directly."

While Eva, leaning on the maid's arm, mounted the stairs with trembling
knees, Els turned to the Swiss and said in a grave, resolute tone: "If
you are worthy of your escutcheon, Sir Knight, you will not now fly like
a coward from this house across whose threshold you stole with shameful
insolence, but await me here until I return. You shall not be detained
long. But, to guard yourself and another from misinterpretation, you
must hear me."

Heinz nodded assent in silence, as if still under the spell of what he
had recently experienced. But, ere he reached the entry below, Martsche,
the old housekeeper, and Endres, the aged head packer, came towards him,
just as they had risen from their beds, the former with a petticoat flung
round her shoulders, the latter wrapped in a horse-blanket.

Eva's shriek had waked both, but Els enjoined silence on everyone and,
after telling them to go back to bed, said briefly that Eva in her
somnambulism had this time gone out into the street and been brought back
by the knight. Finally, she again said to Heinz, "Presently!" and then
went to her sister.




CHAPTER IX.

When Biberli bade farewell to his sweetheart, who gave him Eva's little
note, he had arranged to meet her again in an hour or, if his duties
detained him longer, in two; but after the "true and steadfast" fellow