Come
hither, Christina, my little one; it is well to be abashed, but thou
art not a child who need fear to meet a father."
Christina's extreme timidity, however, made her pale and crimson by
turns, perhaps by the infection of anxiety from her aunt, who could
not conceal a certain dissatisfaction and alarm, as the maiden, led
on either side by her adopted parents, thus advanced from the little
studio into a handsomely-carved wooden gallery, projecting into a
great wainscoated room, with a broad carved stair leading down into
it. Down this stair the three proceeded, and reached the stone hall
that lay beyond it, just as there entered from the trellised porch,
that covered the steps into the street, a thin wiry man, in a worn
and greasy buff suit, guarded on the breast and arms with rusty
steel, and a battered helmet with the vizor up, disclosing a weather-
beaten bronzed face, with somewhat wild dark eyes, and a huge
grizzled moustache forming a straight line over his lips. Altogether
he was a complete model of the lawless Reiter or Lanzknecht, the
terror of Swabia, and the bugbear of Christina's imagination.
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