While I write a certain summer day from that long past time comes back to my mind strangely clear.

We had played long enough in our chamber, and we found it too hot in the loft under the roof, where we had climbed on to the beams, which were great, so we went down into the garden.

Herdegen had quitted us in haste after noon, and we found none but Kunz, who was shaping arrows for his cross-bow.

But he ere long threw away his knife and came to be with us, and as he was well-disposed to Ann as being my friend, he did his best to make himself pleasing, or at least noteworthy in her sight.

He stood on his head and then climbed to the top of the tallest fruit-tree and flung down pears, but they smote her head so that she cried out; then he turned a wheel on his hands and feet, and a little more and his shoe would hit her in the face; and when he marked that he was but troubling us, he went away sorrowful, but only to hide behind a bush, and as we went past, to rush out on a sudden and put us in fear by wild shouting.
My eldest brother well-nigh affrighted us more when he presently joined us, for his hair was all unkempt and his looks wild.