Would to God I had less painful tidings for you!" Heinz shrank back, but his cousin told him the tidings learned from a Swiss messenger scarcely an hour before.

The dispute over the bridge toll had caused a fight.

The uncle who supplied a father's place to Heinz and managed his affairs--brave old Walther Ramsweg--was killed; Schorlin Castle had been taken by the city soldiery and, at the command of the chief magistrate, razed to the ground.

Wendula Schorlin, Heinz's mother, with her daughter Maria, had fallen into the hands of the city soldiers and been carried to the convent in Constance, where she and her youngest child now remained with the two older daughters.
Heinz, deeply agitated by the news, exclaimed: "Uncle Ramsweg, our kind second father, also in the grave without my being able to press his brave, loyal hand in farewell! And Maria, our singing bird, our nimble little squirrel, with those grave, world-weary Sisters! And my mother! You, too, like every one, love her, Cousin--and you know her.

She who has been accustomed to command, and to manage the house and the lands, who like a saint dried tears far and near amid trouble and deprivation--she, deprived of her own strong will, in a convent! Oh, Cousin, Cousin! To hear this, and not be able to rush upon the rabble who have robbed us of the home of our ancestors, as a boy crushes a snail shell! Can it be imagined?
No Castle Schorlin towering high above the lake on the cliff at the verge of the forest.