Whereupon, casting a look of leisurely scorn toward the guard coming up in the last beams of day, the Baron shrugged his huge shoulders to an altitude expressing the various contemptuous shades of feudal coxcombry, stuck one leather-ruffled arm in his side, and jolted off at an easy pace.

‘Amen!’ ejaculated the stranger, leaning on his staff.  ’There are Barons in my old land; but never a brute beast in harness.’

Margarita stood before him, and took his two hands.

’You will come with me to my father!  He will thank you.  I cannot.  You will come?’

Tears and a sob of relief started from her.

The city guard, on seeing Werner’s redoubtable back turned, had adopted double time, and now came panting up, while the stranger bent smiling under a fresh overflow of innocent caresses.  Margarita was caught to her father’s breast.

‘You shall have vengeance for this, sweet chuck,’ cried old Gottlieb in the intervals of his hugs.

‘Fear not, my father; they are punished’:  and Margarita related the story of the stranger’s prowess, elevating him into a second Siegfried.  The guard huzzaed him, but did not pursue the Baron.

Old Gottlieb, without hesitation, saluted the astonished champion with a kiss on either cheek.

’My best friend!  You have saved my daughter from indignity!  Come with us home, if you can believe that a home where the wolves come daring us, dragging our dear ones from our very doorsteps.  Come, that we may thank you under a roof at least.  My little daughter!  Is she not a brave lass?’

‘She’s nothing less than the white rose of Germany,’ said the stranger, with a good bend of the shoulders to Margarita.

‘So she’s called,’ exclaimed Gottlieb; ’she ‘s worthy to be a man!’

‘Men would be the losers, then, more than they could afford,’ replied the stranger, with a ringing laugh.

‘Come, good friend,’ said Gottlieb; ’you must need refreshment.  Prove you are a true hero by your appetite.  As Charles the Great said to Archbishop Turpin, “I conquered the world because Nature gave me a gizzard; for everywhere the badge of subjection is a poor stomach.”  Come, all!  A day well ended, notwithstanding!’

THE SILVER ARROW

At the threshold of Gottlieb’s house a number of the chief burgesses of Cologne had corporated spontaneously to condole with him.  As he came near, they raised a hubbub of gratulation.  Strong were the expressions of abhorrence and disgust of Werner’s troop in which these excellent citizens clothed their outraged feelings; for the insult to Gottlieb was the insult of all.  The Rhinestream taxes were provoking enough to endure; but that the licence of these free-booting bands should extend to the homes of free and peaceful men, loyal subjects of the Emperor, was a sign that the evil had reached from pricks to pokes, as the saying went, and must now be met as became burgesses of ancient Cologne, and by joint action destroyed.