repute than those who had had care of her infancy; but who those people were, and where he should seek his little friend, Berthold knew not. And when he recovered, his stepmother and her son ill-treated him, and drove him from their presence; and, Arnulph having left, he had no friend or companion but the shaggy hounds with which he slept. At this point of his youthful tribulations, Master Hammerling ceases to discourse of himself, and abruptly transports us to the sign of the Thistle, an isolated public house, consisting partly of the ruins of an old watch-tower, and much frequented by students, who on bright summer evenings loved to sit under the trees and lie upon the grass before its door, until the tolling bell warned them to return to the town before gates and bridges were closed for the night. This inn was kept by a strange old couple, childless, avaricious, and, as it was reported, passing rich, who went by the names of Father Finch and Mother Blutrude. They professed great poverty, and were furious if any doubted it, which few cared to do, since a certain rash scoffer had suddenly fallen sick, and gradually withered away and expired, in consequence, it was supposed, of certain unholy incantations of Mother Blutrude. The fear of her incantations, however, did not deter a reckless and debauched student from laying a plan for appropriating her concealed treasures. He found means to ingratiate himself with the old people, and to conceal himself in a nook at the top of the old tower, whence he saw them in the dead of night counting a large sum in silver coin. He only waited their departure to possess himself of the store, when he heard them talk of removing to the same place a large amount of Hungarian ducats they had bestowed elsewhere, and he resolved to wait where he was for this richer booty. He waited so long, that hunger, thirst, want of sleep and greed of gold bewildered his weak brain, and drove him mad. With delirious eagerness he filled his cap and pockets with the silver, rushed down the