As I made my way humbly enough across to Master Gerard's room his
daughter did not speak to me, only followed me boldly, and yet, as it
seemed to me, somewhat wistfully too, with her sea-green eyes. And as the
door was closing upon me I saw her beckon the serving-man.

But I, on the inner side of the door, and with Master Gerard von Sturm
before me, had enough to do to tell my tale and answer his questions
without troubling my head about green-eyed girls.

Master Gerard was as remarkable looking to the full as his daughter, with
the same luminously green eyes. But the orbs which in the maid shone as
steadily clear as the depths of the sea, in the father glittered
opalescent where he sat in the dusk, like the eyes of Grimalkin cornered
by dogs in some gloomy angle of the Wolfsberg wall.

As soon as I had set eyes on him I knew that I had to do with a man--not
with a walking show like my Lord Duke Casimir. It struck me that for good
or evil Master Gerard could carry through his intent to the bitter end,
and that in council he would smile when he saw my father change his black
vesture of trial for the red of beheading.

The Doctor Gerard was little seen in the streets of Thorn. Many citizens
had never so much as set eyes on him. Nevertheless his hand was in
everything. Some said he was a Jew, chiefly because none knew rightly
what he was or whence he had come. Thirty years had gone by since he had
suddenly appeared one day in the noble old house by the Weiss Thor, from
which Grätz the wizard and his wife had been burned out by the fury of
the populace. Twenty years of artistic labor had made this place what it
now was. And the little impish maid who used to break unexpectedly upon
the workmen of Thorn from behind doors, or who clapped hands upon their