Malfalconnet mounted his noble stallion, and Count Lanoi, the equerry,
gave his companion a good horse and furnished two mounted torch-bearers.

But the Emperor's envoys had not far to ride; halfway between the abbey
of Prufening and Ratisbon, just outside the village of Dcchbetten, they
met the returning excursionists.

Barbara's voice reached Wolf from a considerable distance.

He knew the playmate of his childhood; her words never sounded so loud
and sharp unless she was excited.

She had said little on the way out, and Herr Peter Schlumperger asked
what had vexed her. Then she roused herself, and, to conquer the great
anxiety which again and again took possession of her, she drank Herr
Peter's sweet Malmsey wine more recklessly than usual.

At last, more intoxicated by her own vivacity than by the juice of the
grape, she talked so loudly and freely with the other ladies and
gentlemen that it became too much even for Frau Kastenmayr, who had
glanced several times with sincere anxiety from her golden-haired
favourite to her brother, and then back to Barbara.

Such reckless forwardness ill beseemed a chaste Ratisbon maiden and the
future wife of a Peter Schlumperger, and she would gladly have urged
departure. But some of the city pipers had been sent to the forest, and
when they began to play, and Herr Peter himself invited the young people
to dance, her good humour wholly disappeared; for Barbara, whom the young
gentlemen eagerly sought, had devoted herself to dancing with such
passionate zest that at last her luxuriant hair became completely