His fevered blood, fear, and hope drove him from his couch at the first dawn of morning.
Ere returning to the two men the evening before, Barbara had hastily spoken to Ursula, and brought her whatever she preferred to receive from her hands rather than those of the one-eyed maid who spent the night with her--her Sunday cap and a little sealed package which she kept in her chest.

When Wolf tapped at her door early the next morning, she was already up, and had had her cap put on.

This was intended to give her a holiday appearance, but the expression of her faithful eyes and the smile upon her sunken mouth showed her darling that his return was a festival to her.
The stroke of apoplexy which had attacked the woman of seventy had been slight, and merely affected her speech a little.

But she found plenty of words to show Wolf how happy it made her to see him again, and to tell him about his foster parents' last illness and death.
The precentor and organist, aided by Bishop Pangraz Sinzenhofer and Blasius, the captain of the city guard, had endeavoured to collect the papers which proved Wolf's noble birth.

The package that Barbara handed to her the evening before contained the patent of nobility newly authorized by King Frederick at Vienna and the certificate of baptism which proved him to be the only son of the Frank Knight Ullmann Hartschwert and the Baroness Wendula Sandhof.
His mother's family died with her; on his father's side, as the precentor had learned, he still had an uncle, his father's older brother, but his castle had been destroyed during the Peasant War.