In a few minutes we were all standing on the rampart between the pools and the Convent, and there were the miserable knaves whom Jorg Starch and his men-at-arms had surrounded and carried off while they were making good cheer over their morning broth and sodden flesh.  They had declared that they had been of Wichsenstein’s fellowship, but had deserted Eber by reason of his over-hard rule, and betaken themselves to robbery on their own account.  Howbeit Starch was of opinion that matters were otherwise.  When he had been sent forth to seek them he had as yet no knowledge of the attack on Eppelein; now, so soon as he heard that they had stripped him of his clothes, he bid them stand in a row and examined each one; in truth they were a pitiable crew, and had they not so truly deserved our compassion their rags must have moved us to laughter.  One had made his cloak of a woman’s red petticoat, pulling it over his head and cutting slits in it for arm-holes, and another great fellow wore a friar’s brown frock and on his head a good-wife’s fur turban tied on with an infant’s swaddling band.  Jorg Starch’s enquiries as to where were Eppelein’s garments made one of them presently point to his decent and whole jerkin, another to his under coat, and the biggest man of them all to his hat with the cock’s feather, which was all unmatched with his ragged weed.  Starch searched each piece for the letter, and meanwhile Uhlwurm stooped his long body, groping on the ground in such wise that it might have seemed that he was seeking the four-leaved clover; and on a sudden he laid hands on the shoes of a lean, low fellow, with hollow cheeks and a thrifty beard on his sharp chin, who till now had looked about him, the boldest of them all; he felt round the top of the shoes, and looking him in the face, asked him in a threatening voice:  “Where are the tops?”

“The tops?” said the man in affrighted tones.  “I wear shoes, Master, and shoes are but boots which have no tops; and mine. . . .”

“And yours!” quoth Uhlwurm in scorn.  “The rats have made shoes of your boots and have eaten the tops, unless it was the mice?  Look here, Captain, if it please you. . . .”

Starch did his bidding, and when he had made the lean knave put off his left shoe he looked at it on all sides, stroked his beard the wrong way, and said solemnly:  “Well said, Master, this is matter for thought!  All this gives the case a fresh face.”  And he likewise cried to the rogue:  “Where are the tops?” The fellow had had time to collect himself, and answered boldly:  “I am but a poor weak worm, my lord Captain; they were full heavy for me, so I cut them away and cast them into the pool, where by now the carps are feeding on them.”  And he glanced round at his fellows, as it were to read in their faces their praise of his quick wit.  Howbeit they were in overmuch dread to pay him that he looked for; nay, and his bold spirit was quelled when Starch took him by the throat and asked him:  “Do you see that bough there, my lad?  If another lie passes your lips, I will load it with a longer and heavier pear than ever it bore yet?  Sebald, bring forth the ropes.—­Now my beauty; answer me three things:  Did the messenger wear boots?  How come you, who are one of the least of the gang, to be wearing sound shoes?  And again, Where are the tops?”