‘Then I say it, Herr Baron!’ pursued Henker Rothhals, wiping his frontispiece:  ’The Devil has turned against you at last.  Look up there—­Ah, it’s gone now; but where’s the man sitting this side saw it not?’

The Baron made one spring, and stood on the board.

‘Now! will any rascal here please to say so?’

Something in the cruel hang of his threatening hatchet jaw silenced many in the act of confirming the assertion.

‘Stand out, Henker Rotthals!’

Rotthals slid a hunting-knife up his wrist, and stepped back from the board.

‘Beast!’ roared the Baron, ’I said I wouldn’t shed blood to-night.  I spared a traitor, and an enemy——­’

‘Look again!’ said Rothhals; ‘will any fellow say he saw nothing there.’

While all heads, including Werner’s, were directed to the aperture which surveyed them, Rothhals tossed his knife to the Goshawk unperceived.

This time answers came to his challenge, but not in confirmation.  The Baron spoke with a gasping gentleness.

’So you trifle with me?  I’m dangerous for that game.  Mind you of Blass-Gesell?  I made a better beast of him by sending him three-quarters of the road to hell for trial.’  Bellowing, ‘Take that!’ he discharged a broad blade, hitherto concealed in his right hand, straight at Rothhals.  It fixed in his cheek and jaw, wringing an awful breath of pain from him as he fell against the wall.

‘There’s a lesson for you not to cross me, children!’ said Werner, striding his stumpy legs up and down the crashing board, and puffing his monstrous girth of chest and midriff.  ’Let him stop there awhile, to show what comes of thwarting Werner!—­Fire-devils! before the baroness, too!—­Something unholy is there?  Something unholy in his jaw, I think!—­Leave it sticking!  He’s against meat last, is he?  I’ll teach you who he’s for!—­Who speaks?’

All hung silent.  These men were animals dominated by a mightier brute.

He clasped his throat, and shook the board with a jump, as he squeaked, rather than called, a second time ‘Who spoke?’

He had not again to ask.  In this pause, as the Baron glared for his victim, a song, so softly sung that it sounded remote, but of which every syllable was clearly rounded, swelled into his ears, and froze him in his angry posture.

’The blood of the barons shall turn to ice,
And their castle fall to wreck,
When a true lover dips in the water thrice,
That runs round Werner’s Eck.

’Round Werner’s Eck the water runs;
The hazels shiver and shake: 
The walls that have blotted such happy suns,
Are seized with the ruin-quake.

’And quake with the ruin, and quake with rue,
Thou last of Werner’s race! 
The hearts of the barons were cold that knew
The Water-Dame’s embrace.

’For a sin was done, and a shame was wrought,
That water went to hide: 
And those who thought to make it nought,
They did but spread it wide.