After first murmuring some unintelligible words in his beard, Romeias said: "Well, she ought to be thankful if she is one, and I am not going to tear off her garb of sanctity. But since I was at Constance on a visit to my mother, I have heard many a tale, that's not quite as it ought to be. It has not yet been forgotten in those parts, how she had to defend herself before the bishop on account of this and that which is none of my business; and the Constance merchants will tell you, without your asking them, that the recluses near the cathedral have lent them money, given to them by pious pilgrims, on usurious interest. It was not my fault, that once, when I was still a boy, I found in a quarry a strange big pebble. When I knocked it to pieces with my hammer, there was a toad in the middle, looking very much astonished. Since then I know what a recluse is like. Snip-snap--trari-trara!" Romeias accompanied his new friend to the house which lay beyond the cloister-walls and which was destined to receive her. Before it, the other maids were standing, and the posy of wild flower's they had gathered lay on a stone table before the door. "We must say Good-bye," said the gate-keeper. "Farewell," said Praxedis. He then went away, and after going thirty steps suddenly turned round,--but the sun does not rise twice in one day; least of all for the keeper of a cloister-gate! No hand was being kissed to him. Praxedis had entered the house. Then Romeias slowly walked back, and without troubling himself to ask leave, hastily took up the flowers from the stone table, and went away. The stag and four hares he brought to the kitchen. After this he toiled up to his room in the watch-tower, fastened the nosegay to the wall with the help of a nail, and taking a piece of charcoal, drew a heart under it, which had two eyes, a long stroke in lieu of a nose, and a cross-line for a mouth. He had just finished this, when the cloister-pupil Burkhard came up, bent upon amusing himself. Romeias seized him with a powerful grasp, held out the charcoal and placing him before the wall, said: "There, write the name under it!" "What name?" asked the boy. "Hers," commanded Romeias. "What do I know about her, and her name," testily replied the pupil. "There one can see again, what is the use of studying," grumbled Romeias. "Every day the boy sits for eight hours behind his asses'-skins and does not know the name of a strange damsel!" ... CHAPTER IV. In the Monastery.