I rang again.

This time his grotesque figure appeared abruptly, and he cried to me from the door in a fury—­

“Who are you?”

“I?—­Doctor Fritz.”

“Oh, that alters the case,” and he went back into his lodge for a lantern, crossed the outer court where the snow came up to his middle, and staring at me through the grating, he exclaimed—­

“I beg your pardon, Doctor Fritz; I thought you would be asleep up there in Hugh Lupus’s tower.  Were you ringing?  Now that explains why Sperver came to me about midnight to ask if anybody had gone out.  I said no, which was quite true, for I never saw you going out.”

“But pray, Monsieur Knapwurst, do for pity’s sake let me in, and I will tell you all about that by-and-by.”

“Come, come, sir, a little patience.”

And the hunchback, with the slowest deliberation, undid the padlock and slipped the bars, whilst my teeth were chattering, and I stood shivering from head to foot.

“You are very cold, doctor,” said the diminutive man, “and you cannot get into the castle.  Sperver has fastened the inside door, I don’t know why; he does not usually do so; the outer gate is enough.  Come in here and get warm.  You won’t find my little hole very inviting, though.  It is nothing but a sty, but when a man is as cold as you are he is not apt to be particular.”

Without replying to his chatter I followed him in as quickly as I could.

We went into the hut, and in spite of my complete state of numbness, I could not help admiring the state of picturesque disorder in which I found the place.  The slate roof leaning against the rock, and resting by its other side on a wall not more than six feet high, showed the smoky, blackened rafters from end to end.

The whole edifice consisted of but one apartment, furnished with a very uninviting bed, which the dwarf did not often take the trouble to make, and two small windows with hexagonal panes, weather-stained with the rainbow tints of mother-of-pearl.  A large square table filled up the middle, and it would be difficult to account for that massive oak slab being got in unless by supposing it to have been there before the hut was built.

On shelves against the wall were rolls of parchment, and old books great and small.  Wide open on the table lay a fine black-letter volume, with illuminations, bound in vellum, clasped and cornered with silver, apparently a collection of old chronicles.  Besides there was nothing but two leathern arm-chairs, bearing on them the unmistakable impression of the misshapen figure of this learned gentleman.

I need not stay to do more than mention the pens, the jar of tobacco, five or six pipes lying here and there, and in a corner a small cast-iron stove, with its low, open door wide open, and throwing out now and then a volley of bright sparks; and to complete the picture, the cat arching her back, and spitting threateningly at me with her armed paw uplifted.