you a little tale for your guidance. You knew Riklein, the spinster,
whom folks called the night-spinster; and was not she a right loving
and cheerful soul? Yet had she known no small meed of sorrows. She died
but lately on Saint Damasius' day last past, and the tale I have to tell
concerns her. They called her the night-spinster, by reason that she
ofttimes would sit at her wheel till late into the night to earn money
which she was paid at the rate of three farthings the spool. But it was
not out of greed that the old body was so keen to get money.

"In her youth she had been one of the neatest maids far and wide,
and had set her heart on a charcoal burner who was a sorry knave indeed,
a sheep-stealer and a rogue, who came to a bad end on the rack. But for
all that Riklein never ceased to love him truly and, albeit he was dead
and gone, she did not give over toiling diligently while she lived yet
for him. The priest had told her that, inasmuch as her lover had taken
the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper on the scaffold, the Kingdom of Heaven
was not closed to him, yet would it need many a prayer and many a mass to
deliver him from the fires of purgatory. So Riklein, span and span, day
and night, and stored up all she earned, and when she lay on her death-
bed, not long ago, and the priest gave her the Holy Sacrament, she took
out her hoard from beneath her mattress and showed it to him, asking
whether that might be enough to pay to open the way for Andres to the
joys of Heaven? And when the chaplain said that it would be, she turned
away her face and fell asleep. So do you spin your yarn, child, and let
the flax on your distaff be glad assurance; and, if ever your heart sinks
within you, remember old Riklein!"

"And the Farmer's daughter in 'Poor Heinrich,'" I said, "who gladly gave
her young blood to save her plighted lord from leprosy."