"Who sent it to her?" asked her mother.

"Her brother in Cologne. He is doing well at his trade, and so he
bought this necklace at a fair and sent it to his sister as a
remembrance. He wrote her a letter all about the sights in Cologne,
and asked Frau Braun to come and visit him and his wife.

"He promised her in the letter that if she would come, he would take
her to see the grand Cologne cathedral. He said thousands of
strangers visit it every year, because every one knows it is one of
the most beautiful buildings in all Europe.

"Then he said she should also see the Church of Saint Ursula, where
the bones of the eleven thousand maidens can still be seen in their
glass cases."

"Do you know the story of St. Ursula, Gretchen?" asked her father.

"Yes, indeed, sir. Ursula was the daughter of an English king. She
was about to be married, but she said that before the wedding she
would go to Rome on a pilgrimage.

"Eleven thousand young girls went with the princess. On her way home
she was married, but when the wedding party had got as far as
Cologne, they were attacked by the savage Huns. Every one was
killed,--Ursula, her husband, and the eleven thousand maidens. The
church was afterward built in her memory. Ursula was made a saint by
the Pope, and the bones of the young girls were preserved in glass
cases in the church."