He raised some little difficulties, vexations of routine, which King Richard persistently laughed at, while doing his best to fulfil them.  Gunther did not relish this.  He named the Archduke as his overlord, hard upon strangers.  Richard let it slip that he did not greatly esteem the Archduke.  However, in the end he got his safe-conduct, and all would have been well if, on leaving Gazara, he had not overpaid the bill.

Overpay is not the word:  he drowned the bill.  In a hurry for the road, the innkeeper fretted him.  ‘Reckoning, landlord!’ he cried, with one foot in the stirrup:  ’how the devil am I to reckon half-way up a horse?  Here, reckon yourself, my man, and content you with these.’  He threw a fistful of gold besants on the flags, turned his horse sharply and cantered out of the yard.  ‘Colossal man!’ gasped the innkeeper.  ’King or devil, but no merchant under the sun.’  So the news spread abroad, and Gunther puffed his cheeks over it.  A six-foot-two man, a monstrous leisurely merchant, who rose not to the lord of a castle and town, who did not wait for his lordship’s humour, but found laughable matter in his own; who was taller than the Archduke and thought his Grace a dull dog; who made a Danae of his landlord!  Was this man Jove?  Who could think the Archduke a dull dog except an Emperor, or, perhaps, a great king?  A king:  stay now.  There were wandering kings abroad.  How if Richard of England had lost his way?  Here he slapped his thigh:  but this must be Richard of England—­what other king was so tall?  And in that case, O thunder in the sky, he had let slip his Archduke’s deadly enemy!  He howled for his lanzknechts, his boots, helmet, great sword; he set off at once, and riding by forest ways, cut off the merchant in a day and a night.  He ran him to earth in the small wooden inn of a small wooden village high up in the Carinthian Alps, Blomau by name, which lies in a forest clearing on the road to Gratz.

King Richard was drinking sour beer in the kitchen, and not liking it.  The lanzknechts surrounded the house; Gunther with two of them behind him came clattering in.  Glad of the diversion, Richard looked up.

‘Ha, here is Lord Gunther again,’ said he.  ‘Better than beer.’

‘King Richard of England,’ said the Austrian, white by nature, heat, and his feelings, ‘I make you my prisoner.’

‘So it seems,’ replied the King; ’sit down, Gunther.  I offer you beer and a most indifferent cheese.’

But Gunther would by no means sit down in the presence of an anointed king for one bidding.

‘Ah, sire, it is proper that I should stand before you,’ he said huskily, greatly excited.

‘It is not at all proper when I tell you to be seated,’ returned King Richard.  So Gunther sat down and wiped his head, Richard finished his beer; and then they went to sleep on the floor.  Early in the morning the prisoner woke up his gaoler.

‘Come, Gunther,’ he says, ‘we had better take the road.’