"Grace and peace in Christ! You will have to hire other horses, if you need them, dear Kate, for His Grace will keep yours, until he can return them to you by Master Philip. I myself, leaving Smalcald yesterday, came hither in the Elector's coach. The reason is this,--I have been ill; rest and sleep forsook me, and food and drink sickened me. I was as one dead, and had commended you and the little ones to my dear Lord, thinking I should never see you again. I was sorely grieved for you,--yet I was prepared for the end. But so many prayers were made in my behalf, that they have prevailed, and I feel as one newly born. Therefore give thanks to God, and tell Aunt Lena and the children, to thank the Father in Heaven, for without His mercy they had surely lost their earthly father. The good prince endeavored by all means to procure me relief, but in vain. Neither did your remedy against indigestion do me any good. It is God alone who has done, and still does wonders for me, through, the intercession of godly persons. "This I write you, thinking that His Grace may have given orders to have you brought to meet me, that, in case I died upon the way, you might once more see me and speak with me. But there is no longer any need of it, and you can remain at home, God having helped me so abundantly that I hope soon to return to you in good health. "To-day we are at Gotha. I have written you four times, and am surprised that nothing has reached you. "MARTIN LUTHER." "_Tuesday after Reminiscere, 1537_." With tear-dimmed eyes Katharine read the letter, and then broke out in passionate lamentations, that she should be so far away from her beloved husband, when he most needed her care. She pictured to herself his sufferings, which her imagination painted in colors more somber than the reality. Full of her sorrow, she forgot to thank God for what He had done, until Aunt Lena reminded her of her duty. "He wrote me four letters, and I received none of them," she complained. "Oh, how he must have longed for his wife and children. Yet none but strange faces were around him, and strange hands ministered to him. No doubt, they were kind and faithful, but his friends are not the same as his wife!" She felt like a captive, and would fain have taken to herself wings, and hastened to him, whom her soul loved. Aunt Lena's arguments were without effect; and indeed, her uneasiness was but the instinct of an anxious heart. Through the magic tie of love, the souls of husband and wife were so linked together, that each in a measure felt the other's pain. Katharine's torturing anxiety, nowithstanding the reassuring tone of the letter, was but the premonition of further trouble. A relapse again brought her husband to the brink of the grave. It seemed to her as though he were stretching out his hands, and crying: "Come hither, and help me!"