our money to those who have
the noose around their neck?"

"Who is this demon who has the baron in his power?" cried Anton, in
uncontrollable excitement.

"What signifies the name?" coolly replied the Galician. "Even if I knew
it I would not tell it, and if I told it it could do you no good, nor
the baron either, for you know him not, and he knows him not."

"Is it Ehrenthal?" inquired Anton.

"I can not tell the name," rejoined the trader, shrugging his shoulders;
"but it is not Hirsch Ehrenthal."

"If I am to believe your words, and if you wish to do me a service,"
continued Anton, more composedly, "you must give me exact information. I
must know this man's name--must know all that you have heard of him and
of the baron."

"I have heard nothing," replied the trader, doggedly, "if you wish to
examine me as they do in the courts of law. A word that is spoken flies
through the air like a scent; one perceives it, another does not. I can
not tell you the words I have heard, and I will not tell them for much
money. What I say is meant for your ear alone. To you I say that two men
have sat together, not one, but many evenings--not one, but many years;
and they have whispered in the balcony of our inn, under which the water
runs; and the water whispered below them, and they whispered above the
water. I lay in the room on my bed of straw, so that they believed I was
asleep; and I have often heard the name of Rothsattel from the lips of
both, and the name of his estate too; and I know that misfortune hovers
over him, but further I know not; and now I have said all, and will go.
The good advice I have this day given you will make up for the day when
you fought for the wool and the hides; and you will remember the promise
you have made me."

Anton was lost in thought. He knew from Bernhard that Ehrenthal was in
many ways intimately connected with the baron, and this link between the
landed proprietor and the ill-spoken-of speculator had often seemed to
him unaccountable. But Tinkeles' story was too incredible, for he had
never himself heard any unfavorable account of the baron's
circumstances. "I can not," said he, after a long pause, "be satisfied
with what you have told me. You will think the matter over, and perhaps
you will remember the name, and some of the words you heard."

"Perhaps I may," said the Galician, with a peculiar expression, which
Anton in his perplexity quite lost. "And now we have squared our
accoun