swift enough in departing. When I was telling of all this to Uhlwurm,
who had stayed without, and what I had heard concerning Junker Herdegen,
he had nought to say but that accursed 'Gone!' And how that dazes me,
old mole that I am, you yourselves have seen. But the demeanor of
Mistress Tetzel of Nuremberg, I have never had it out of my mind since,
day or night, nor again, yesterday."

He rubbed his damp brow, drank a draught, and took a deep breath; he was
not wont to speak at such length. But whereas we asked him many
questions of these matters, he turned again to us maidens, and said
"Grant me a few words apart from the matter you see, in time a man gets
an eye for a falcon, and sees what its good points are, and if it ails
aught. He learns to know the breed by its feathers, and breastbone, and
the color of its legs, and many another sign, and its temper by its eye
and beak;--and it is the same with knowing of men. All this I learned
not of myself, but from my father, God rest him; and like as you may know
a falcon by the beak, so you may know a man or a woman by the mouth. And
as I mind me of Mistress Ursula's face, as I saw it then, that is enough
for me. Aye, and I will give my best Iceland Gerfalcon for a lame crow
if every word she spoke concerning the death of Junker Herdegen was not
false knavery. She is a goodly woman and of wondrous beauty; yet, as I
sat erewhile, thinking and gazing into the Wurzburg wine in my cup, I
remembered her red lips and white teeth, as she bid me exhort his kin at
home to seek the lost man no more. And I will plainly declare what that
mouth brought to my mind; nought else than the muzzle of the she-wolf you
caught and chained up. That was how she showed her tusks when Uhlwurm
wheedled her after his wise, and she feigned to be his friend albeit she
thirsted to take him by the throat.--False, I say, false, false was every
word that came to my ears out of that mouth! I know what I know; she is
mad for the sake of one of the Schoppers, and if it be not Kunz then it