the musician's order:

"Nothing of that sort, waiter! The little keg from the Wurzburger Stein
can't be empty yet. We'll find the bottom of it this evening. What do
you say, Captain?"

"Such an arrangement will lighten the keg and not specially burden us,"
replied the other. "Good-evening, Herr Wilhelm, punctuality adorns the
soldier. People are beginning to understand how much depends upon it.
I have posted the men, so that they can overlook the country in
every direction. I shall have them relieved from time to time, and at
intervals look after them myself. This is good liquor, Junker. All honor
to the man who melts his gold into such a fluid. The first glass must be
a toast to the Prince."

The three men touched their glasses, and soon after drank to the liberty
of Holland and the prosperity of the good city of Leyden. Then the
conversation took a lively turn, but duty was not forgotten, for at the
end of half an hour the captain rose to survey the horizon himself and
urge the sentinels to vigilant watchfulness.

When he returned, Wilhelm and Junker von Warmond were so engaged in
eager conversation, that they did not notice his entrance. The musician
was speaking of Italy, and Allertssohn heard him exclaim impetuously:

"Whoever has once seen that country can never forget it, and when I am
sitting on the house-top with my doves, my thoughts only too often fly
far away with them, and my eyes no longer see our broad, monotonous
plains and grey, misty sky."

"Oh! ho! Meister Wilhelm," interrupted the captain, throwing himself
into the arm-chair and stretching out his booted legs. "Oh! ho! This
time I've discovered the crack in your brain. Italy, always Italy!
I know Italy too, for I've been in Brescia, looking for good steel
sword-blades for the Prince and other nobles, I crossed the rugged
Apennines and went to Florence to see fine pieces of armor. From Livorno
I went by sea to Genoa, where I obtained chased gold and silverwork for
shoulder-belts and sheaths. Truth is truth the brown-skinned rascals can
do fine work. But the country--the country! Roland, my fore man--how any
sensible man can prefer it to ours is more than I understand."

"Holland is our mother," replied von Warmond. "As good sons we believe
her the best of women; yet we can admit, without shame, that there are
more beautiful ones in the world."

"Do you blow that trumpet too?" exclaimed the fencing-master, pushing
his glass angrily further upo