heer and merrymaking
were ere long overmuch for me; and I would gladly have withdrawn with
Ann to some lonely spot, there to think of our dear one.

At last we were released; Jorg Starch, the captain of the Lichtenau
horsemen, a tall, lean soldier, with shrewd eyes, a little turned-up
cock-nose, and thick full beard, now came in and, lifting his hand to
his helmet, said as sharply as though he were cutting each word short
off with his white teeth: "Caught; trapped; all the rabble!"

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 top