at the lodge, and there we found Young Kubbeling well nigh healed of his
fever, and Eppelein's tongue ready to wag and to tell us of his many
adventures without overmuch asking. Howbeit, save what concerned his own
mishaps, he had little to say that we knew not already.

The Saracen pirate who had boarded the galleon from Genoa which was
carrying him and his lord to Cyprus, had parted him from Herdegen and Sir
Franz, and sold him for a slave in Egypt. There had he gone through many
fortunes, till at last, in Alexandria, he had one day met Akusch. At
that time my faithful squire's father was yet in good estate, and he
forthwith bought Eppelein, who was then a chattel of the overseer of the
market, to the end that the fellow might help his son in the search for
Herdegen. This search they had diligently pursued, and had discovered
my brother and Sir Franz together in the armory of the Sultan's Palace,
in the fort over against Cairo, whither they had come after they had both
worked at the oars in great misery for two years, on board a Saracen
galley.

But then Herdegen had made proof, in some jousting among the young
Mamelukes, of how well skilled he was with the sword, and thereby he had
won such favor that they were fain to deliver sundry letters which he
wrote to us, into the care of the Venice consul. Whereas he had no
answer he had set it down to our lack of diligence at home, till at last
he was put on the right track by Akusch, and it was plainly shown that
those letters had never reached us, and that by Ursula's malice. To
follow up these matters Akusch had afterwards betaken himself again to
Alexandria; notwithstanding by this time his father had fallen on evil
days. And behold, on the very evening after their return, as they were
passing along by the side of the Venice Fondaco, whither they had gone to
see the leech who attended the Consul--having heard that he was a German