They marched joyously for several leagues, singing and joking, and telling of a thousand feats of love and chase and war.  While thus engaged, some one remarked to Otto, that he was not dressed in the regular uniform, having no feathers in his hat.

“I dare say I will find a feather,” said the lad, smiling.

Then another gibed because his bow was new.

“See that you can use your old one as well, Master Wolfgang,” said the undisturbed youth.  His answers, his bearing, his generosity, his beauty, and his wit, inspired all his new toxophilite friends with interest and curiosity, and they longed to see whether his skill with the bow corresponded with their secret sympathies for him.

An occasion for manifesting this skill did not fail to present itself soon—­as indeed it seldom does to such a hero of romance as young Otto was.  Fate seems to watch over such:  events occur to them just in the nick of time; they rescue virgins just as ogres are on the point of devouring them; they manage to be present at court and interesting ceremonies, and to see the most interesting people at the most interesting moment; directly an adventure is necessary for them, that adventure occurs:  and I, for my part, have often wondered with delight (and never could penetrate the mystery of the subject) at the way in which that humblest of romance heroes, Signor Clown, when he wants anything in the Pantomime, straightway finds it to his hand.  How is it that,—­suppose he wishes to dress himself up like a woman for instance, that minute a coalheaver walks in with a shovel-hat that answers for a bonnet; at the very next instant a butcher’s lad passing with a string of sausages and a bundle of bladders unconsciously helps Master Clown to a necklace and a tournure, and so on through the whole toilet?  Depend upon it there is something we do not wot of in that mysterious overcoming of circumstances by great individuals:  that apt and wondrous conjuncture of the hour and the man; and so, for my part, when I heard the above remark of one of the archers, that Otto had never a feather in his bonnet, I felt sure that a heron would spring up in the next sentence to supply him with an aigrette.

And such indeed was the fact:  rising out of a morass by which the archers were passing, a gallant heron, arching his neck, swelling his crest, placing his legs behind him, and his beak and red eyes against the wind, rose slowly, and offered the fairest mark in the world.

“Shoot, Otto,” said one of the archers.  “You would not shoot just now at a crow because it was a foul bird, nor at a hawk because it was a noble bird; bring us down yon heron:  it flies slowly.”

But Otto was busy that moment tying his shoestring, and Rudolf, the third best of the archers, shot at the bird and missed it.

“Shoot, Otto,” said Wolfgang, a youth who had taken a liking to the young archer:  “the bird is getting further and further.”