’O the King he loved his lawful wife,
The Knight a lawless lady: 
And ten on one-made ringing strife,
Beneath the forest shady.’

‘Fifty to one, child!’ said Aunt Lisbeth:  ’You forget the story.  They made Kraut sit with them at the jabbering feast, the only mortal there.  The walls were full of eye-sockets without eyes, but phosphorus instead, burning blue and damp.’

‘Not to-night, aunty dear!  It frightens me so,’ pleaded Margarita, for she saw the dolor coming.

’Night! when it’s broad mid-day, thou timid one!  Good heaven take pity on such as thou!  The dish was seven feet in length by four broad.  Kraut measured it with his eye, and never forgot it.  Not he!  When the dish-cover was lifted, there he saw himself lying, boiled!

“’I did not feel uncomfortable then,” Kraut told us.  “It seemed natural.”

’His face, as it lay there, he says, was quite calm, only a little wrinkled, and piggish-looking-like.  There was the mole on his chin, and the pucker under his left eyelid.  Well! the Baron carved.  All the guests were greedy for a piece of him.  Some cried out for breast; some for toes.  It was shuddering cold to sit and hear that!  The Baroness said, “Cheek!"’

‘Ah!’ shrieked Margarita, ’that can I not bear!  I will not hear it, aunt; I will not!’

‘Cheek!’ Aunt Lisbeth reiterated, nodding to the floor.

Margarita put her fingers to her ears.

’Still, Kraut says, even then he felt nothing odd.  Of course he was horrified to be sitting with spectres as you and I should be; but the first tremble of it was over.  He had plunged into the bath of horrors, and there he was.  I ’ve heard that you must pronounce the names of the Virgin and Trinity, sprinkling water round you all the while for three minutes; and if you do this without interruption, everything shall disappear.  So they say.  “Oh! dear heaven of mercy!” says Kraut, “what I felt when the Baron laid his long hunting-knife across my left cheek!"’

Here Aunt Lisbeth lifted her eyes to dote upon Margarita’s fright.  She was very displeased to find her niece, with elbows on the window-sill and hands round her head, quietly gazing into the street.

She said severely, ’Where did you learn that song you were last singing, Margarita?  Speak, thou girl!’

Margarita laughed.

’The thrush, and the lark, and the blackbird,
They taught me how to sing: 
And O that the hawk would lend his eye,
And the eagle lend his wing.’

‘I will not hear these shameless songs,’ exclaimed Aunt Lisbeth.

’For I would view the lands they view,
And be where they have been: 
It is not enough to be singing
For ever in dells unseen!’

A voice was heard applauding her.  ’Good! right good!  Carol again, Gretelchen! my birdie!’

Margarita turned, and beheld her father in the doorway.  She tripped toward him, and heartily gave him their kiss of meeting.  Gottlieb glanced at the helm of Siegfried.