had lost some relative who was specially dear to him. Among the girls
there were few whose rosy cheeks were not constantly wet with tears.

From the first Kuni had believed that she knew who was being borne to the
grave. Now she heard several women whispering near her mention the name
of Juliane Peutinger. A pale-faced gold embroiderer, who had recently
bordered a gala dress with leaves and tendrils for the dead girl's
sister, described, sobbing, the severe suffering amid which this fairest
blossom of Augsburg girlhood had withered ere death finally broke the
slender stem.

Suddenly she stopped; a cry of mingled astonishment, lamentation, and
delight, sometimes rising, sometimes falling, ran through the crowd which
had gathered along the sides of the street.

The bier was in sight.

Twelve youths bore the framework, covered with a richly embroidered blue
cloth, on which the coffin rested. It was open, and the dead girl's
couch was so high that it seemed as though the sleeper was only resting
lightly on the white silk pillow. A wreath again encircled her head, but
this time blossoming myrtles blended with the laurel in the brown
curls that lay in thick, soft locks on the snowy pillows and the lace-
trimmed shroud.

Juliane's eyes were closed. Ah! how gladly Kuni would have kissed those
long-lashed lids to win even one look of forgiveness from her whom her
curse had perhaps snatched from the green spring world!

She remembered the sunny radiance with which this sleeper's eyes had