“Make zem take you avay, so zat you vill be safe from my rage!  I do not trost myself mit you.  I am so violent as a bull!  Better zat you should go; far better—­do you not see?”

“No, Rudolph, no!” replied the adamant lady.  “I have come to guard you against your own abandoned nature, and I shall only leave this room when you do!”

She sat down and faced him, palpitating, but immovable; and against such obstinacy the unhappy Rudolph gave up the contest in despair.

“But I shall not talk mit her; oh, Himmel, nein!” he said to himself; and in pursuance of this policy sat with his back turned to her while the shadows of evening gradually filled the room.  In vain did she address him:  he neither answered nor moved.  Indeed, to discourage her still further, he even summoned up a forced gaiety of demeanor, and in a low rumble of discords sang to himself the least respectable songs he knew.

“His mind is certainly deranged,” thought the Countess.  “I must not let him out of my sight.  Ah, poor Alicia!”

But in time, when the dusk was thickening so fast that her son-in-law’s broad back had already grown indistinct of outline, and no voice or footstep had come near their prison, her thoughts began to wander from his case to her own.  The outrageous conduct of those Americans in discrediting her word and incarcerating her person, though overshadowed at the time by the yet greater atrocity of the Baron’s behavior, now loomed up in formidable proportions.  And the gravity of their offence was emphasized by an unpleasant sensation she now began to experience with considerable acuteness.

“Do they mean to starve us as well as insult us?” she wondered.

The Baron’s thoughts also seemed to have drifted into a different channel.  He no longer sang; he fidgeted in his chair; he even softly groaned; and at last he actually changed his attitude so far as to survey the dim form of his mother-in-law over one shoulder.

“Oh, ze devil!” he exclaimed aloud.  “I am so hongry!”

“That is no reason why you should also be profane,” said the Countess severely.

“I did not speak to you,” retorted the Baron, and again a constrained silence fell on the room.

The Baron was the first to break it.

“Ha!” he cried.  “I hear a step.”

“Thank God!” exclaimed the Countess devoutly.

In the blaze of a stable lantern there entered to them Dugald M’Culloch, jailor.

“Will you be for any supper?” he inquired, with a politeness he felt due to prisoners with purses.

“I do starve!” replied the Baron.

“And I am nearly fainting!” cried the Countess.

Both rose with an alacrity astonishing in people so nearly exhausted, and made as though they would pass out.  With a deprecatory gesture Dugald arrested them.

“I will bring your supper fery soon,” said he.

“Here?” gasped the Countess.