me; Ann thenceforth was diligent in waiting on the sick lady, and such
loving duty won her more and more of my uncle's love, who found his
weakly, suffering wife much on his hands, and that in the plainest sense
of the words, since, whenever he might be at home, she would allow no
other creature to lift her from one spot to another.

Now, whereas Uncle Conrad had taught Ann to mark the divers voices of the
forest, so did she open my eyes to the many virtues of my aunt, which,
heretofore, I had been wont to veil from my own sight out of wrath at her
hardness to my cousin Gotz.

Ann, in her compassion and thankfulness, had truly learnt to love her,
and she now led me to perceive that she was in many ways a right wise and
good woman. Her low, sheltered couch in the peaceful chimney-corner was,
as it were, the centre of a wide net, and she herself the spider-wife who
had spun it, for in truth her good counsel stretched forth over the whole
range of forest, and over all her husband's rough henchmen. She knew the
name of every child in the furthest warders' huts, and never did she
suffer one of the forest folks to die unholpen. She was, indeed, forced
to see with other eyes and give with other hands than her own, and
notwithstanding this she ever gave help where it was most needed, since
she chose her messengers well and lent an ear to all who sought her.

She soon found work for us, making us do many a Samaritan-task; and many
a time have we marvelled to mark the skill with which she wove her web,
and the wisdom coupled with her open-handed bounty.

No one else could have found a place in the great books which she filled
with her records; but to her they were so clear that the craft of the
most cunning was put to shame when she looked into them. Never a soul,