’"Psha!” answered the Minister; “I will pay you half the money beforehand; such is my confidence in you.  Accident’s impossible if you take your measures properly.  There are four leagues of wood; the Jew rides slowly.  It will be night before he can reach, let us say, the old Powder-Mill in the wood.  What’s to prevent you from putting a rope across the road, and dealing with him there?  Be back with me this evening at supper.  If you meet any of the patrol, say ’foxes are loose,’—­that’s the word for to-night.  They will let you pass them without questions.”

’The man went off quite charmed with his commission; and when Magny was losing his money at our faro-table, his servant waylaid the Jew at the spot named the Powder-Mill, in the Kaiserwald.  The Jew’s horse stumbled over a rope which had been placed across the road; and, as the rider fell groaning to the ground, Johann Kerner rushed out on him, masked, and pistol in hand, and demanded his money.  He had no wish to kill the Jew, I believe, unless his resistance should render extreme measures necessary.

’Nor did he commit any such murder; for, as the yelling Jew roared for mercy, and his assailant menaced him with a pistol, a squad of patrol came up, and laid hold of the robber and the wounded man.

’Kerner swore an oath.  “You have come too soon,” said he to the sergeant of the police.  “Foxes are loose.”  “Some are caught,” said the sergeant, quite unconcerned; and bound the fellow’s hands with the rope which he had stretched across the road to entrap the Jew.  He was placed behind a policeman on a horse; Lowe was similarly accommodated, and the party thus came back into the town as the night fell.  ’They were taken forthwith to the police quarter; and, as the chief happened to be there, they were examined by his Excellency in person.  Both were rigorously searched; the Jew’s papers and cases taken from him:  the jewel was found in a private pocket.  As for the spy, the Minister, looking at him angrily, said, “Why, this is the servant of the Chevalier de Magny, one of her Highness’s equerries!” and without hearing a word in exculpation from the poor frightened wretch, ordered him into close confinement.

’Calling for his horse, he then rode to the Prince’s apartments at the palace, and asked for an instant audience.  When admitted, he produced the emerald.  “This jewel,” said he, “has been found on the person of a Heidelberg Jew, who has been here repeatedly of late, and has had many dealings with her Highness’s equerry, the Chevalier de Magny.  This afternoon the Chevalier’s servant came from his master’s lodgings, accompanied by the Hebrew; was heard to make inquiries as to the route the man intended to take on his way homewards; followed him, or preceded him rather, and was found in the act of rifling his victim by my police in the Kaiserwald.  The man will confess nothing; but, on being searched, a large sum in gold was found on