LITMIR.BIZ

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voices held long on the last note, and let it die in a forest cadence.

      ‘‘Fore Gad! well done. Hurrah! Tra-ra, ha-ha, tra-ra! That’s a trick we’re not half alive to at home,’ said Guy. ‘I feel friendly with these German lads.’

      The Goshawk’s disposition toward German lads was that moment harshly tested by a smart rap on the shoulder from an end of German oak, and a proclamation that he was prisoner of the hand that gave the greeting, in the name of the White Rose Club. Following that, his staff was wrested from him by a dozen stout young fellows, who gave him no time to get his famous distance for defence against numbers; and he and Farina were marched forthwith to the chorusing body in front of Gottlieb Groschen’s house.

THE MISSIVES

       Table of Contents

      Of all the inmates, Gottlieb had slept most with the day on his eyelids, for Werner hung like a nightmare over him. Margarita lay and dreamed in rose-colour, and if she thrilled on her pillowed silken couch like a tense-strung harp, and fretted drowsily in little leaps and starts, it was that a bird lay in her bosom, panting and singing through the night, and that he was not to be stilled, but would musically utter the sweetest secret thoughts of a love-bewitched maiden. Farina’s devotion she knew his tenderness she divined: his courage she had that day witnessed. The young girl no sooner felt that she could love worthily, than she loved with her whole strength. Muffed and remote came the hunting-song under her pillow, and awoke dreamy delicate curves in her fair face, as it thinned but did not banish her dream. Aunt Lisbeth also heard the song, and burst out of her bed to see that the door and window were secured against the wanton Kaiser. Despite her trials, she had taken her spell of sleep; but being possessed of some mystic maiden belief that in cases of apprehended peril from man, bed was a rock of refuge and fortified defence, she crept back there, and allowed the sun to rise without her. Gottlieb’s voice could not awaken her to the household duties she loved to perform with such a doleful visage. She heard him open his window, and parley in angry tones with the musicians below.

      ‘Decoys!’ muttered Aunt Lisbeth; ‘be thou alive to them, Gottlieb!’

      He went downstairs and opened the street door, whereupon the scolding and railing commenced anew.

      ‘Thou hast given them vantage, Gottlieb, brother mine,’ she complained; ‘and the good heavens only can say what may result from such indiscreetness.’

      A silence, combustible with shuffling of feet in the passage and on the stairs, dinned horrors into Aunt Lisbeth’s head.

      ‘It was just that sound in the left wing of Hollenbogenblitz,’ she said: ‘only then it was night and not morning. Ursula preserve me!’

      ‘Why, Lisbeth! Lisbeth!’ cried Gottlieb from below. ‘Come down! ’tis full five o’ the morning. Here’s company; and what are we to do without the woman?’

      ‘Ah, Gottlieb! that is like men! They do not consider how different it is for us!’ which mysterious sentence being uttered to herself alone, enjoyed a meaning it would elsewhere have been denied.

      Aunt Lisbeth dressed, and met Margarita descending. They exchanged the good-morning of young maiden and old.

      ‘Go thou first,’ said Aunt Lisbeth.

      Margarita gaily tripped ahead.

      ‘Girl!’ cried Aunt Lisbeth, ‘what’s that thing in thy back hair?’

      ‘I have borrowed Lieschen’s arrow, aunt. Mine has had an accident.’

      ‘Lieschen’s arrow! An accident! Now I will see to that after breakfast, Margarita.’

      ‘Tra-ra, ta-ta, tra-ra, tra-ra,’ sang Margarita.

      ‘The wild boar lay a-grunting,

       A-grunting, tra-ra.’

      ‘A maiden’s true and proper ornament! Look at mine, child! I have worn it fifty years. May I deserve to wear it till I am called! O Margarita! trifle not with that symbol.’

      ‘ “O birdie, and boar, and deer, lie tame!”

      I am so happy, aunty.’

      ‘Nice times to be happy in, Margarita.’

      “Be happy in Spring, sweet maidens all,

       For Autumn’s chill will early fall.”

      So sings the Minnesinger, aunty; and

      ‘ “A maiden in the wintry leaf

       Will spread her own disease of grief.”

      I love the Minnesingers! Dear, sweet-mannered men they are! Such lovers! And men of deeds as well as song: sword on one side and harp on the other. They fight till set of sun, and then slacken their armour to waft a ballad to their beloved by moonlight, covered with stains of battle as they are, and weary!’

      ‘What a girl! Minnesingers! Yes; I know stories of those Minnesingers. They came to the castle—Margarita, a bead of thy cross is broken. I will attend to it. Wear the pearl one till I mend this. May’st thou never fall in the way of Minnesingers. They are not like Werner’s troop. They do not batter at doors: they slide into the house like snakes.’

      ‘Lisbeth! Lisbeth!’ they heard Gottlieb calling impatiently.

      ‘We come, Gottlieb!’ and in a low murmur Margarita heard her say: ‘May this day pass without trouble and shame to the pious and the chaste.’

      Margarita knew the voice of the stranger before she had opened the door, and on presenting herself, the hero gave her a guardian-like salute.

      ‘One may see,’ he said, ‘that it requires better men than those of Werner to drive away the rose from that cheek.’

      Gottlieb pressed the rosy cheek to his shoulder and patted her.

      ‘What do you think, Grete? You have now forty of the best lads in Cologne enrolled to protect you, and keep guard over the house night and day. There! What more could a Pfalzgrafin ask, now? And voluntary service; all to be paid with a smile, which I daresay my lady won’t refuse them. Lisbeth, you know our friend. Fear him not, good Lisbeth, and give us breakfast. Well, sweet chuck, you’re to have royal honours paid you. I warrant they’ve begun good work already in locking up that idle moony vagabond, Farina—’

      ‘Him? What for, my father? How dared they! What has he done?’

      ‘O, start not, my fairy maid! A small matter of breakage, pet! He tried to enter Cunigonde Schmidt’s chamber, and knocked down her pot of lilies: for which Berthold Schmidt knocked him down, and our friend here, out of good fellowship, knocked down Berthold. However, the chief offender is marched off to prison by your trusty guard, and there let him cool himself. Berthold shall tell you the tale himself: he’ll be here to breakfast, and receive your orders, mistress commander-in-chief.’

      The Goshawk had his eye on Margarita. Her teeth were tight down on her nether lip, and her whole figure had a strange look of awkwardness, she was so divided with anger.

      ‘As witness of the affair, I think I shall make a clearer statement, fair maiden,’ he interposed. ‘In the first place, I am the offender. We passed under the window of the Fraulein Schmidt, and ’twas I mounted to greet the lilies. One shoot of them is in my helm, and here let me present them to a worthier holder.’

      He offered the flowers with a smile, and Margarita took them, radiant with gratitude.

      ‘Our friend Berthold,’ he continued, ‘thought proper to aim a blow at me behind my back, and then ran for his comrades. He was caught, and by my gallant young hero, Farina; concerning whose character I regret that your respected father and I differ: for, on the faith of a soldier and true man,

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