Many a person for whom he forgot to turn aside looked angrily after him.

Suddenly he found his farther progress arrested.

The crier had just raised his voice to announce some important tidings to the people who thronged around him between the Town Hall and the Franciscan monastery.

Perhaps he might have succeeded in forcing a passage through the concourse, but when he heard the name "Ernst Ortlieb," in the monotonous speech of the city crier, he followed the remainder of his notice.

It made known to the citizens of Nuremberg that, since the thunderstorm of the preceding night, a maid had been missing from the house of the Honourable Herr Ernst Ortlieb, of the Council, a Swiss by birth, Katharina of Sarnen, called Katterle, a woman of blameless reputation.