Soon afterwards Cuno made his will, but he told no one what was in it. The old woman plagued her favourite sorely to tell her if he had left anything to his brothers, but he would not, and in the end she never knew, for she died the following year. All her pills and potions could not help her then, for she was ninety-eight years old, and the disease she died of was “old age,” which the cleverest doctor in the world cannot cure.
Count Cuno laid her to rest with every mark of respect and sorrow. It was not long before the old chaplain also left him, and then he became a very lonely man. But his loneliness was not for long, for Cuno, the good, died in his twenty-eighth year. Some said he was poisoned by his brothers, but whether it were so or no, no one ever really knew.
Again the country resounded with the roar of cannons, twenty-five rounds being fired from the castles of Zollern and Schalksberg.
“Well, there is no mistake this time,” said Schalk, as he met his brother Wolf on the road.
“No, indeed,” answered Wolf, “and if he were to rise and glare at us from the window as he did before, I have a pistol with me, ready charged, that will soon teach him to hold his peace.”
As they rode up the castle hill a rider and his retinue joined them. Neither of the brothers knew him, but supposed he must be a friend of Cuno’s who had come to his funeral, so they began to praise the dead man, lamented his early death, and Schalk even shed a few crocodile tears. But the knight answered never a word, only rode silently up the hill-side.
When the brothers dismounted, Wolf called for wine—“and of the best, Master Cellarman,” he added—“for now we are going to enjoy ourselves.”
He went up the stairs and entered the great hall, followed closely by the silent knight, who, when the twins had seated themselves at the table, drew a silver coin from his vest pocket, and, flinging it on the table between them, cried: “There is your inheritance, you will find it correct, the exact amount being a florin.”
The brothers looked surprised, laughed uneasily, and asked him what he meant.
The knight drew forth a parchment, with numerous seals attached, and began to read out what Cuno had set down there. Every act of enmity they had shown him during his lifetime was chronicled there, and then came an order that his estates and all that he possessed, with the exception of his mother’s jewels, were to be sold to the State of Würtemberg for the sum of one florin. The jewels, however, were to be sold, and the money be used to endow a house for the poor in the little town of Balingen.