Katterle had reached Heinz, had been required to tell him everything she
knew about Eva and Biberli down to the minutest detail and had then
been commissioned to repeat to the latter what had been also contained in
the letter. On the way home, however, she only reached Schwabach, for
the long walk in the most terrible anxiety, drenched by a pouring rain,
whilst enquiring her way to Heinz, and especially the terrible
excitements of the last few days, had been too much even for her vigorous
constitution. Her pulse was throbbing violently and her brow was burning
when she knocked at the door of Apel, the carrier, who had taken her into
his waggon at Schweinau, and the good old man and his wife received and
nursed her. The fever was soon broken, but weakness prevented her
journeying to Schweinau on foot, and, as Apel intended to go to Nuremberg
the first of the following week, she had been forced to content herself
with sending the messenger who had betrayed her confidence.

How hard it was for Katterle to wait! And her impatience reached its
height when, before she could leave, some of the imperial troopers
stabled their horses at the carrier's and reported that Castle Siebenburg
and the robber stronghold of the Absbachs were destroyed. Sir Heinz
Schorlin had fought like St. George. Now he was detained only by the
fortresses of the knights Hirschhorn and Oberstein, whose situation on
inaccessible crags threatened long to defy the imperial power.

The thought that the strong Swiss girl might be ill never entered the
mind of Biberli or Eva, but in quiet hours he asked himself which it
would probably grieve him most to miss forever--his beautiful young nurse
or his countrywoman and sweetheart. His heart belonged solely to
Katterle, but towards Eva he obeyed the old trait inherent in his nature,
and clung with the same loyalty hitherto evinced for his master to her