Gottlieb whirled a thong-lashing arm in air, and groaned of law and justice.  What were they coming to!

Margarita softened the theme with a verse: 

‘And tho’ to sting his enemy,
Is sweetness to the angry bee,
The angry bee must busy be,
Ere sweet of sweetness hiveth he.

The arch thrill of his daughter’s voice tickled Gottlieb.  ’That’s it, birdie!  You and the proverb are right.  I don’t know which is best,

’Better hive
And keep alive
Than vengeance wake
With that you take.’

A clatter in the cathedral square brought Gottlieb on his legs to the window.  It was a company of horsemen sparkling in harness.  One trumpeter rode at the side of the troop, and in front a standard-bearer, matted down the chest with ochre beard, displayed aloft to the good citizens of Cologne, three brown hawks, with birds in their beaks, on an azure stardotted field.

‘Holy Cross!’ exclaimed Gottlieb, low in his throat; ’the arms of Werner!  Where got he money to mount his men?  Why, this is daring all Cologne in our very teeth!  ’Fend that he visit me now!  Ruin smokes in that ruffian’s track.  I ‘ve felt hot and cold by turns all day.’

The horsemen came jingling carelessly along the street in scattered twos and threes, laughing together, and singling out the maidens at the gable-shadowed windows with hawking eyes.  The good citizens of Cologne did not look on them favourably.  Some showed their backs and gruffly banged their doors:  others scowled and pocketed their fists:  not a few slunk into the side alleys like well-licked curs, and scurried off with forebent knees.  They were in truth ferocious-looking fellows these trusty servants of the robber Baron Werner, of Werner’s Eck, behind Andernach.  Leather, steel, and dust, clad them from head to foot; big and black as bears; wolf-eyed, fox-nosed.  They glistened bravely in the falling beams of the sun, and Margarita thrust her fair braided yellow head a little forward over her father’s shoulder to catch the whole length of the grim cavalcade.  One of the troop was not long in discerning the young beauty.  He pointed her boldly out to a comrade, who approved his appetite, and referred her to a third.  The rest followed lead, and Margarita was as one spell-struck when she became aware that all those hungry eyes were preying on hers.  Old Gottlieb was too full of his own fears to think for her, and when he drew in his head rather suddenly, it was with a dismal foreboding that Werner’s destination in Cologne was direct to the house of Gottlieb Groschen, for purposes only too well to be divined.

‘Devil’s breeches!’ muttered Gottlieb; ’look again, Grete, and see if that hell-troop stop the way outside.’

Margarita’s cheeks were overflowing with the offended rose.

‘I will not look at them again, father.’

Gottlieb stared, and then patted her.