Then he staggered back to Gitta.

The girl watched him silently for a while. At last she passed her hand
quickly across her brow, as if to dispel some unpleasant thought, and
shook her burning head, half sadly, half disapprovingly.

She had done a good deed--and this, this--But she had not performed it
for the sake of reward, she had only desired to aid the sufferer.

Straightening herself proudly, she limped toward the kitchen.

Here, frequently interrupted by fits of coughing, she told the landlady
of The Pike in touching words that the sick mother, whom she had so
kindly strengthened with nice broth, desired the sacrament, as her life
would soon be over. The Lord Abbot of St. AEgidius in Nuremberg was
still sitting over his wine.

She went no further. The landlady, who, while Kuni was talking, had
wiped her pretty flushed face with her apron, pulled the rolled up white
linen sleeves farther down over her plump arms, and gazed with mingled
surprise and approval into the girl's emaciated face, interrupted her
with the promise to do what she could for the poor woman.

"If it were any one else," she continued, significantly, "I would not
venture to try it. But the Abbot of St. AEgidius, in his charity,
scarcely asks, when help is needed, whence did you come, who are you,
or what do you possess? I know him. Wait here a little while. If he
condescends to do it, you can take him to the poor creature at once."

While speaking she smoothed, with two swift motions of her hands, the