“A Groland?” asked Gitta, Cyriax’s wife, cowering as if threatened with a blow from an invisible hand.  “It was he—­”

“He?” laughed the chain-bearer, while he crouched beside her, drawing himself into the smallest space possible.  “No, Redhead!  The devil dragged the man who did that down to the lower regions long ago, on account of my tongue.  It’s his son.  The younger, the sharper.  This stripling made Casper Rubling,—­[Dice, in gambler’s slang]—­poor wretch, pay for his loaded dice with his eyesight.”

He thrust his hand hurriedly into his jerkin as he spoke, and gave Gitta something which he had concealed there.  It was a set of dice, but, with ready presence of mind, she pressed them so hard into the crumb of the loaf of bread which she had just cut that it entirely concealed them.

All this had passed wholly unnoticed in the corner of the long, wide room, for all the numerous travellers whom it sheltered were entirely occupied with their own affairs.  Nothing was understood except what was said between neighbour and neighbour, for a loud uproar pervaded the tavern of The Blue Pike.

It was one of the most crowded inns, being situated on the main ferry at Miltenberg, where those journeying from Nuremberg, Augsburg, and other South German cities, on their way to Frankfort and the Lower Rhine, rested and exchanged the saddle for the ship.  Just at the present time many persons of high and low degree were on their way to Cologne, whither the Emperor Maximilian, having been unable to come in April to Trier on the Moselle, had summoned the Reichstag.

The opening would take place in a few days, and attracted not only princes, counts, and knights, exalted leaders and more modest servants of the Church, ambassadors from the cities, and other aristocrats, but also honest tradesfolk, thriving money-lenders with the citizen’s cloak and the yellow cap of the Jew, vagrants and strollers of every description, who hoped to practise their various feats to the best advantage, or to fill their pockets by cheating and robbery.

This evening many had gathered in the spacious taproom of The Blue Pike.  Now those already present were to be joined by the late arrivals whom Cyriax had seen ride up.

It was a stately band.  Four aristocratic gentlemen at the head of the troop were followed by an escort of twenty-five Nuremberg mercenaries, a gay company whose crimson coats, with white slashes on the puffed sleeves, presented a showy spectacle.  Their helmets and armour glittered in the bright light of the setting sun of the last day of July, as they turned their horses in front of the wide gateway of The Blue Pike to ride into Miltenberg and ask lodgings of the citizens.

The trampling of hoofs, the shouts of command, and the voices of the gentlemen and their attendants outside attracted many guests to the doors and windows of the long, whitewashed building.