“Genuine, by the Holy Rood, generous lady. Ah! if I could relate to you all my sad travels. In my boyhood I cursed my mother, and she died suddenly ere granting forgiveness. Therefore I took the pilgrim’s vows to save my soul. Fulda, St. Martin’s shrine in Tours in France, St. James of Compostella, St. Thomas of Canterbury; I have visited them all. Now I would fain visit holy Einsiedeln in Switzerland, but the way is long--” “Ah! my poor friend,” said she, manifestly stirred by my twanging pathos, “I am sure your mother has long since forgiven you up in heaven. You must have been indeed a good son, though a bit hasty of tongue, to proffer such expiation. Well, if to Einsiedeln you must go, you must not go starving. Wait a moment.” She was gone into the house, and soon came back with two small loaves of bread and a goodly slice of ham, which she placed in my wallet. “Now hasten on, I beg of you,” she enjoined, “my Heinrich has been reading those books of Dr. Luther, and says now that giving to pilgrims is giving to rogues. If he knows, he will be in a temper.” “Our Lady bless and assoil you,” I whined as I shuffled away, made confident by my success, yet boiling inwardly at the shallowness of an imposture which must have made religion the finest dress for beggary through all wide Germany. And now I began to go up the slow, steep way to the castle convent. Trude and Adolf had arranged everything, had taught me the custom of the nuns in distributing their alms, and had brought it to pass, by a discreet distribution of groschen to earlier comers, that I should be the only applicant upon that day. At the gate house, before I entered the fortification, the sleepy old porter looked out of his lodge, as I trudged past. “Go up! go up, you cheese-hunter.[10] Your bag is well filled, I warrant, and you’ve breakfasted better than I; but you’ll meet one of the sisters at the inner grille, and she’ll give you more.” So he called cynically, and I continued on my way. The cobble paved ascent ended presently. Before me rose the bleak stone wall of the inner convent, where I was unprivileged to enter; but I had been informed what I must do. Turning to the left I saw a small doorway. The inner door was open, but across it was a firm iron lattice duly locked within, and above the lattice hung a little image of St. Christopher bearing Our Lord, also a small bell. I seized the dangling cord and rang. Immediately a very old nun, all bent and furrowed under her black robes and veil, responded. “Well, fellow,” she demanded, not too amiably. “_Panem propter Deum_,” I whined at my best. “I am a poor pilgrim, very hungry, and nigh spent.” “Bah!” she answered tartly from behind the bars, “you look as fat as any of them; but it’s none of my business to sift your silly stories. Wait a bit. This is Sister Ilsa’s task. She can listen all day, and give you the convent bread if she will.”