bewilderment at the distinguished gentlemen who, incredible as it seemed,
had actually--for Dietel said so--foregone their morning nap for the sake
of a vagabond girl. The feather-curler shook his head as if something
marvellous had happened when he heard the ambassador of the Honourable
Council of his own native city, the distinguished Herr Lienhard Groland,
say to old Doctor Schedel:

"I will wait here with you, my venerable friend. Since the poor girl can
live only a few hours longer, I can join the others, if I hurry, before
they leave Frankfort."

"That's right, Lienhard," cried Wilibald Pirckheimer, and the Abbot of
St. AEgidius added approvingly:

"You will thereby do something which is pleasing in the sight of Heaven.
Yes, gentlemen, I repeat it: there are few deathbeds beside which I have
found so little reason to be ashamed of the fate of being a mortal as by
the humble couch of this vagabond girl. If, before the judgment seat
above, intention and faith are weighed with the same scales as works,
few who close their eyes behind silken curtains will be so sure of a
favourable sentence as this poorest of the poor."

"Did the girl really keep no portion of Herr Lienhard's rich gift for
herself?" asked the Nuremberg imperial magistrate.

"Nothing," replied the abbot. "She gave the whole, down to her last
copper, to the stranger, though she herself must remain here, poor, lame,
and deserted--and she had only met the sick woman by accident upon the
highway. My duty forbids me to repeat the details, and how she bore
herself even while at Augsburg, but, thanks to the confession which I